Techie Ramblings

Category: Internet

  • Smartphone addiction or social media addiction?

    We see it all the time. People are at war with their own screen time. Or not. I’d argue some people don’t even know they have a problem. It’s very telling though when both of the major smartphone operating systems have built in methods to help limit screen time and use their devices in more productive ways. Would they actually want you to use your smartphone less though? Obviously not, but there is enough of a demand that they need to be seen trying at least.

    If you use a smartphone, take a look at your screen time in the settings of your device. If this isn’t something you’re mindful of you may be surprised at just how much time you spend staring at it every day. Secondly take a look at the breakdown by application, if you have any form of social media installed on the device I’d bet with fairly high confidence that the social media application is at the top of the list.

    The argument I’d like to make is that when we hear people talking about smartphone addictions, with people regularly hitting 10 hours or more a day on their phone (which is frankly insane!) they’re actually incorrect. I think what most people are describing is a social media addiction, the reason that the smartphone is blamed as the culprit it because it enhances the problem due to it’s convenience and portability.

    Have you ever noticed that neither Windows or Mac computers have settings to limit screen time? They simply don’t need it. When we use a computer it’s more intentional. Generally we perform the task we set out to complete and then we switch it off again. In my case I primarily use a desktop computer, to use it I have to sit at my desk and if I’m not at my desk any task I need to perform on the computer would have to wait until I’m there. The 27″ monitor I have can display information at a much larger size, I can type at 80 words per minute on it’s full sized keyboard, and I can select things and operate much more accurately with a proper mouse. Considering this and many more reasons, using my desktop computer is the most efficient and productive way for me to interface with the digital world. Yet if I wasn’t mindful of my usage I would be sat on the sofa trying to do these things on my phone. Why? Because it’s more convenient.

    Yes you can use social media on a computer, in a web browser but I doubt many people do this, especially those that aren’t mindful of their social media consumption. The majority of people will use social media on their mobile device, with a dedicated app that can send notifications to them at any time, and that’s when social media can become a problem.

    A smartphone, when used intentionally can be a very powerful productivity tool. It provides a way to interface with the digital form in a portable form factor. You can access and manage your finances. You have the entirety of human knowledge at your fingertips through its web browser. You can take photos, record videos, play them back or send them to friends and family. You can take and store an almost infinite number of notes. It can be your alarm clock, timer or stopwatch. You can read books or watch films on it. It can also replace your wallet. Obviously it’s also a phone! This is really only scratching the surface of the near endless functionality of a smartphone. Looking back only a few years having a modern smartphone in your pocket would be the equivalent of having access to a pocketable super computer. Is it the most productive form factor? Absolutely not. A relatively small touch screen as the only input and display is not a particularly ergonomic or effective way of using a computer, but considering it has to fit in our pocket the options are quite limited.

    I argue strongly that it is not the smartphone that should be demonised, for it’s merely a tool it is in fact the social media apps that have completely hijacked our smartphones that is the problem.

    Don’t believe me? Don’t take my word for it. Take part in my challenge. But before you do anything I’d like you to record some data as a baseline. For 7 days, at the end of each day, write down your total screen time for the day.

    Once you’ve done that delete every single social media app from your mobile phone, and block access to their web versions from your web browser (depending on your device the steps for that will be different but the information is easily found on popular search engines). You don’t need to delete your social media accounts, and you can still access the accounts on a desktop, laptop or even a tablet as often as you like but just not your smartphone. Do this for 14 days, and at the end of each day write down your total screen usage.

    I’ve done exactly as I described above, however I went one step further. I also completely deleted the accounts. The only account I still have is Youtube and I limit my usage of that to my tablet.

    The first couple of days you’ll find your screen time is still high, however it will be slightly lower than before. You’ll find yourself unlocking your smartphone regularly out of sheer habit, but because the allure of social media is gone from it you’ll probably swipe through the Home Screen for a minute or so before putting it back in your pocket. Try your best not to replace scrolling social media with mindless web browsing. By the end of this challenge I am almost certain that (unless you’re involved in multiple group chats that you participate heavily in) your screen time will have at least halved. You’ll find that when you do use your smartphone it will be to complete a task that you decided upon before you unlocked the screen, and once that task is completed the screen will be switched off.

    If you have taken part in this challenge, please share your results in the comments if you’re comfortable doing so. What I’d also be interested to know is that at the end of the challenge will you be reinstalling the apps or are you going to continue to keep them off your smartphone?

    For me personally I enjoy being intentional with my consumption of media, and I like to be present when I’m spending time with friends or family. A face to face conversation is much richer and more fulfilling than anything I could ever see on my smartphone so I prioritise that. I spend less than an hour a day on my smartphone now, and yet I still listen to music, I still use my GPS, I keep in touch with people, I do mobile banking and I keep on top of email. My device can go almost a week between charges because unless I need the phone for something, it’s not being used.

    To conclude and summarise: When you next hear the term “smartphone addiction”, consider correcting it to “social media addiction”. It’s nigh on impossible to be addicted to a tool. To put it crudely; a drug user is not addicted to a syringe, but the drugs they administer through it. Used correctly a syringe is a powerful tool that can be used to saved lives, but it can also be misused to devastating effect.

  • Staying sane in the digital era

    We are living in the biggest mental health crisis in modern history. People are more anxious and depressed than ever before. Doctors are throwing medication at the issue, with record numbers of people on prescribed medication, many others are self medicating the issue with illicit substances.

    We can cure more conditions than ever before, with diseases and illnesses that would’ve been a death sentence in years gone by now trivial. Yet mental health is still murky territory, and the knowledge we have on the subject lags years behind our advancements in physical conditions.

    Irrespective of this, it could easily be argued that the mental health of the developed world’s population is worse than ever, particularly in younger generations.

    Excessive smartphone and internet use have been cited as causes for a decline in mental health, and I’d argue it’s the main factor.

    Smartphones and internet, when used in a positive manner are two of the biggest technological advancements of man kind. We have the entirety of human knowledge and history at our fingertips, accessible to everyone and we can store the whole thing in our pocket. No longer does a question have to go unanswered, and everyone regardless of their education can find guides and a wealth of information on any task they are presented with.

    However, something that started with pure intentions of the advancement of humans has quickly been corrupted by greed and as of today there’s very little left of the internet that isn’t trying to make someone richer. At first the internet became littered with adverts, generic at first, then targeted through algorithmic analysis. Then came the influencers; advertisements in the disguise of content. Most recently came “AI”, human content is now at war with computer generated content, and the use of AI doesn’t come cheap for corporations so it’s used to either advertise products, harvest data or sway opinions in the favour of it’s overlord.

    People flock to social media as a last huddle to escape computer generated content, but this is not much better. Deep fakes, bots and generated content flood this too, often posing as a human poster.

    So what are we left with in 2025? Mass data collection, targeted advertising, political propoganda, AI generated content, fake news, malicious scamming and a mass of bots. Does this sound a healthy place to be? If you described that to me I wouldn’t want to spend one minute there, let alone upwards of 10 hours a day that an alarming number of people do today.

    There’s a lot to examine here so I’ll break this down into the different ways that this hurts our mental health:

    • Isolation – Human’s are social creatures, and interacting with each other and forming positive relationship improves our mental state. It’s an innate behaviour that we seek out interaction and approval of our peers. Social media preys on that. It exchanges genuine human interaction for cheap, low effort interaction. A like, a comment, an upvote, a retweet, a share all take next to no effort. The sender feels like they’ve got behind the poster, and the recipient feels accepted, like or admired. Both get a quick rush of dopamine, reinforcing the behaviour, encouraging the cycle to repeat. In actuality, these people haven’t interacted at all, but they feel like they have for a brief moment. People are using this as a substitute for staying in contact with their friends, family or acquaintances because it’s low effort. However for something to be genuinely fulfilling it needs to be given effort. Think of it as receiving a thoughtful, relevant gift opposed to a gift card. This whole cycle leaves people feeling more isolated and lonely than ever, which in turn leads them to spend more time on social media trying to fulfil a longing for human contact, obviously this just compounds the issue, but benefits the social media company massively as the user spends more time on their platform, consuming their content, sharing more of their personal information and feeding the advertisers.
    • Anxiety – You’ll have most likely heard of the term “clickbait” and maybe even “ragebait” by now. Even so, I’m sure you still fall for it, we all do. It’s a well known fact that negative content gets more engagement than positive. Someone who is outraged, scared or full of dread is much likely to click on an article, share or engage in discussion than something nice. It’s the same concept as you only see bad reviews online, people are generally more likely to go out of their way if they’ve had a negative experience. Marketers and news outlets know this, and as their income comes from your engagement they’ll produce what makes them more of it. For someone who gets the majority of their news from social media or less credible publications it would be very easy for them to form a view that everything in the world is terrible, on the brink of all out war, and that everyone is out to get them. In reality it’s not, but if that’s all you see you’ll start to believe it.
    • Too much exposure to news – Previously there were two ways to get your news. Either a newspaper or the televised news, usually once a day. To cram all this into one paper, or a small period of time on a TV channel news was concise and relevant to it’s readers/viewers. Do we really need to know of every conflict or problem occurring in the world? Does knowing about this enable you to do anything about it? Not every problem is ours to bare, and the increased mental stress of knowing all this information can weigh us down. Not too long ago we had town criers, who would deliver local news to the population. Being naturally inquisitive leads us into trying to be up to speed on worldwide events, even when there is really no benefit to us knowing about them.
    • Less time spent in the real world – Every minute spent online is a minute that could be spent doing something else. Buying something online substitutes an actual shopping trip, that would generally include some exercise and social interaction. Watching short form videos could substitute someone going for a walk in nature, playing with their children or learning a new hobby. I could go on but I’m sure you get the point. Granted that not every moment spent on the internet or a smartphone is productive time, but generally the time spend online does our mental health more harm than if we just stared at a wall.
    • Lack of boredom – This sounds counterintuitive but boredom is actually pretty important. I’m old enough to remember being a child or teenager, bored out of my mind in my bedroom, with only my thoughts. When we have no distractions the voice in our heads wake up, we start to think about and process our experiences, we start to be creative and eventually we seek out something interesting to do. When I hear that people are spending 10 hours a day on their phones it baffles me, what does that really leave any other time free for? Assuming the average person spends 7 hours a day asleep, and 8 hours a day working there literally is not enough hours in the day. Sleep problems are on the rise, and is it any surprise? That voice in our head that gets subdued with mindless content consumption wakes up when we close our eyes to try and sleep, we haven’t given our imagination and subconscious any time to be active.

    So what can we do?

    The most important thing you can do by far is remove yourself from social media. There is nothing beneficial there anymore, it’s mass data harvesting, propaganda and advertising thrown together in an addictive pot. Consider deleting your accounts, your apps and keep yourself as far away from it as possible. Reddit and Youtube count too, however these can be beneficial sources of information so I would suggest using these without an account and avoid the comments sections. Staying signed out keeps the algorithm from sucking you in. Personally I deleted all of my accounts years ago and the benefits have been huge. The funny thing is I’ve never felt like I was missing out. Nothing on those sites was of any real value.

    Secondly, limit your news consumption both in volume and geography. Consider setting aside 10 minutes a day to catch up on the news, and do it conscientiously. Either buy a local newspaper or stick to your towns local news outlet. You don’t need the whole worlds problems bearing down on your shoulders. And if it’s something you really need to know, you’ll find out.

    Thirdly, spend more time outside of your bubble. Step out into the world, go for a walk, explore a new place, even just go to the shops in person. Your outlook will begin to brighten quickly when you see life isn’t what the internet portrays it to be.

    Finally, embrace boredom! Achieving moments of boredom will look different for everyone. For me that meant keeping my smartphone very minimalist. I don’t have a web browser and I don’t have any apps outside of functional ones. My phone becomes a tool. For times where I need the internet, or apps I have my tablet and a PC. They’re less convenient and generally not on my person, so I can moderate their use more easily. To this day when I’m feeling bored I sometimes instinctively pull out my phone, only to realise there’s nothing to do on there and put it away. I’ll either find something else to do or just allow myself to be bored for a while. Eventually it stops being so uncomfortable and feels peaceful.

    The resolution looks slightly different for everyone, because we all have different circumstances and needs. For you, it might be a less extreme solution, even just reducing screen time but the key point is removing yourself from what has become a toxic environment.

  • eBay – A downward spiral?

    Of the older ones among us that were the pioneers of the internet, most will have memories of eBay in its early days. My earliest memory of it would’ve been around 2003 as we didn’t get internet access at home until around 2005. I remember borrowing my Grandfathers laptop and browsing listings, there were no businesses on there it was just average people selling their unwanted belongings as it was originally intended.

    Fast forward today and you have to set up a search specifically just to find a private seller. The majority are “businesses” (in the loosest sense of the definition) reselling things can be purchased for a 5th of the price on Chinese market places such as Temu and Aliexpress.

    eBay seem hell bent on ruining their marketplace through poor decisions over the years. Pushing buyers and sellers away in their droves. I’ll list a few that come to mind:

    • Charging ever increasing selling fees.
    • Forcing all payments through their platform, and charging higher payment fees.
    • Siding with the buyer regardless of the situation, leaving honest sellers out of pocket.
    • Promoting alternative sellers items on a product listing, drawing attention away from the item that was clicked on toward a sponsored listing.
    • The entirety of the Global Shipping Programme. This abomination has left buyers and sellers all over the world frustrated and out of pocket through sheer incompetence.
    • Packlink shipping. They act as a broker for different couriers but when a shipment goes wrong neither of the parties will take responsibility.

    I could go on.

    The latest nail in the metaphorical coffin is the abolishing of the seller fees. This was in response to a loss of traffic due to Vinted. Vinted offer zero selling fees and put the onus on the buyer to pay for a “Buyer protection fee”, which in effect is just paying the platform tax.

    For a brief period of around a month eBay experienced a new golden era. Sellers sold their items with no fees, and buyers paid no fees. Sellers got paid immediately and could withdraw funds at any time. However this was not to last.

    Not satisfied with ad revenue and sponsored listing income eBay tried to follow Vinted’s footsteps and implement buyer fees, buy of course in a much worse way. As of Feb 2025 if you now go onto eBay and search for anything you will see all the prices look a little strange. Where an item was £9.99, you’ll now see an item at £10.76. This is because eBay have slid their fees into the selling price of the item. The seller still listed their item for £9.99 but now it looks like they’ve priced it higher.

    The honest way for eBay to implement this would have been to state the original price, and then clearly state their fees which make up the total. Interestingly this fee only applies to private sellers. Seemingly another effort to push out entire market they’re promoting themselves to. To stand any chance of competing with the droves of business sellers on eBay the private seller will realistically have to lower their asking price to incorporate eBay’s slice of the pie.

    To make matters worse eBay have made a change to how sellers get paid. Payments will now be held until a confirmed delivery is made, based on the tracking number. In the case of a collection or untracked delivery they will hold payment for 14 days. This leaves sellers out of pocket when they need to pay for postage, and they will not have the money for the item that is no longer in their possession.

    I think we are witnessing the end of eBay’s 30 year run, at least eBay as we know it. One of the first big websites, a household name and a hobby and a passion for many coming to an end. If the company does survive their truly dreadful decision makers latest blunder it will not be as we know it. We can expect more of the Amazon esque off brand products, a search that is fed by the highest bidder and algorithms and an ever worsening user interface.

    Truly a shame.