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Comment by arcturus17 | Hacker News Reader

How does this help with addiction as opposed to uninstalling said apps?

I was addicted to TV when I was in high school. After school I alwys lied down in front of a tv for few hours. Switching channels, getting a little bit entertained but more and more tired.

When I wanted to break that routine I asked my mom to put a parental lock on the TV.

Even though TV showed jo channel for me I still lied down in front of it, twiddled with remote. Sometimes for many minutes. My dumb brain gradually learned that TV is not fun anymore (not that it was much fun in the first place).

I think similar mechanism might help you shake off your app addiction.

Not sure if this tool does this but maybe you could even have you fake facebook app show you static screenshot of facebook and let you scroll up and down a bit. You might have additional twists like scrolling locking up after few minutes forcing you to abandon or restart. Or maybe screenshot might be blurred a bit.

> You might have additional twists like scrolling locking up

The real Facebook for sure does this!

This is the exact feeling that I have had recently when trying to cut the phone addiction. I deleted all games and social networks from my phone, then turned it to black and white. It's still tough since I can just go to reddit or hacker news on the browser, not much I can do about that since even flip phones have internet. The interesting thing was that my phone pick ups remained the same for a week or so, but the time on my phone when dramatically down.

The disturbing part is that even weeks later, if I am really bored I will reach for my phone and pick it up. There just isn't much to do on there anymore, so I put it down. I think I'm going to start leaving it places altogether so I lose the habit of having it on my at all times.

Just chuck it off a cliffside... Wait till you see what happens next!

Pollution?

Install a good book-reader app and buy/download epubs on the internet. Always good to a have the content of fresh reading material.

> not much I can do about that

You could root the device and redirect reddit and hn domains to 127.0.0.1 with /etc/hosts file (does android have that).

Good on you for realizing that as a teenager. I use to read the TV section of the newspaper and plan a binge for a few hours. That was a different pattern to switching channels. I was extremely bored of the kind of TV you'd see if it was just unplanned "let's see whats on..."

I used to remove apps but I'd end up re-installing them after a while. Unlearning a habit (aka forming a new habits to replace the old one) is about having a cue. The fake app acts as a cue/signal to remind you about your goal and boost learning the new habit of not visiting the app randomly based on the habit.

By installing the fake app, you'll be surprised how many times you unconsciously you open them, although you are aware that they are fake apps. It feels like our brain is on auto-pilot, once we're hooked/addicted to unconsciously open addictive apps.

I think the idea is that out of habit people will open the app and be greeted with a reminder of there habits.

Uninstalling can just leave you searching for the app before you remember.

I don't really know if it will help any more than just uninstalling but I suppose for some it could.

Some people have more success weaning off an addiction as opposed to cold turkey.

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