> COLLEGE students tell me they know how to look someone in the eye and type on their phones at the same time, their split attention undetected. They say it’s a skill they mastered in middle school when they wanted to text in class without getting caught.
In my experience, they haven't mastered that nearly as well as they think...
Yeah, I'm a college student and I rolled my eyes at that one. I can think of countless interactions where people think they're discreetly checking their text messages and it is so irritating to be on the other end of that.
The article has a great message, but unfortunately I don't think most people are conscientious enough to deliberately change how they use technology and it is just so easy to check your phone when there is a lull in a conversation. Technology has been beneficial in many ways, but it has a tendency to be incredibly antisocial as well and I don't think we've learned to compensate for that yet.
We've spent generations filling our every waking moment with more forced broadcast stimuli, I don't blame 'millennials' for wanting to put up a minimum filter and default to their own bubble of controlled media. Why should we talk if you don't have something more interesting to say than my phone?
You don't know whether or not I have something more interesting to say if you're dividing your attention between me and your phone.
As the article says, it takes more than 30 second to divine whether or not a conversation is going to go somewhere interesting, and if you stop paying attention at the drop of a hat, it never has a chance.
And must all conversation have a point that is deliberated at the origin? A lot of the most useful and salient conversations I've had with friends, colleagues, and mentors in my life have been ideation, thinking out loud, stepping through an experience or an impression... there wasn't a clear point, until two hours later, when there suddenly was. Or, there was a point, one thought, and it changed course during the conversation.
I don't know where I'd be without those conversations.
There are things of value to be learned even in media that doesn't immediately grab and hold your attention. Sometimes learning things requires focus. In fact, probably most things worth learning don't jump out and grab you, but require some effort to keep your attention on them.
If you always optimize your attention towards whatever is most immediately compelling, you'll wake up one day and find out you don't really know anything.
Well, but maybe on the other side of the phone there is another person, relationship with whom I value more? It's not like smartphones are all (or even mostly) about status updates.
That's what I'd do if you weren't interrupting and pressing me for face-to-face conversation. Also, it's you who invaded my space, so why don't you go somewhere else?
The point is - in my opinion, it's equally rude to pull out a smartphone in the middle of a face-to-face conversation, as is to approach someone "fiddling with their phone" and expect undivided attention.
Exactly this. Some people seem to think that using smartphone means doing something irrelevant, less important than talking to a person. But you know what? On the other side of that phone there usually is a person.
One of the rudest behavior I encounter is people suddenly coming to you and interrupting in the middle of your IM conversation, demanding undivided attention and refusing to accept that you're in the middle of a conversation. IM is not e-mail, it's often as time-sensitive as voice, and quite often that IM conversation is much more important than whatever the interrupter came with.
> 89 percent of cellphone owners said they had used their phones during the last social gathering they attended.
Right there is where the author looses me. That online collaboration via the phone IS a social gathering unto itself. One is not fundamentally different than the other. Physical proximity is great, but it is a serious limitation. Not everyone has the time/money to physically meet their friends over coffee every twenty minutes. Not everyone lives in downtown Boston or NY.
> They say it’s a skill they mastered in middle school when they wanted to text in class without getting caught.
And why do kids text so much at school? Because they are bored to death by mind-numbing subjects and teaching that doesn't actually teach. Texting is the symptom, not the disease.
The ability to 'not get caught' while communicating with others is a valuable skill for nearly everyone these days. It should be encouraged.
>That online collaboration via the phone IS a social gathering unto itself.
Still the fact is that it is inconsiderate, or plain rude, to be "somewhere else" when you are sitting with other people who all took the time to physically be with each other. If a few people get together and spend large amounts of their time on their phones, then why get together at all?
> I know of literally nobody my age who would ever think this.
I think that's precisely the point of the article. If you are in fact in the middle of a conversation with someone, then it is polite to pay attention. If you don't want to be in a conversation with them, then exit the conversation (i.e. tell them that you don't have time and walk away). Pretending to pay attention while doing nothing of the sort cheapens the interaction.
I'm not sure if this is meant to be /s, but I'm 24, and I find this behavior offensive as well. When I'm having a conversation with someone, yes, I would like to have their attention, and I'd surely give them mine.
I'm in the millennial-age range and am quite irritated when someone sits on their phone when we're meeting in person.
Electronic/social communication is, by its very nature, asynchronous. You can send a message and there's generally little pressure for an immediate response. Face to face conversations are synchronous and when you do something on your laptop/phone/tablet you break the flow of the conversation.
I think it just tends to be who you associate with. I don't really know anyone I hang out with that sits on their phone the entire time. Then again, I wouldn't put up with hanging out with them if they did either.
It depends. IMs are much less asynchronous. I think what's rude is breaking off one conversation into another one, regardless of media. For instance, it's incredibly annoying when someone comes up to me in person and demands attention when I'm in the middle of an important IM conversation with my SO.
An no, my reply can't wait because I had a tempo of conversation, and the person on the other side of the phone can't see that someone interrupted me in person. Face to face conversations transmit out-of-band information through body language, and in the same way electronic conversations transmit out-of-band information through timing. Also reading timing is just as subtle skill as reading faces.
>Also reading timing is just as subtle skill as reading faces.
I understand people "read timing" and interpret it as adding to the conversation but timing in a text conversation is so unreliable I personally give it no importance. More often than not the timing of my IM/text/email has more to do with the situation I'm currently in rather than how I feel about the conversation. I didn't reply to that last text because I just stepped into a meeting, or started driving, or got in the shower, etc.
> I know of literally nobody my age who would ever think this.
The behavior is a demonstration of not valuing someone else's time and attention (the time that it took to put themselves into your proximity, and the attention that they can't pay to someone else while waiting for you.) One would expect that people who practice it would tend to know less about what other people think and feel.
My generation is probably your generation. Talk about arrogance--you should look at yourself.
So I assume you'd have no problem if your date pulled our his/her phone and completely ignored you? If your boss called you over and spent the next half hour on his phone, that shouldn't be a problem. If you ask a friend over to talk because you're hurting, and he ends up on his phone the whole time, that shouldn't be a problem either right? If you fly across the country to see someone, and they ignore you completely for two days while being buried in their phone, that's not a problem?
Is this a generational thing? No, you're just being a selfish asshole by talking on the phone when you should be giving others your attention. What arrogance indeed!
Millennial here. I quite frequently end up standing as the odd one out in crowds who isn't checking their smartphone (I never use them for telephony purposes either, but as testing grounds/toys for Replicant/KDE Plasma Mobile/Ubuntu Touch and similar), which always catches me off guard.
It's not that I have a superiority complex over not using smartphones, though it is delightfully ironic to witness many of the older generations I hear chastising people like me for a variety of grievances commit one of the cardinal sins I actually don't.
And yes, if you can't last more than 5 minutes without checking Facebook, you need help.
Same situation here. I find it terrible when I look around a bus or some other public space and see literally everybody bent over their iPhones and what not. (Not only the younger generation, btw, many older people are just as bad.)
That's why I'm always glad when I find other people my age who consciously refuse to be constantly available via WhatsApp, FB Messenger, etc. - several I know actually refuse to have a smart phone at all (yes, those people still exist ;-) ).
>it is delightfully ironic to witness many of the older generations I hear chastising people like me for a variety of grievances commit one of the cardinal sins I actually don't
Fucking up the planet like Shkreli the millenial and 21st century robber baron that thinks that $1k is too little a price to pay him to save your life for a course of medication that barely costs $100 total?!
I'm a millenial myself and I have a lot of strong opinions about previous generations but enough with tired meme that all baby boomers or most of them are evil people and we're the saviors of the planet esp when you see examples like that jerk from our generation blackmailing sick and people in need just to get a new sport car or jet to show off in front of his peers of the same age.
The Millennial generation is just the same as every other generation when it comes to ruining the planet. Every time a young guy gets in a car filled up with gas, he's no different than anyone two or three times his age. It is not a conscious effort, it's just the way the society is, and everyone is responsible and everyone is guilty.
I used to feel this way, until I had the realization one day that almost everybody I know in fact refrains from using their phone even during group interactions. I felt the way you did because people don't use their phones around me in general, so I never had the opportunity to be overly upset about phone usage in the first place, nor did anyone else.
Of course there might be the occasional checking of messages, and nobody minds that, especially in groups. But generally I've found people in my age group (early to mid 20s) to be very mindful of when and how they use their phones. If they are going to text in front of you, I find that they often explain out loud why they're doing it, without your even asking, so you know that they actually are responding to something that needs or deserves a somewhat prompt reply.
The illusion was shattered for me with my former roommate, also former friend. I was really amazed at how he'd just sit on his phone on Facebook whenever we went out together to grab something to eat. He'd often just sit there in silence. What sealed the deal for me and led me to the above realization was how he'd ignore me even if I remarked on something while he was in the midst of his Facebooking. It was so offensive to me that I don't even consider him a friend anymore.
Not only is it rude, but it's not a social gathering in the same way. That's how I read this quote from the article,
>After five days without phones or tablets, these campers were able to read facial emotions and correctly identify the emotions of actors in videotaped scenes significantly better than a control group.
Staying away from most anything makes you worse at that thing. Staying away from phones/tablets for a week might also make them less able to understand emogies, slang, and current humor (all vitally important for the youth of today).
The OP places greater value on face-to-face conversation. I'm saying that the OP takes this too far, that electronic interactions should not be dismissed so readily.
I think you overestimate human flexibility. We're hardwired for all kinds of face-to-face interaction. It's almost certain that emogies or no, no matter the amount of training, you're never going to gain the level of social insight and empathy while texting that you could have had face-to-face.
You may have huge brain and trillions of times of the computing capacity of a simple calculator, but it's still going to beat you at arithmetic. Know your limitations and embrace your strengths. You're not some general purpose machine; what's the point in pretending otherwise?
I don't think the author is arguing that online collaboration via phones aren't social gatherings, just that there are appropriate venues for each.
By all means, communicate with your friends over the internet using all the means availed to you by technology. On the other hand, when you're sitting at a coffeeshop with your friend right next to you, that isn't the time to be chatting with someone half way across the country.
> And why do kids text so much at school? Because they are bored to death by mind-numbing subjects and teaching that doesn't actually teach. Texting is the symptom, not the disease.
Actually there is plenty of evidence that texting and social media offer a similar kick as several other addictions like smoking, etc. it's akin to blaming teenage smoking on boring classes. Further, the teenage mind is susceptible to getting easily bored and to addiction.
Can we please stop comparing any activity that our brain learns to enjoy to drug usage by saying that some neurotransmitter is involved?
I'm sure one could just as easily say that getting the mail is like other addictions, because I chronically get excited at the thought of my latest online order arriving.
It's only an ill-recepted drug usage if it starts remaking your behaviour as to increase consumption. Does the excitement and anticipation of getting mail significantly increase the frequency of your ordering?
I assume not at all, but compulsive buying is a thing, and "some neurotransmitter" can totally make people addicted, so why can't I make a comparison when it is reasonable to do so?
Point taken; you are right to defend the drug comparison, so long as we're talking about compulsive behavior with negative effects.
I do feel the analogy is overused though, mostly because the notion that chemical reactions in the brain are involved seems to have an unduly strong impression on people, whereas I imagine that these phenomena in the brain turn up in all sorts of human activity (see sandworm101's comment).
There's also a negative connotation that exists with drug usage. I could be totally addicted to jogging, though ("runner's high"), with an almost totally net positive effect on my life.
> I'm sure one could just as easily say that getting the mail is like other addictions, because I chronically get excited at the thought of my latest online order arriving.
There actually are many people addicted to shopping. You can often see them on “Hoarders” or similar TV shows, their homes filled to the brim with products in boxes, unopened.
> Actually there is plenty of evidence that texting and social media offer a similar kick as several other addictions like smoking, etc.
Habitual behavior in general forms because of "a similar kick". The main difference between a habit and an addiction is whether the habit is seen as adaptive or maladaptive.
And there is plenty of evidence that face-to-face social interactions trigger various neurotransmitters. I was reading a little while ago about distinct effects in the brains of men of hearing young female voices. No doubt this is Darwinism in action, but I guess I should start wearing earplugs around women to prevent any effect listening to them might have on my brain.
"And why do kids text so much at school? Because they are bored to death by mind-numbing subjects and teaching that doesn't actually teach. Texting is the symptom, not the disease."
You seem to have missed a main theme of the article, which was in first paragraph: "Now they use it when they want to be both with their friends and, as some put it, 'elsewhere.'"
>>Because they are bored to death by mind-numbing subjects and teaching that doesn't actually teach.
I would say an illusion of financial security does that too. If your life depended on getting a decent education, petty indulgences like this wouldn't even occur.
That would imply that education and school are in some way related. Perhaps they can be, but often as not, school has more in common with a minimum security prison where children are warehoused during working hours.
eh, kids have been passing notes in class since they had access to paper.
Personally, i've been following the maxim "Prefer a warm body over a cold screen." I turn off (most) notifications. Sure, sometimes i'll pull out my phone to look something up. I'll check from time to time if i'm coordinating with someone, but i try to let my interlocutor know what's going on.
Turkle has written some good stuff but her recent work has been too close to "Kids these days! Why back in my day..." for my tastes.
(I was going to use that Socrates quote about "Our youth now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority" but it turns out not be by Socrates but from someone in 1907 paraphrasing complains from antiquity http://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/01/misbehaving-children... )
This isn't unique to millennials. My dad and I had this problem where he would be on his blackberry when talking with me until we had a conversation about it and agreed to be more mindful of being on glowing rectangles rather than present in the conversation.
Lately I've been feeling despair and dread at the scene of hundreds of people glued to their phones .. after a particularly hard week at work I stood at the station and watched the train roll by, full of commuters glued to their little machines. It was an entirely dystopian scene, and as much as I've been a promoter of the technological revolution that is the Internet and all its devices, I'm feeling more and more disaffected with the results of what we've done.
It could be different, but its not. These phones are brick walls, carefully channeling the minds of the enslaved back to the master.
So I started thinking about what I would do to make it different, and really, I think one small tweak to our technology would make a huge difference. Of course, its not in the interests of the manufacturers or network providers: make it possible for phones to auto-discover each other locally, without requiring a server somewhere upstream.
If only we had some way to get people connected to each other - in a local context - i.e. anyone on the train can search for and find others on the same train without requiring a client-server relationship with an upstream connection. Host-AP mode: too restrictive.
We need local peer search and discovery.
About the only way I can think of to get this right now is to man up and put a device in AP mode with some sort of SSID named "LocalUsersNetwork" or something .. some sort of recognizable brand that people can use to connect with their local peers.
It would make the forward march towards further electronic enslavement so much more palatable if it were possible to have at least a local context in which to freely operate.
EDIT: events like this make me think there is a market for "local stranger discovery services", its just nobody has worked out a branding process for it:
Surely there's an opportunity to break this barrier down .. local peer discovery, open lines of communication - if these features were 'normal' somehow, they'd be used. But people are just used to having a strict social wall imposed upon them on the trains .. it seems like an opportunity to me.
Why would people choose to speak to strangers when they can communicate electronically with their friends 24/7? The fact is that whether you're introverted or extroverted, phones now suit all your needs as both a device to keep you occupied and as a means of communication.
Because strangers are interesting and different and you can learn new things. Because strangers can become friends. Because that stranger is attractive and I'd like a date on Friday night.
Our obsession with hiding ourselves in our little toys drives me absolutely bonkers. And I'm not blameless, I know I do it, too--most of us fall prey to the fact that hiding is so easy that we do so goddamn much of it.
I was not alive when newspapers were at their prime. I cannot answer that question definitively, but I will say that it is entirely possible, and does not take away from the analogy. Would you interrupt someone reading a newspaper to talk to them? How about if they were reading a book? Would it be okay to interrupt someone typing or scrolling on their phone to try to start a conversation with them?
Occasionally, but because the newspaper was large enough to present a physical barrier between you and the person you were talking to -- large enough to hide your face! -- you didn't do it unless you wanted to send a very clear message that "this conversation is over."
No, but newspapers also served as a clear sign of "I don't want to engage in casual conversation". Really, it's not like before smartphones people were actually talking with each other on the bus. Hell, in the fine era of 1990s, when people stopped reading so many newspapers but didn't have smartphones yet, no one talked with random people either - it's sort of a cultural norm in the west.
I read some years ago about a social dating app in Japan that matched users and when encountered in the wild (or was it the metro ?) the app would trigger some kind of msg or interaction to incite users to get to know each other (based on their dating profile). It used bluetooth.
While I share your dread and find your idea interesting, I honestly wouldn't use a service like that. "Local stranger discovery service" - why not just strike up a conversation with the person sitting next to you? I do so fairly frequently, and I have had some incredible conversations that way.
I feel weird because more and more I start to miss old tech. For many reasons, I feel there were beautiful ideas forgotten too soon (aka AlanKayism). I've also seen a few cycles (from osx aqua, flash, html5, java, js, flat, metro, material, etc, etc) so I'm past being excited for newness. I don't know if it's the absolute natural way of things now that I'm not part the current generation or if there's some value in these thoughts.
It's also natural for some to follow new trends for there's a lot of energy in exploring things 'a la mode'. But also not to be blinded into thinking old is useless. Progress is not an arrow, it's a wiggling hyperplane.
I'm young, I still find newness exciting. Fortunately I also find history exciting, and one big lesson that has taught me is that it is foolishness to equate "newer" with "better". Often it is, often it seems to be, and often it isn't. The trick is knowing which is which.
Exactly. It's especially hard to compare, when things don't move straightforwardly, every new thing is 9/10 old and 1/10 new, and all new things have their own 10th. Things wave back and forth, in spirals. Knowing history avoids looping too much. I didn't understand that about it as a kid (it holds in tech but in society, politics, musics etc too). Good for you you're already sensible to that.
That's not an argument. I mean, there's a similar trap in thinking that anything new is good (or neutral).
I don't particularly care about other people's behavior (and I don't have this problem with friends/family), but I can certainly see how it would annoy people, and probably even detract from the experience of the person who is doing it.
"I'll just disregard your argument without actually considering or engaging with it because you're old and therefore clueless," said every younger generation ever.
Nobody is saying not to use these technologies. We are just trying to figure out as a society what the boundaries are for behavior being OK or being rude. Its kind of like bluetooth headsets or google glass, both of which were questionable at first and later determined by society at large to be rude to use in company.
Did you read the article? That's not the argument at all. It's about the antisocial effects of technology and how we as a society haven't yet learned how to compensate for those effects.
Humm... if only there was a way to analyze what kinds of behaviours can have a bad impact on society instead of mindlessly writing off arguments because 'hurr you're old'.
I am nostalgic for the land before internet. While there are many technological divides and revolutions between generations, not sure many in history compare to the dramatic change to global society and behavior as a result of the internet, and by its extension, the mobile era.
The invention of the car (and then of the plane)? Imagine the nostalgia for times when you had to walk for hours to meet someone across a city, or travels for days/weeks/months to meet far away places. Same with phones (and mobile phones), when you had to stick to a time you decided to meet somewhere, and you didn't show up... Good old times. Transportation and communication are really one thing, and any significant advancement in them will have the feeling. I will be remembering my youth, before VR, before shuttles/portals to Mars, whatever the future will bring.
The way we look at the changes is much more tied to us than the change. You can always flip a coin and think of how marvelous these changes might seem to people in the past: "While I'm sitting in cafe with someone I can simultaneously communicate with someone else half-way across the globe? Wonderful!"
I believe the internet is far greater a revolution for mankind than either the car or plane or telephone were. Unlike those, it has provided the possibility for 24-hour permanent connection with the rest of the world, at all times, at all locations you may be in. That is the sort of disruption that can significantly fade behavioral patterns that existed before.
I don't want to downplay the impact of Internet, but I do think it is similar and the other advancements also faded some behavioral patterns, such as exchanging letters, which used to be an integral part of people's lives (for some perhaps the most important one).
Second, we are not there yet on 24/7, anywhere connection, but we are working on it. Perhaps if we have instantaneous world-wide telepathy one day, Internet will also feel as just another advancement, like the car plane phone.
You are conflating two different things. If you traveled by car to meet someone vs walking, you were not losing anything. However typing words to communicate is not the same as meeting someone in person and using the entire range of human expression - posture, voice, facial expressions, touch, smell, etc. There is an objective loss of 'information' when it comes to digital communication. Whether you value those additional things is up to you. But lets not pretend that its just the same and old people need to get on with the new times.
Well, I'm not touching or smelling everyone I talk to. I mean of course, text is much narrower band, but it's not that most of the communication you do day-to-day needs, or even benefits, from the full spectrum of bodily expressions.
Please consider, that current technology gives us the ability to have many, many more conversations every day than our great grandparents could ever dream of. For instance, this whole discussion between all of us here wouldn't happen without Internet. I prefer having "subpar" communication with people all around the world to not having it at all.
Also consider this - we've been having video chat capabilities for a decade or so already, and yet people don't go for it all that often. Why it's so? Maybe because for most of our conversations, not having to involve the messy things like body language and posture and cleaning yourself up from whatever you ate for breakfast are actually beneficial?
Implicit in what you're saying is that one of the reasons you're cool with having a "subpar" conversation with someone half-way around the world, is this idea that you're unable to find anyone in your immediate vicinity. Otherwise (if you agree that text is subpar) you would always prefer just calling up someone who is across the street.
So because we don't know (or feel immediately comfortable) talking to 99.999% of humans that surround us, the "removal of the human element" makes it more comfortable to talk to someone halfway around the world. Sure, I'd like the OPTION of having to talk to someone half-way around the world. But I don't think that its necessarily the best option or that we should think that the only people that you can talk to on any given topic are necessarily not people who are sitting right next to you - on the bus/train/plane/park bench/etc.
>Maybe because for most of our conversations, not having to involve the messy things like body language and posture and cleaning yourself up from whatever you ate for breakfast are actually beneficial?
Or to turn it around, it would be so much better to live in a society where you could just strike up conversations with strangers and not be judged for superficial BS like crumbs on your face.
> Implicit in what you're saying is that one of the reasons you're cool with having a "subpar" conversation with someone half-way around the world, is this idea that you're unable to find anyone in your immediate vicinity. Otherwise (if you agree that text is subpar) you would always prefer just calling up someone who is across the street.
Yes and no. I used "subpar" in scare quotes to refer to what I think was implicit sentiment in your comment above. Personally, I don't find text subpar, just different - trading off additional information for more control and efficiency, as well as range.
As for being unable to find someone in my immediate vicinity, there are two issues here, both of which involves self-selection. First of all, people in my vicinity often are preoccupied with something else, whereas whoever signals his availability for conversation on-line is probably a safe bet to talk to.
Secondly, when you look for people in your vicinity, you sample the general population. When you interact on a forum like this one, you sample through a much smaller population of people particularly tuned to that forum's topic and style of discussion.
I don't mean to say here that people around me are inferior to those I meet online; on the contrary, there are conversations I prefer having with those next to me (often, not surprisingly, about topics related to local context). I find off-line and on-line forms to be different enough not to substitute for one another.
> But I don't think that its necessarily the best option or that we should think that the only people that you can talk to on any given topic are necessarily not people who are sitting right next to you - on the bus/train/plane/park bench/etc.
I agree. Though again, self-selection. I'm equally fine with talking about things with people on the bus or on the other side of the planet. But I'm having this conversation here with you, on HN, and not with my friends over beer, because it's Sunday night over here in my timezone; most of face-to-face conversations I could have have selected themselves out by going to sleep :).
> Or to turn it around, it would be so much better to live in a society where you could just strike up conversations with strangers and not be judged for superficial BS like crumbs on your face.
Oh I would so love to live in such a world! But that will require serious rewiring of both our societies and our own insecurities, which would be a change of much more profound (whether good or bad) consequences than mere smartphones.
Well the thing is, if you think about trade-offs, the current way of thinking is - I'm willing to have a text only conversation, if I could only get in touch with other like minded individuals. If we reverse it - I don't want to compromise on a richer interaction, so how can I change my own life/address/etc so that there is a higher chance of meeting like-minded individuals. For e.g. what if, it became extremely easy to move. Like, you could move your entire house in 30 minutes and go live somewhere else. All the hassles of changing addresses, packing, unpacking, etc didn't exist. In that scenario you could just spontaneously move around and be among whichever group of people you choose to. It sounds weird in my head as well, but that's just because we're conditioned to feel that way.
One other related issue is this notion of wanting to always be with 'like minded' individuals. That's pretty much a recipe for disaster if you ask me. It's probably good to have people around who challenge you or disagree with you or don't like you all the time, etc. Anyway, I think we're probably close enough in agreement on the main point.
> If you traveled by car to meet someone vs walking, you were not losing anything.
You may not be losing any bandwidth, but you are introducing a ton of latency. The time spent walking less the time it would have taken to drive is time I could have spent communicating.
Also, without cars, many face-to-face communications just would not take place at all.
Plus, I don't think it's accurate to say that walking doesn't come with it's own benefits. It might not strictly increase communication, but you do get more information about your travel if you take it at a slower speed (which you can talk about with whomever you're meeting).
I feel nostalgic for this time too, but in a less clear cut way.
People seem to have forgotten that before the rise of the Internet there was another form of media that dominated our lives, and that was TV. Some of the complaints that apply to the Internet also apply to TV, in that it directed our attention away from life in our immediate vicinity, dominated how we spent our free time, etc...
Even though I basically only watch YouTube now, I remember watching a ton of TV in the 80s and 90s. I have some fond memories of moments spent watching TV, but for the most part I watched a lot of utter dross. The same is true for the Internet now, some fond memories of time spent online but something keeps me looking even when the content is dull.
If I could go back, I'd go back to an alternative reality where pirate radio was the dominant form of mass media. I like radio, and I'd like it even better with a greater variety of output, including easy to find output from those in the local area.
I'm worried more about the way people are using the web while at work.
If somebody would have said a few decades ago that in 2000, every employee would have a television set on his desk, people would not have believed this person. However, the situation is actually much worse.
A television set was a primitive single-function screen which could only play streaming video from a limited number of content providers. Think sort of like a phone that could only use youtube.
What are you worried about? In my experience many jobs simply don't have 8 hours worth of work to do in a day, so there's downtime. (And the ones that do have 8 hours+ worth of actual work to do, without breaks, are the ones that pay near minimum wage and are a bit terrible). Since you're on hacker news I presume you're aware that it is nigh-impossible for a programmer to just program in flow state 8 hours a day every day 5-7 days a week. I usually get 4 hours of good work out of myself on bad days, 6-10 on great days or under deadline pressure, but can't keep that up many days in a row. Slack-ing off and the web help me decompress my brain in between uses.
Don't become a consultant. My company bills in 15-minute blocks, so I track my time with that precision. I bill for more than just in-the-flow coding, but I dont bill for downtime. I regularly bill 35+ hours a week, and the rest of my 40hr week is usually spent on company business. It's not hard, if you're professional.
IMO, all of this applies to meetings at work as well, which are, after all, conversations. It's hard enough for people to listen to each other when they're actually listening. Throw in a laptop, a phone, and the mistaken belief that a person can 'multi-task' without a quality hit, and its a disaster straight out of the gate.
I'm curious: Does anyone have rules at work around no laptops / phones at meetings?
Everyone's ragging on this article, but it matches my experience exactly. I feel like I can't talk to anyone nowadays without fearing that little buzz in their pocket, at which point they pull out their phone and start playing with it while I'm mid-sentence. And I'm not some grumpy "get off my lawn" old man; I'm barely 25 years old.
Friends say "but it was [such-and-such nonsense]. I had to check my phone!" Really, you had to? Your life depended on you checking that text? People get frustrated with me because my phone is dead all the time (and thus I don't text back immediately), but I hate feeling tethered to some device.
I notice an overwhelmingly huge difference in the quality of my conversations with people when their phone is not present in the room with them.
This isn't to say I'm anti-technology at all — I spend 10 hours a day programming. I just don't attempt to do it while conversing at the same time (nor could I; without uninterrupted focus, I make a lot of mistakes in my code).
Agreed though I don't let it bother me much. I have a front row seat to the internet all day, so the last thing I want to do at lunch is futz with a phone.
This seems like something of a selection bias issue. By the same token, I don't know that I've run into anyone lately who's checked their phones while talking with me. Not to say that it doesn't happen, of course, but you might need to find new people.
It's funny. On my development team we have four younger guys (mid-late twenties) and three older guys (35+).
By far the most distracted people on the team are the older ones. In meetings they tend to lose focus, look at their computers, misremembered what's said, or just seem to tune it out. I've made a habit of specifically managing how they are perceiving what I'm saying -- looking at their eyes, seeing if they're distracted, asking lots of confirming questions.
And outside of meetings, they don't pay attention to our online communication channels enough.
If anything, my experience has been that it's the older generation that sucks at paying attention to the right things in the new super connected world.
The stereotypical family morning used to involve the father reading the newspaper while eating breakfast. Eating and reading with others is a tradition long predating smartphones.
We're in a golden age of text, with dramatically higher engagement due to an unprecedented access to more useful, interesting and relevant information than has ever been available before.
The title uses a new fancy word, but it might as well say "Stop reading. Let's talk."
One of the basic human needs is to be loved and feel like you belong. We do this by both "keeping in touch", "getting together". The usual assumption is that "getting together" is a higher quality way to meet these needs than "keeping in touch".
Your smartphone represents almost everyone you know. In a face-to-face meeting, the ratio is precisely (n-1)/n. So if you both have 100 friends, realize that you're competing to meet the need of love and belonging against the 99 other people in their pocket, who can also give that to your friend with surprising effectiveness.
(The argument generalizes: you are also competing against every stranger that's ever put anything online - the person who wrote that Wikipedia article or Yelp review has a call on your attention, too!)
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 148 ms ] threadIn my experience, they haven't mastered that nearly as well as they think...
The article has a great message, but unfortunately I don't think most people are conscientious enough to deliberately change how they use technology and it is just so easy to check your phone when there is a lull in a conversation. Technology has been beneficial in many ways, but it has a tendency to be incredibly antisocial as well and I don't think we've learned to compensate for that yet.
As the article says, it takes more than 30 second to divine whether or not a conversation is going to go somewhere interesting, and if you stop paying attention at the drop of a hat, it never has a chance.
I think that's an older-generation thing. If you go 30 seconds without getting to the point, of course people will think that you don't have one.
I don't know where I'd be without those conversations.
If you always optimize your attention towards whatever is most immediately compelling, you'll wake up one day and find out you don't really know anything.
I don't think that valuing relationships by how useful they are to you "right at this moment" is a very good way to go about life.
The point is - in my opinion, it's equally rude to pull out a smartphone in the middle of a face-to-face conversation, as is to approach someone "fiddling with their phone" and expect undivided attention.
One of the rudest behavior I encounter is people suddenly coming to you and interrupting in the middle of your IM conversation, demanding undivided attention and refusing to accept that you're in the middle of a conversation. IM is not e-mail, it's often as time-sensitive as voice, and quite often that IM conversation is much more important than whatever the interrupter came with.
This screams of a lack of mindfulness that hopefully can be fixed through working to become more aware of your own thoughts.
Right there is where the author looses me. That online collaboration via the phone IS a social gathering unto itself. One is not fundamentally different than the other. Physical proximity is great, but it is a serious limitation. Not everyone has the time/money to physically meet their friends over coffee every twenty minutes. Not everyone lives in downtown Boston or NY.
> They say it’s a skill they mastered in middle school when they wanted to text in class without getting caught.
And why do kids text so much at school? Because they are bored to death by mind-numbing subjects and teaching that doesn't actually teach. Texting is the symptom, not the disease.
The ability to 'not get caught' while communicating with others is a valuable skill for nearly everyone these days. It should be encouraged.
Still the fact is that it is inconsiderate, or plain rude, to be "somewhere else" when you are sitting with other people who all took the time to physically be with each other. If a few people get together and spend large amounts of their time on their phones, then why get together at all?
Why do you think you should have someone's complete and undivided attention just because you're within 5 feet and facing them?
What arrogance. This is why your generation fucked up the planet.
I think that's precisely the point of the article. If you are in fact in the middle of a conversation with someone, then it is polite to pay attention. If you don't want to be in a conversation with them, then exit the conversation (i.e. tell them that you don't have time and walk away). Pretending to pay attention while doing nothing of the sort cheapens the interaction.
Electronic/social communication is, by its very nature, asynchronous. You can send a message and there's generally little pressure for an immediate response. Face to face conversations are synchronous and when you do something on your laptop/phone/tablet you break the flow of the conversation.
An no, my reply can't wait because I had a tempo of conversation, and the person on the other side of the phone can't see that someone interrupted me in person. Face to face conversations transmit out-of-band information through body language, and in the same way electronic conversations transmit out-of-band information through timing. Also reading timing is just as subtle skill as reading faces.
I understand people "read timing" and interpret it as adding to the conversation but timing in a text conversation is so unreliable I personally give it no importance. More often than not the timing of my IM/text/email has more to do with the situation I'm currently in rather than how I feel about the conversation. I didn't reply to that last text because I just stepped into a meeting, or started driving, or got in the shower, etc.
The behavior is a demonstration of not valuing someone else's time and attention (the time that it took to put themselves into your proximity, and the attention that they can't pay to someone else while waiting for you.) One would expect that people who practice it would tend to know less about what other people think and feel.
So I assume you'd have no problem if your date pulled our his/her phone and completely ignored you? If your boss called you over and spent the next half hour on his phone, that shouldn't be a problem. If you ask a friend over to talk because you're hurting, and he ends up on his phone the whole time, that shouldn't be a problem either right? If you fly across the country to see someone, and they ignore you completely for two days while being buried in their phone, that's not a problem?
Is this a generational thing? No, you're just being a selfish asshole by talking on the phone when you should be giving others your attention. What arrogance indeed!
It's not that I have a superiority complex over not using smartphones, though it is delightfully ironic to witness many of the older generations I hear chastising people like me for a variety of grievances commit one of the cardinal sins I actually don't.
And yes, if you can't last more than 5 minutes without checking Facebook, you need help.
That's why I'm always glad when I find other people my age who consciously refuse to be constantly available via WhatsApp, FB Messenger, etc. - several I know actually refuse to have a smart phone at all (yes, those people still exist ;-) ).
That's abusive generalizations for you.
I'm a millenial myself and I have a lot of strong opinions about previous generations but enough with tired meme that all baby boomers or most of them are evil people and we're the saviors of the planet esp when you see examples like that jerk from our generation blackmailing sick and people in need just to get a new sport car or jet to show off in front of his peers of the same age.
Of course there might be the occasional checking of messages, and nobody minds that, especially in groups. But generally I've found people in my age group (early to mid 20s) to be very mindful of when and how they use their phones. If they are going to text in front of you, I find that they often explain out loud why they're doing it, without your even asking, so you know that they actually are responding to something that needs or deserves a somewhat prompt reply.
The illusion was shattered for me with my former roommate, also former friend. I was really amazed at how he'd just sit on his phone on Facebook whenever we went out together to grab something to eat. He'd often just sit there in silence. What sealed the deal for me and led me to the above realization was how he'd ignore me even if I remarked on something while he was in the midst of his Facebooking. It was so offensive to me that I don't even consider him a friend anymore.
Personal attacks are not allowed on Hacker News. Please don't do this again.
Generational generalizations are also a trope we can do without.
>After five days without phones or tablets, these campers were able to read facial emotions and correctly identify the emotions of actors in videotaped scenes significantly better than a control group.
The OP places greater value on face-to-face conversation. I'm saying that the OP takes this too far, that electronic interactions should not be dismissed so readily.
You may have huge brain and trillions of times of the computing capacity of a simple calculator, but it's still going to beat you at arithmetic. Know your limitations and embrace your strengths. You're not some general purpose machine; what's the point in pretending otherwise?
Why do you care how other people enjoy themselves?
By all means, communicate with your friends over the internet using all the means availed to you by technology. On the other hand, when you're sitting at a coffeeshop with your friend right next to you, that isn't the time to be chatting with someone half way across the country.
Actually there is plenty of evidence that texting and social media offer a similar kick as several other addictions like smoking, etc. it's akin to blaming teenage smoking on boring classes. Further, the teenage mind is susceptible to getting easily bored and to addiction.
I'm sure one could just as easily say that getting the mail is like other addictions, because I chronically get excited at the thought of my latest online order arriving.
I do feel the analogy is overused though, mostly because the notion that chemical reactions in the brain are involved seems to have an unduly strong impression on people, whereas I imagine that these phenomena in the brain turn up in all sorts of human activity (see sandworm101's comment).
There's also a negative connotation that exists with drug usage. I could be totally addicted to jogging, though ("runner's high"), with an almost totally net positive effect on my life.
There actually are many people addicted to shopping. You can often see them on “Hoarders” or similar TV shows, their homes filled to the brim with products in boxes, unopened.
Habitual behavior in general forms because of "a similar kick". The main difference between a habit and an addiction is whether the habit is seen as adaptive or maladaptive.
You seem to have missed a main theme of the article, which was in first paragraph: "Now they use it when they want to be both with their friends and, as some put it, 'elsewhere.'"
I would say an illusion of financial security does that too. If your life depended on getting a decent education, petty indulgences like this wouldn't even occur.
Personally, i've been following the maxim "Prefer a warm body over a cold screen." I turn off (most) notifications. Sure, sometimes i'll pull out my phone to look something up. I'll check from time to time if i'm coordinating with someone, but i try to let my interlocutor know what's going on.
(I was going to use that Socrates quote about "Our youth now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority" but it turns out not be by Socrates but from someone in 1907 paraphrasing complains from antiquity http://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/01/misbehaving-children... )
It could be different, but its not. These phones are brick walls, carefully channeling the minds of the enslaved back to the master.
So I started thinking about what I would do to make it different, and really, I think one small tweak to our technology would make a huge difference. Of course, its not in the interests of the manufacturers or network providers: make it possible for phones to auto-discover each other locally, without requiring a server somewhere upstream.
If only we had some way to get people connected to each other - in a local context - i.e. anyone on the train can search for and find others on the same train without requiring a client-server relationship with an upstream connection. Host-AP mode: too restrictive.
We need local peer search and discovery.
About the only way I can think of to get this right now is to man up and put a device in AP mode with some sort of SSID named "LocalUsersNetwork" or something .. some sort of recognizable brand that people can use to connect with their local peers.
It would make the forward march towards further electronic enslavement so much more palatable if it were possible to have at least a local context in which to freely operate.
EDIT: events like this make me think there is a market for "local stranger discovery services", its just nobody has worked out a branding process for it:
https://www.facebook.com/events/1480766915558797/
[0] https://d262ilb51hltx0.cloudfront.net/max/800/1*U36hBj8i-C7J...
Our obsession with hiding ourselves in our little toys drives me absolutely bonkers. And I'm not blameless, I know I do it, too--most of us fall prey to the fact that hiding is so easy that we do so goddamn much of it.
It's also natural for some to follow new trends for there's a lot of energy in exploring things 'a la mode'. But also not to be blinded into thinking old is useless. Progress is not an arrow, it's a wiggling hyperplane.
I don't particularly care about other people's behavior (and I don't have this problem with friends/family), but I can certainly see how it would annoy people, and probably even detract from the experience of the person who is doing it.
I am nostalgic for the land before internet. While there are many technological divides and revolutions between generations, not sure many in history compare to the dramatic change to global society and behavior as a result of the internet, and by its extension, the mobile era.
The way we look at the changes is much more tied to us than the change. You can always flip a coin and think of how marvelous these changes might seem to people in the past: "While I'm sitting in cafe with someone I can simultaneously communicate with someone else half-way across the globe? Wonderful!"
Second, we are not there yet on 24/7, anywhere connection, but we are working on it. Perhaps if we have instantaneous world-wide telepathy one day, Internet will also feel as just another advancement, like the car plane phone.
Please consider, that current technology gives us the ability to have many, many more conversations every day than our great grandparents could ever dream of. For instance, this whole discussion between all of us here wouldn't happen without Internet. I prefer having "subpar" communication with people all around the world to not having it at all.
Also consider this - we've been having video chat capabilities for a decade or so already, and yet people don't go for it all that often. Why it's so? Maybe because for most of our conversations, not having to involve the messy things like body language and posture and cleaning yourself up from whatever you ate for breakfast are actually beneficial?
So because we don't know (or feel immediately comfortable) talking to 99.999% of humans that surround us, the "removal of the human element" makes it more comfortable to talk to someone halfway around the world. Sure, I'd like the OPTION of having to talk to someone half-way around the world. But I don't think that its necessarily the best option or that we should think that the only people that you can talk to on any given topic are necessarily not people who are sitting right next to you - on the bus/train/plane/park bench/etc.
>Maybe because for most of our conversations, not having to involve the messy things like body language and posture and cleaning yourself up from whatever you ate for breakfast are actually beneficial?
Or to turn it around, it would be so much better to live in a society where you could just strike up conversations with strangers and not be judged for superficial BS like crumbs on your face.
Yes and no. I used "subpar" in scare quotes to refer to what I think was implicit sentiment in your comment above. Personally, I don't find text subpar, just different - trading off additional information for more control and efficiency, as well as range.
As for being unable to find someone in my immediate vicinity, there are two issues here, both of which involves self-selection. First of all, people in my vicinity often are preoccupied with something else, whereas whoever signals his availability for conversation on-line is probably a safe bet to talk to.
Secondly, when you look for people in your vicinity, you sample the general population. When you interact on a forum like this one, you sample through a much smaller population of people particularly tuned to that forum's topic and style of discussion.
I don't mean to say here that people around me are inferior to those I meet online; on the contrary, there are conversations I prefer having with those next to me (often, not surprisingly, about topics related to local context). I find off-line and on-line forms to be different enough not to substitute for one another.
> But I don't think that its necessarily the best option or that we should think that the only people that you can talk to on any given topic are necessarily not people who are sitting right next to you - on the bus/train/plane/park bench/etc.
I agree. Though again, self-selection. I'm equally fine with talking about things with people on the bus or on the other side of the planet. But I'm having this conversation here with you, on HN, and not with my friends over beer, because it's Sunday night over here in my timezone; most of face-to-face conversations I could have have selected themselves out by going to sleep :).
> Or to turn it around, it would be so much better to live in a society where you could just strike up conversations with strangers and not be judged for superficial BS like crumbs on your face.
Oh I would so love to live in such a world! But that will require serious rewiring of both our societies and our own insecurities, which would be a change of much more profound (whether good or bad) consequences than mere smartphones.
One other related issue is this notion of wanting to always be with 'like minded' individuals. That's pretty much a recipe for disaster if you ask me. It's probably good to have people around who challenge you or disagree with you or don't like you all the time, etc. Anyway, I think we're probably close enough in agreement on the main point.
You may not be losing any bandwidth, but you are introducing a ton of latency. The time spent walking less the time it would have taken to drive is time I could have spent communicating.
Also, without cars, many face-to-face communications just would not take place at all.
Plus, I don't think it's accurate to say that walking doesn't come with it's own benefits. It might not strictly increase communication, but you do get more information about your travel if you take it at a slower speed (which you can talk about with whomever you're meeting).
People seem to have forgotten that before the rise of the Internet there was another form of media that dominated our lives, and that was TV. Some of the complaints that apply to the Internet also apply to TV, in that it directed our attention away from life in our immediate vicinity, dominated how we spent our free time, etc...
Even though I basically only watch YouTube now, I remember watching a ton of TV in the 80s and 90s. I have some fond memories of moments spent watching TV, but for the most part I watched a lot of utter dross. The same is true for the Internet now, some fond memories of time spent online but something keeps me looking even when the content is dull.
If I could go back, I'd go back to an alternative reality where pirate radio was the dominant form of mass media. I like radio, and I'd like it even better with a greater variety of output, including easy to find output from those in the local area.
If somebody would have said a few decades ago that in 2000, every employee would have a television set on his desk, people would not have believed this person. However, the situation is actually much worse.
I'm curious: Does anyone have rules at work around no laptops / phones at meetings?
Friends say "but it was [such-and-such nonsense]. I had to check my phone!" Really, you had to? Your life depended on you checking that text? People get frustrated with me because my phone is dead all the time (and thus I don't text back immediately), but I hate feeling tethered to some device.
I notice an overwhelmingly huge difference in the quality of my conversations with people when their phone is not present in the room with them.
This isn't to say I'm anti-technology at all — I spend 10 hours a day programming. I just don't attempt to do it while conversing at the same time (nor could I; without uninterrupted focus, I make a lot of mistakes in my code).
By far the most distracted people on the team are the older ones. In meetings they tend to lose focus, look at their computers, misremembered what's said, or just seem to tune it out. I've made a habit of specifically managing how they are perceiving what I'm saying -- looking at their eyes, seeing if they're distracted, asking lots of confirming questions.
And outside of meetings, they don't pay attention to our online communication channels enough.
If anything, my experience has been that it's the older generation that sucks at paying attention to the right things in the new super connected world.
We're in a golden age of text, with dramatically higher engagement due to an unprecedented access to more useful, interesting and relevant information than has ever been available before.
The title uses a new fancy word, but it might as well say "Stop reading. Let's talk."
Your smartphone represents almost everyone you know. In a face-to-face meeting, the ratio is precisely (n-1)/n. So if you both have 100 friends, realize that you're competing to meet the need of love and belonging against the 99 other people in their pocket, who can also give that to your friend with surprising effectiveness.
(The argument generalizes: you are also competing against every stranger that's ever put anything online - the person who wrote that Wikipedia article or Yelp review has a call on your attention, too!)