Comment by anteloper

Great article, I'm a cofounder of Clearspace and think about this a lot.

> I'm an adult, I know how to circumvent these limits, and I will if motivation is low.

It's impossible to build systems that perfectly prevent you from doing this, but it is possible to build systems that can perfectly deter you from doing it. You could set up one - for example - that texts your spouse if you delete it. Or charges your bank account. Or whatever other doomsday device you want to rig up.

> Time limits don't affect the underlying addiction. You don't quit smoking by only smoking certain hours of the day.

Yeah but if you could encode cigarettes to ween you off of them by force, that'd be a big help. Also cigarettes don't have any real utility, so cold turkey is a reasonable strategy. Unfortunately the social media platforms have real utility, so a guardrail strategy makes more sense.

> The companies that build these apps have tens of thousands of really smart people (and billions of dollars) trying to get me hooked and keep me engaged. The only way to win this game isn't by trying to beat them (I certainly can't), but by not playing.

When it's all said and done, someone is going to build the right set of digital environment modification tooling that does beat them. It has to be possible, the internet is intrinsically customizable