The really simple answer? Give up your smartphone. It's eating your life anyway, crossing boundaries with your family / work. You're addicted to checking: your downtime is zero, your free space to think: negligible. Mindfulness: none. Mindlessness: maximum.
How is this kind of "advice" anything but plain old-fashioned victim-blaming?
If ever an entire category of HN posts deserved an instant trip to -4 territory, these ever-present and singularly-unhelpful posts ("Just turn your phone off/leave it in airplane mode/leave it at home/give it up for Lent/sell it on Craigslist/go to Uttar Pradesh and join a Zen monastery") should more than qualify.
Letting scumbags dictate how you live your life -- or how you use your phone -- is never the optimal strategy. Don't turn off. Fight back.
I don't really see how my thought (note: more "thought", less "advice") qualifies for this ire, but, hey, maybe you too need to spend less time on social media being angry at people ;-)
Actually I think a considered and gentle re-looking at one's life is an entirely viable thing to do.
What's so nuts about leaving your smartphone at home, or giving it up completely? Try taking a step back in an attempt to take a cold look at how weird and unbalanced this whole smartphone addiction thing has become. A situation in which, what, 50%+ of any random group of people has head down looking at a screen? A situation in which a family goes out for a meal and spends the time with each member socialising with people in the virtual world but not with each other? A situation in which young girls are self-harming because they're spending 6 hours a day comparing themselves with others online? I live by the sea - a beautiful, wonderful part of the world - but the number of people who simply don't engage with the world they're moving through because of this little square of plastic in their pocket is astounding.
There's nothing blame-y about this - yes, the corporations need a slap at what they're doing with our data and our lives - but we've got individual agency, too.
There was a HN thread about it the other day, but I don't see the point of rushing out to buy a nokia if you've already bought a smartphone; that's just doubling down on e waste.
You can always detox your phone though. Delete all your third party apps, stay off mobile web and it's a de facto dumb phone with a battery that lasts a day instead of a week like your old razr.
I'm just over a year into it. I'm going to write this up in more detail at some point but broadly my strategy has been:
1) Keep a smartphone without a SIM in it at home on wifi for banking / 2FA / etc
2) Move everything social off it. I was never a FB user, but I'm into Twitter and news - so those two got canned, as did Instagram
3) Take work email off it. If you can't, turn off all notifications. If people want you, they'll ring you.
4) Anything you want to do, do it on your desktop - you have way more control here. I use https://heyfocus.com on "hardcore" mode, which blocks Tweetdeck, email, news, HN, whatever so I can actually get work done
5) Have a dumbphone for out-and-about use. It's painful, awful texting, no camera - but it is remarkably liberating to have moments of boredom, moments when you'd normally take a photo but can now just admire the view, moments when you have to actually "ring" someone (I know, this is apparently a thing..)
6) Never let your smartphone into your bedroom, ever
7) Put any gadgets on charge upstairs after 6pm, and leave them there on silent until the morning
It works for me. It hurts, and sometimes I slip (if I have to travel with work, I normally re-sim-ify my smartphone for maps or whatever), but in general I feel more a part of the world I'm supposed to be spending my life in, rather than down a rabbithole of virtual nothingness.
The first and easiest way to try this is simply to leave your phone at home when you go out for a period of time. Redirect calls to your partner if you need - but just try it. There's a Zen saying: "if you don't have 10 minutes to meditate each day, you should meditate for 20 minutes". If it hurts, try it for a longer period of time!
Just a thought.