It is very pervasive in certain parts of India. Google Pan Masala India.

> People generally follow them because they expect to be caught and punished.

Laws are the last line of defense. People don’t do bad things primarily because their human nature and moral compass stops them from doing so.

That's not really true.

People don't do bad things because they have nothing to gain from them. Ask someone to do something evil as part of their job, they'll often do it.

There's lots of ways that you could go out of your way to hurt someone and get away with it. There are not that many ways you could go out of your way to hurt someone, get away with it, and significantly profit.

I could do plenty of small bad things all the time and gain something small from it - yet I don't. I drive the speed limit when no one is around, I throw thrash in the right bag, I try to keep my general pollution levels at a reasonable place, etc.

I have plenty to gain from not following the rules, but I would not feel good about myself.

For my wife, who (a doctor) I'm confident is a representative of 95% of smartphone user-base, uses her iPhone for all[0] the tasks you described.

[0] At work she uses hospital provided Windows PC. Used only for patient records, nothing else.

People have different ways of dealing with overuse of technology. For some, one day a week off works for some notification off, for some using dumb phones. It is perfectly normal for people to tryout and share anything that works. And it is also perfectly normal to ignore it.

> There is A LOT of this sort of pressure and sentiment.

There’s absolutely no pressure that can’t be ignored. Just because you feel the pressure there’s no need to call everyone else’s way of dealing with overuse nonsensical.

> It's not screens that are bad, it's what you do with them and how you use them.

“Medium is the message” is a highly recommended reading.

There are two things that jump out at me being a parent of two children.

Until kids get to about 10 years old they need 24x7 supervision. Which means your time and energy is spent there. Your schedule completely revolves around them.

It’s hard to be 100% committed to anything else because you could get a call to attend to them regardless of your situation.

So yes, kids need their parents most of the time in early childhood.

However it also depends upon how much of community, relatives & governmental support you have. So take my words with a grain of salt.

Can relate. Though I was never that big into podcast/earphones etc., I had gotten into the habit of instinctively reaching out to play something while driving. However, I stopped doing that and it's so fun to be with myself again, me and my own voice in my head.

I used to take news papers and magazines and sometimes still do. So yes it’s perfectly fine.

Seconded. For me "doing nothing" also means "doing nothing without following any rules" as you've stated. My version of doing nothing involves either just sitting outside watching the world go by or walking & wandering around. May poke at plants here or there, pick up a stone or throw it etc., But no, I'm not consciously trying to "calm my mind"

Leave it to hacker news to bitch about how “meditation is wrong” just because it requires a tiny bit of effort to understand.

No one ever implied, let alone said, that, but if it makes you happy to have a strawman please carry on

“..for me..”, “…my version…”

Perhaps you could edit the submission to add this context?

Sorry, am not the submitter so we will let it be.

And crypto.