Show HN: Scream to Unlock – Blocks social media until you scream “I'm a loser”

Might I suggest https://www.prodigygame.com - it's a free-to-play online math game, where your child is a wizard that has to answer (age appropriate) math questions to gain magic to cast spells. Note: there is a paid subscription that allows your child to get access to more pets / faster experience gain, but is not required.

While this isn't a "do math to be able to unlock your device" type of game, it is fun to play and can be used as an earned screen-time requirement (or a "free screen-time" option!)

Disclaimer: I work for Prodigy as a Site Reliability Engineer, but my son (10) also enjoys playing the game!

It would work short term, but I would worry that it makes a a price to be paid which will impair joy in learning the subject in the long term.

Its much better to make kids interested in learning than to reward reaching goals or punish failing to reach them.

Can I reach you over email ? Mine is in profile ! I want to share something not ready for primetime.

It certainly seems like someone would've invented a Kid Friendly phone by now that's completely safe, and doesn't allow access to the "real" internet at all, but only an ability to send texts without images, make voice calls, etc. Now that we have AI it would be easier, an you could potentially give "Google" access that's censored into a "child friendly" output by the AI. You could have a texting app where friends can talk, but only to kids in their own school for example, or at least limited by geographical area, to foster friendships IRL, rather than some Chinese Bot being able to trick your kid into eating Tide Pods or whatever their latest Attack on America happens to be.

But TBH making kids continually solve math problems seems a bit mean to me. Like making a kid do pushups for food if they're overweight. Too militaristic and authoritarian for my liking, but I can respect your creativity for creating that. It's good to try new ideas.

But the point is you aren't a winner if you are unlocking social media. You are opening the gate to loserdom. I'm not sure how the I'm a winner concept would apply here using one of the four methods of operant conditioning.

The research stands, but the practical application of his app is based on a Positive Punishment operant conditioning.

Then it would be even simpler to build an app, because if you shout "I'm a winner", the extension doesn't need to do anything at all, just keep everything blocked as before...

Be kind to yourself, but think through the problem before sending a week worth of research articles.

I have on some occasions been tempted to wire up a shock collar to myself (or equivalent) and do some experiment for things like not visiting social media websites during certain times, but I find myself concerned that I may be reaching way, way further down the metaphorical "brain stack" than I really intend with that and could do some seriously weird things to myself in the process. So far I've always judged that risk as greater than the reward.

Yelling "I'm a loser" too much reminds me of that, though on a different level of the "brain stack". I get the sentiment, and I understand the somewhat playful intent, but quite seriously I'd suggest something more neutral at the very least. Maybe it's completely harmless, but that's clearly the best case scenario, and it goes down hill fast after that. "First, do no harm" strikes me as relevant here, and important as ever.

For sure, important to be kind to yourself.

But screaming "I'm a winner" doesn't do it either, and is perhaps even more undermining

Everyone knows if you yourself have to say "I'm randomPositiveAttribute", whether it is "winner", "genius", "brilliant", "good-looking", etc., you are NOT that — you are just a loser trying to tell everyone you are somehow a winner.

Perhaps the best thing to yell is the most straightforward — "Unlock Social Media Now!". It doesn't overtly characterize you, it honestly exposes your weakness, which is probably a more powerful shaming de-motivator.

That’s the idea of the disturbing pictures on packs of cigarettes in Germany.

Not sure it works as well on people already addicted compared to people not yet addicted.

> links to a random image of what you imagine to be a social media addict, or someone who has ruined their lives due to social media.

Wouldn't that simply be a picture of himself?

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It seems to send the data to google's servers.

> Note: On some browsers, like Chrome, using Speech Recognition on a web page involves a server-based recognition engine. Your audio is sent to a web service for recognition processing, so it won't work offline.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Web_Speech_...

You could also just stop visiting those sites that you previously decided were bad for you... Then you don't need to scream "I'm a loser".

In order to uninstall it, you must scream "I'm a huge loser." (Just kidding)

That's the problem with habit blocking extensions. A theoretical workaround would be to create two extensions - only make them work when both are installed and when one notices that the other got disabled, it does something like deleting your login credentials, or some form of reversible but very annoying punishment.