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Comment by eridius | Hacker News Reader

The phone doesn't generate anxiety. Not having the phone generates anxiety. The Apple Watch series 3 with LTE fixes the issue. So what's the problem?

Your comment seems to be implying that being used to always being available if someone needs to contact you is a bad thing (e.g. is the same thing as alcoholism). But why? Personally, I'm all for disconnecting, but even when I'm not available to anyone else, I still want to be available if my wife needs to talk to me. And even if I didn't have a wife, that doesn't mean it's unreasonable for other people to want to be available at any time. And finally, even if you want to disconnect regularly, you may still want to disconnect on your terms rather than being forced to disconnect because of the activity you're doing at the moment (e.g. going for a run).

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I agree. If it's not a spouse, it's an elderly parent or grandparent that might need help. If it's work, they can pound sand, but if it's family, I don't mind being available when needed.

I ordered the new watch. It will be my first, so I'm pretty excited to check it out. I hope it motivates me to write apps again.

That is the implication. Alcoholism is an affliction wherein something that's fairly benign in small doses can be a significant detriment to the individual if consumptions falls out of balance. In this way, being ever-available and ever-connected is a bad thing; there's nothing intrinsically wrong with it in small and balanced doses, but in high doses it can cause significant neuroses through withdrawal. It follows that, just as alcohol is the cause of alcoholism, the phone _is_ the ultimate source of anxiety. It provides dopamine, you feel bad when you don't get it.

An alternative angle is this:

If you're an addict and you get withdrawal symptoms, having more of your substance does not alleviate your addition. The symptom of withdrawal, not having the phone, generates anxiety. By increasing the time that you're connected and removing natural/forced break periods, you're raising the threshold that you need to maintain to not feel anxious. In doing so, you've created a situation where it will be harder to make break time and when you do, it'll feel worse.

Here's an excerpt, link at the bottom, of one of an increasing number of studies that describe the negative health impact of communication technology dependency:

> The results indicate that depression, anxiety, and sleep quality may be associated with smartphone overuse. Such overuse may lead to depression and/or anxiety, which can in turn result in sleep problems. University students with high depression and anxiety scores should be carefully monitored for smartphone addiction.

Yet, we want to sell everyone smart-watches so that they'll never miss a beat...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26132913

Just reading the abstract of that study it sounds like bullshit. Nobody is addicted to a smartphone. People get "addicted" to their social networks, but the social network isn't the smartphone. Take the smartphone, reset it back to factory defaults, and block the ability to install new apps, and you'll find that the "addicts" aren't going to be as interested in it (block the browser too and they probably won't even use it).

And making yourself available to be contacted isn't the same thing as being "addicted" to social networks. You'll notice the study you linked was looking at university students (which itself means its conclusions aren't necessarily applicable to the larger world), people for whom "being connected" means Snapchat and Instagram and other social networks. But for most adults, "being connected" means someone can reach them if necessary, as opposed to sitting there for hours browsing a stream of social network posts.

Personally, I've disengaged from basically all social networks. But I'd still like to "be connected" because people do sometimes contact me directly and I'd like to be available for that, or sometimes I get an important email that I want to handle sooner rather than later. And the only reason I'm not getting the LTE watch is because I always have my phone with me anyway and the LTE isn't worth giving my carrier $120/year.

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