I disagree. Yes there can be good intermediate steps, but deleting slop is not even half as healthy as locking a phone away.
- Interruptions
Not just phone calls or texts, but things like typing an email on the phone and then seeing a text or having the GPS interrupt your train of thought by yelling "Continue straight for 5 miles". Brains hate interruptions. Those are still going to exist even when the slop is gone.
- Resisting a temptation is exhausting. "not eating candy is healthy"... yes but having a candy bowl right next to your desk is exhausting. It takes 2sec to open a twitter link in the browser. Uninstalling an app is like moving the candy bowl to a nearby room, yeah its better, but it only takes 30 sec to reinstall.
Turning off the dopamine machine (not eating candy) is one thing. But Eddy was showing something a lot bigger than that; deleting his access to the temptation. He didnt know the code to unlock the phone.
I'm saying one of the big downsides has nothing to do with self discipline.
Merely living in a world covered in advertisements, living next to a delicious smelling candy bowl, living 30 seconds away from memes, rage-bait, doom scrolling, sports gambling, and other slop -- just living next to those things are bad for our mental health.
Some sources if you're curious on the research behind it. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4731333/
https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/full/10.2105/AJPH.2013.301694
https://scholarworks.uark.edu/mgmtuht/31/