If you’re looking to do something about this, please read [https://lemmy.ml/post/1441038](this great post) about dopamine detoxing! It can be very hard at first, but once you’re through the first few weeks it becomes much easier. I’ve been writing down my feelings as I take a few weeks off from my smartphone which has helped immensely.
Did you read the book?
The main takeaway of it is that slowly and pervasively we have been manipulated into handing over our focus. The techniques have been sophisticated and subtle.
If I were to convince you that it was worthwhile to hand over your life savings to me and then it was pointed out to you that you had been manipulated in to doing so, would you not take the view that the money had been stolen from you?
Similarly, for some, telling them to go cold-turkey on tech and social is not massively dissimilar to telling a smoker to just quit smoking, or a alcoholic to just stop drinking. Our brains have been conditioned to want the dopamine fix that our vices give us and it is a strong motivator. Just stopping is not that simple.
But to respond to one comment “we, as as society, are also in charge of gaining our attention back”, that is actually what the book leads to. In the realization that singularly the deck is stacked against us to fight this as much as we may try. It is hard to succeed and easy to fail. But as an organized group or body with the power and/or ability to collectively resist the methods of big tech, to legislate against the situation we are in now where the public are the commodity and the advertisers are the real client to social media companies, to make us the real clients who are catered too, then we stand a better chance.
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