why just Indian youth? This is a global phenomenon and I am not sure this is such a bad thing. Very similar things were said about books, movies & TV, humanity adapts and moves on.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with addressing a group of people you belong to and share common values with. This site is based around such as notion. Statements from a group member carry more weight and you can speak to shared ideals. It doesn’t mean your statement can’t apply to others either. Similar things were said about the other media you list but one can’t deny that there are both qualitative and quantitative differences between those media. The danger I think lies in the replacement of human interaction and is proportional to the amount of time consumed.
I am not Indian, but I feel like he is talking to me as well. I spend about 5-6 hours online and I am not accomplishing my goals. I don’t even have goals. Ultimately it is not the fault of the internet companies, the blame lies on me.
> Ultimately it is not the fault of the internet companies, the blame lies on me.
That may not be entirely true. Dark patterns like Doom scrolling are employed by companies to keep you hooked on their apps. Also checkout Social cooling.
Quick link for info on the author: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chetan_Bhagat, an investement banker turned novel and screen writer, who also writes about the Indian society. I had never heard of him, but "He was included in Time magazine's list of World's 100 Most Influential People in 2010."
Chetan Bhagat is like a low brow JK Rowling of India. Most Indian authors in 90's wrote with aim of trying to win a Booker by writing needlessly esoteric prose and themes which appealed to Western readers, he wrote books in simple English with Indian urban characters. He is probably the most popular author alive in India right now.
Thank you. I looked him up.. and found that the movie 3 Idiots was loosely based on his first novel! I love that movie so much, and it got me into the wonderful world of 21st C Indian cinema.
3 Idiots (2009) and PK (2014) are my favourites. The best of the other recent Indian movies I've seen:
Barfi! (2012), Mardaani (2014), Lagaan (2001), Rocket Singh (2009), Dangal (2016), Dabba (2013), Black (2005), Rang de Basanti (2006), Taare Zameen Par (2007), Dhobi Ghat (2010), Secret Superstar (2017), My Name Is Khan (2010)
If we really want them to see shouldn't they be tweeting this instead or may be in India post it on WhatsApp.
Kidding aside, its going to be really tough to wean people off social media. It will be the defining problem of the world going forward. Things only get worse from here. There will be woke people who get off of the internet but not woke population.
I don't like how the author pits "using phones" and "success in life" against each other. I get his point, people who don't put any time into furthering their career aren't likely to be in a good position later in life, but there are many who have obtained their career goals while "consuming" media for hours each day and there are also many who don't use their phone much and are still as poor as ever.
I'm not against motivational articles or against critiques of modern smartphone usage, but this one seems to be to be mostly an emotional appeal with the wrong arguments. Paraphrased, "if you use phones, you won't make it anywhere in life, and you don't want that, right?"
Everything is addictive, what matters is when the addiction subverts your intrinsic goals.I think what people need to be spared is some moralism about what your intrinsic goals "should" be. Some people's intrinsic goal is to be part of the culture of their time, and games do that just like books, movies, comics, what have you.
There are lots of games that are simply designed as entertainment (edit: or political pieces, art, etc.), and I'm perfectly fine with those. But there are also games, typically mobile games, that blatantly do everything in their power to keep the player (often a naive child) coming back, and those are definitely manipulative. Manipulative enough to be illegal? I don't think so, but I'm not sure.
> Everything is addictive, what matters is when the addiction subverts your intrinsic goals.
Which is a hell of lot more prevalent when the addictive behavior is driven by a centralized market incentive.
Fentanyl - invented 1959 - didn't become a problem until the Sacklers' greed and fraudulent recommendations to doctors drove the opioid epidemic. Peace pipes and tobacco weren't a problem until the industrialized mass production of cancer sticks drove the manufacturers to reuse literally every ounce of waste through chemical reprocessing. I can't find the research right now but one paper I read on historical gambling mentioned that there is far less evidence of gambling as addictive behavior before urbanization because of a lack of opportunity and strong ties in small communities that kept both gamblers and bookies in line. It wasn't until the innovations in transportation in the 19th century that real estate speculators started building gambling enclaves like Atlantic City, Las Vegas, and the casinos along (and on) the Mississippi river.
Showing ads - aka manipulating human behavior - is now the most profitable. The same thing is going to happen now: the purveyors of the addiction will continue to drive the dystopia to its ultimate conclusion until it gets regulated into the ground (all of the above), loses the largest lawsuit in history and gets culturally sidelined (tobacco), and/or everything but the gains get dismantled (Sacklers).
No, it's not the youth that has to get off their phones
It's the older generation. They are the ones lacking critical skills and ability to understand what goes on Fb, etc
Edit: I don't see why this is so controversial. Younger people do stupid stuff on their phones, but they're more open to learning from their mistakes
The older generation has a more inflexible mindset and hasn't been on the internet/social media for longer (most of them, which is probably not so much the demographic here, even for older HNs commenters)
I see how a lot of people behave today and it's how I behaved and felt for a good amount of time. But that wasn't on the hate melting pot of Facebook, it was on more spread out and on more niche sites.
Or spoken in other words: some things are better left on a pub brawl table not as a hard statement on social media.
How does the older generation getting off their phones help them to understand "what goes on Fb", let alone help them gain critical skills (which seems far fetched)?
I actually think that the generation that was born with a technology also barely understands it.
How many kids really understand what FB is made of? How many of them really understand what the internet is? They don't, it's always been there, who cares?
There is this misconception that just because a kid can swipe and type super fast on their phone they are "tech literate". As someone who taught tech in school I've seen the exact opposite.
I'll tell you a story: I was born not so long ago, but before internet existed and I had my first connection at the age of 19 in 1995.
When I was a kid I grew up between the city and the country
I knew about animals, how they behaved, what they ate and what was their role (cows for milk, chickens made eggs, pigs for ham)
Fast forward 30 years, my nephews know every burger place around and where to eat the best chicken snacks but have never seen a chicken or a cow alive, the younger one was shocked when he discovered that chicken nuggets and fried potatoes don't exist in nature and they don't grow at the supermarket
It might look an extreme example, but as a tech worker I see that younger generations have a way to using technology that is more immediate but is also more shallow
They take it for granted, like it always existed and usually don't think about the downsides much the same way I didn't think of the downside of using the car every time I needed to move
To make an hyperbole, there have been a generation that was born when fascism was established and for them fascism was normal
It's hard to see something from the outside when you are literally born in it and it's the only form you have experienced it
> It might look an extreme example, but as a tech worker I see that younger generations have a way to using technology that is more immediate but is also more shallow
Perfectly described. And yes, this is a factor.
But though it is more shallow technically, I think it's a more profound connection socially (while lacking the life experience of the older generations).
Think of the "dangers" every parent warns their kids against. They're right in spirit but they're outdated in the technology/methods (and think they are immune to it - or maybe they never were)
not sure spouting unfounded assertions about the "cognative brain" is helping. spending 5-7 hours a day on social media is a massive waste of time though. of that there is no doubt
I think this is a good message, but by making the phone the problem I fear the author misses a fundamental connection to the youth he addresses.
The issue is what you do on a phone, not the phone itself.
In fact, phones make it a lot easier to create and not just consume, than televisions did back in the author's youth. And I bet there were similar anti-TV op-eds in newspapers in those days that the author would have rolled his eyes at.
The message should've been to create more and consume less. A phone let's you do either, the device is hardly related at all. You can't see what a person is doing when they're bent over their phone.
> The message should've been to create, not consume.
This needs to be said more and more with each passing year. I became aware of this phenomenon back in the early 2000s, with Facebook gaining popularity among my friends, and blogs were gradually losing steam -- people aren't creating anymore, but simply consuming media, and therein lies the problem: how can you express independent thought when your media consumption habits dictate your beliefs?
Nah. People are more creative now than they have ever been. You just haven't followed them to the new platforms. On the Internet, go check out SoundCloud and YouTube and Instagram and TikTok and Open Source communities. Off the Internet, go check in with your local independent radio, theatre communities, and maker spaces. Creativity is exploding. People haven't stagnated; you have.
> The issue is what you do on a phone, not the phone itself.
This neglects to consider essential differences between people and the ensuing distributional effects of a particular treatment applied across such heterogeneity.
One example: there are phone apps which simulate a piano keyboard, so you can create and record music (or at least jot down chord/melody ideas) while out and about.
Get some talented people together, and you can do some pretty good looking movies. E.g., "Snowbrawl" [1]. Here's a "making of" for that [2] showing the equipment used.
The phone as a device appears to definitely be biased towards consumption rather than production. Another message to add about creativity: don't forget about building real physical things. It is great to have digital wealth, but we also need physical stuff and society seems more and more detached from the creation of this physical stuff, which strikes me as a worrying trend.
> It is great to have digital wealth, but we also need physical stuff and society seems more and more detached from the creation of this physical stuff, which strikes me as a worrying trend.
I’m sorry, what exactly is “digital wealth” supposed to mean?
wealth - plentiful supplies of a particular resource
digital - involving or relating to the use of computer technology
In this context, they presumably mean the abundance of resources that exist solely or primarily in the digital realm. Social media, Youtube, streaming services, and software / data in general as opposed to physical things like cars, houses, consumer goods, etc.
> The issue is what you do on a phone, not the phone itself.
Now try that with tobacco. Indeed, in a very technical sense of the word, cigarettes nor mobile phones are not the issue. But telling people "just stop smoking" didn't do the trick.
I'm old enough to remember when it was TV that was supposedly wasting the time and destroying the youth. Before that, it was comic books. And movies. And even in the 19th century people were complaining about novels. Yes, in theory it is better if people do something constructive rather than just enjoy entertainment. But people can't be 100% in productive mode 100% of the time.
Taken to an extreme simply talking to--and visiting--friends a lot can be considered a useless waste. For example, loitering is forbidden in many retail places yet it's become culturally accepted use of indoor malls for teenagers (pre-COVID).
Life requires balance. And everyone gets to decide what they do with their down time.
Loitering laws are pure bullshit that's used selectively to get "undesirable elements" away from commercial areas. Be they teenagers, the poor, or - back in the day - certain races.
And to add to that, there is this presumption that phones are purely for entertainment aka "time wasting". They are also very useful devices for business, work, education, etc. Let those individuals decide what's good/bad - who are we to lecture?
There's some equivalence, but consider the amount of engineering and research that Facebook, Instagram and Youtube put into keeping eyes on screens, and I think it's worse than ever.
Although maybe the biggest concern being expressed is by the old who are in dire need of the youth working to look after them. From that perspective, the situation seems a little sad.
Considering the amount of time my relatives and parents spend on Facebook and increasingly Instagram, I don't know who's raising concerns here. It's likely the really old elders (70+ folks who don't know their way around a mobile app).
There's a huge segment of the Indian youth population (around 30% iirc) that's underemployed or unemployed, that spends a lot of time on Facebook and Instagram. There's a reason India has the highest consumption among all countries in Facebook and Insta, yet one of the lowest ad revenue rates - advertisers simply don't find value advertising to these fellows.
This is a logical fallacy. If you increase the dosage of mercury, it'll eventually be deadly. In the same vein, smart phones, social media, etc are entirely different beasts to books, radio and even television.
And we'll adjust, as we always do. It's fine to have this discussion, but the position that it can "destroy you" and comparing it to a lethal dosage of mercury is on the extreme end of the discussion.
I don't understand this line of thinking. Sure, it may not be the literal end of the world, but that doesn't mean that it won't cause a lot of damage before people 'adapt'. People have always adapted to wars, but that doesn't mean that the world wars weren't absolutely catastrophic.
And while I don't think that smartphones will 'destroy you', I think there's a good chance that it can both be very corrosive in all sorts of manners. I think smartphones are a lot more potent at sedating people and making them detached than novels ever could hope to be, which can have a very harmful impact on society at large.
I think it's kinda too early too judge (only ~60 years of widespread adoption and in this time the TV landscape has changed massively), but I think there's a pretty good chance that 'tabloid style' TV has caused a good deal more damage than the yellow press has.
> At least there's some ability to interact with a smartphone
Sure, but that also makes it a lot more addictive. You generally won't see people who are glued to their TV 24/7, but with smartphones that's not uncommon.
> yet society survived
Again, I'm not saying that society will just implode on itself, just that these things can do a lot of damage.
I dunno man, the average American (used to) watch eight hours of TV a day. When you look at the changing media landscape, it's that mobiles/PCs are being substituted for TV watching.
Thank you for the answer though, I appreciate consistency when examining the impact of media.
And I also distinctly remember the answer of Harald Schmidt, back then Germany‘s most famous late night show host, when he was asked whether he thought TV makes people dumb:
„With all due respect, I think TV makes intelligent people more intelligent and dumb people more dumb.“
20 years later, I couldn‘t have said it any better.
Yeaaaah, no. I think the reason most of india’s youth is on their phones is because they just have no real prospects in life and the phone is an escape mechanism.
But I will agree with fpip. India has so many fundamental problems that will require serious government and public change.
My state will not have enough drinking water for 30%+ of its population by 2030. Prices of food will go up as ground water becomes non existent. How do you think that will impact people?
Educated people are fleeing the country. They are willing to take any jobs to get out before it's too late.
Doom scrolling is a terrifying problem for me, personally. I have only recently realized just how bad it is.
I have recently gotten headfirst back into turntablism/vinyl DJ’ing, and leaving my iPhone in my room, just wearing my Apple Watch with me to tell the time and to do a quick voice reply to someone if it’s important enough. I’m trying to start reading books again. It’s scarily hard to keep that level of attention span again.
I’m an iOS developer for a living, and I think screen addiction should perhaps start to be considered a workplace hazard.
Worse off for me - previous to DJ’ing, my hobbies have been game/homebrew development and hardcore audio production / editing / engineering - all on my MacBook, of course, staring at a screen.
Looking at the actual ‘Screen Time’ reports became jarring. I actually still have a dopamine response that tells me to look at my phone when it’s in the other room. Thank God the watch can’t do HN or Reddit.
It’s like a signal in my head, wired there, like ‘hey; you’ve gotta use the bathroom’ but instead it’s ‘hey, pick up your phone and start scrolling.’
I’ve had issues with substance abuse in the past that I’ve moved past and worked through.
‘Doom scrolling’ has, by no exaggeration, been harder to kick for me than any substance or even cigarettes, which I smoked for almost ten years - it’s going to take years to unprogram what it took years for the developers of things like Facebook/IG/Reddit to program in the first place.
It’s messed up to think that people who have never faced addiction before may deal with this as their first go. It’s going to be a hard recovery for a world buried unproductively with devices in their faces all the time giving them a much quicker and more consistent dopamine response than cigarettes ever could.
Both zoomers and boomers are guilty of opposite problems
No, zoomer, Facebook is not a good use of your time. Get a PC and create content, rather than consume it. You have access to a miracle of modern technology, and you squander it on garbage.
No, boomer, phones are not the devil, and you're being a drain by refusing to learn basic tech skills, and people are getting tired of holding your head above water when you immediately forget everything we try to teach you and plunge it back in.
The problem isn't what the new generation is using, it's what they're using it for.
The older generation's aversion to technology and deliberate lack of effort will only cause them pain in the future, and it causes pain to countless grandkids right now :^)
An interesting experiment is to leave your phone at home when you go out. Try it.
I don't mean take your phone anyway but don't use it. That is not the same thing.
The value in this experiment is not to have your phone to fall back on. Initially you feel anxiety, but it soon becomes quite liberating. Having to look at road signs to navigate, relying on personal interaction or reading notices to find things out etc etc. Sounds old fashioned but it improves my quality of life when I do it.
I did this accidentally a few weeks ago, and it was such a good experience I have done it intentionally a few times since then. I was just walking in my own neighborhood, but it was a similar feeling to what it's like traveling in a new city for the first time.
This whole idea that being without a phone is somehow liberating — and just not using it is definitely not as pure and wholly amazing as being completely without it — is to me a silly and predictable response to the very real drawbacks of high tech modern life.
Phones have value. That’s why people use them. Pretending they don’t and that we’re all brainwashed doesn’t change that reality.
Here’s an example: I want to take public transport to a grocery store. I walk out the door. I don’t have my phone.
First of all, if I don’t check the opening hours of the store before leaving, I now have no idea. The whole trip may be for nothing.
Secondly, when planning my trip, my phone would help me suggest what line and where to switch, if necessary. It would alert me in real time of any issues, again with alternate suggestions. When traveling: no music. No audio books. Just the organic, wonderful and inspiring sounds of the city. Not to mention all the wonderful people on public transport you’re aching to know better.
When I get to the store, I may have forgotten my shopping list. And even if I brought it, I have no way of getting in contact with someone that may want to add something to it. If I find a new product I don’t recognize and I’m unsure of whether it’s overpriced, I can’t compare to any other vendor. I also can’t check reviews from other people.
I’m sorry if I sound cynical, but sometimes I feel like the spread (but not necessarily the preaching) of this whole luddite idea of smartphones ruining us is mainly fueled by people young enough to have grown up with them being everywhere, because I’m in my mid 30s and I remember what life was like without smartphones, and for the most part, it sucked.
Now try the same line but with heroin, or fast food, or whatever people use to their detriment...
Besides, anything that has value also has an opportunity cost, which can be much more important than the value inherent in the thing...
>Here’s an example: I want to take public transport to a grocery store. I walk out the door. I don’t have my phone. First of all, if I don’t check the opening hours of the store before leaving, I now have no idea. The whole trip may be for nothing.
Yeah, it's a wonder how people managed to live and visit the grocery store in the dark ages of the 90s and early 00s... All these people going out of their homes at 02:00am only to find the grocery store closed...
Yes, but I've never considered it important enough to say
"I'd better be saddled with a device that can be addictive, that I spend hours on end each day on, that everybody I known can harass me at any time, any where on, that keeps tabs on all kinds of things including my every movement
-- lest I repeat this visited-a-closed-store blunder...
I'm not saying that a smartphone is not immesely useful -- I use mine for notes, video, photos (including pro work), phonecalls (duh), messaging, and so on.
I'm saying that "gives us things like grocery store times or gps routes" (or many combinations of such things) is hardly an argument for smartphones as "indispensable", nor a reason not to consider their, often serious, downsides (behavioral, cognitive, social, privacy, etc)
If such an event has ruined your life, I wager that you have bigger or more systemic problems going on than not being able to buy a stick of butter from Cooper's Grocery on a particular day.
The capacity of being flexible is valuable. Yes, having the world in your pocket is valuable when something jumps up and goes "boo". However, most people should not need to Google-search "what do I do after 'boo'?" every single time.
What opportunity cost? Why is it impossible for me to conclude that possessing a smartphone does not cause me any harm? There is a persistent rhetoric among online technologists that people are wrong for making different value judgements. Some people don't like that their phone stores a record of their movements. That's fine. But people who disagree can do so for reasons other than ignorance.
>But people who disagree can do so for reasons other than ignorance.
Yes, and here's the key: they might still be wrong.
I'm not saying this is the case. I'm saying that this is a possibility. "I took an informed decision which is not due to ignorance" doesn't mean the decision can't still be wrong.
Not to mention that most people just adopt shiny new stuff, hardly pausing to indeed make informed decisions...
> Yes, and here's the key: they might still be wrong.
I truly do not believe I am wrong for having a smartphone in my pocket when going to the store. I understand the structure and behavior of mobile apps and mobile operating systems far better than most.
> Not to mention that most people just adopt shiny new stuff, hardly pausing to indeed make informed decisions...
Now we are back at the ignorance claim! I've got a PhD in mobile security. I've been working in this space for more than a decade! I assure you I have done more than "hardly pausing".
People claimed that bicycles would cause the destruction of society when they were introduced. Can't I just declare that all of the skeptics are ignorant luddites using the same arguments you are?
>Now we are back at the ignorance claim! I've got a PhD in mobile security. I've been working in this space for more than a decade! I assure you I have done more than "hardly pausing".
That's technical knowledge though.
But there's another thing when it comes to ignorance or not, that's not tied to "how they work".
The understanding of their social/political/etc implications.
Someone who even designs smartphones is not necessarily savvy to the latter. If anything, his whole career gives them an incentive not to be ("it's difficult to make somebody understand something whose career depends on not understanding it").
>People claimed that bicycles would cause the destruction of society when they were introduced.
Well, they were not far off :-) Though that's more like a "people have been wrong about X in the past, so they can't be right about Y now".
I left the house today, the store I intended to go to was closed. I went to another one.
Honestly if I'm with my child I frequently leave my phone at home. We can both concentrate on each other that way, and there's rarely anything more important than that. My wife has sometimes suggested I should take a phone with me one particular day, in case she wants to change (working) plans at the last minute, but otherwise we're happy without.
This is exactly the kind of absurd, completely surreal type of argumentation I’m talking about. You’re literally comparing a smartphone to one of the most dangerous and addictive opioids available, responsible for 15 000 overdose deaths annually in the US alone.
And in case you perhaps didn’t actually read my comment, I pointed out the fact that I was one of those people who visited grocery stores in the 90s, which is why I know that doing it today is easier than it was back then. That’s the whole point. Falling back on childish exaggeration like “oh I wonder how ANYONE managed to do this before” obviously doesn’t disprove the fact that what was possible before is now still possible but easier.
>This is exactly the kind of absurd, completely surreal type of argumentation I’m talking about. You’re literally comparing a smartphone to one of the most dangerous and addictive opioids available, responsible for 15 000 overdose deaths annually in the US alone.
You've missed the whole point. I'm answering the crap argument "Phones have value. That’s why people use them." - showing that people use things that don't have value (and can even be hamrful) all the time.
It's not about the relative danger of phone vs heroin. It's about "people use it, thus it has value" is a crap argument.
In fact, I also included fast food (which people don't overdose from), on my counter-argument, which you conveniently ignored.
>And in case you perhaps didn’t actually read my comment, I pointed out the fact that I was one of those people who visited grocery stores in the 90s, which is why I know that doing it today is easier than it was back then. That’s the whole point.
No, the whole point is that it's only marginally easier, to the point of hardly being worth it just for those kind of conveniences, while creating its own problems, which can have a much worse impact in one's life than "I missed the grocery store open times"...
You don't need a phone for any of the activities you described.
Stores are pretty much open business hours, or 24 hours, they follow the same pattern. Or just show up and it is closed. Go somewhere else.
Public transport runs to a schedule. Just show up and transport will show up within n minutes anyway, whether you know the time or nor. Or just use the timetable at the station.
Yes, no music, just your thoughts. but take a book if you want.
Write down your shopping list on paper.
All I have just described is why it is so liberating.
The entire point is that you don’t need a phone to do any of this, just like you don’t need a spike gun if you have a hammer when building a house. If you feel that liberates you, go ahead and do whatever you want, but when you’re preaching to others about how they’re somehow going against our innate human nature, that’s when I get a bit annoyed.
Don’t you think it’s pretty obvious that this exact line of reasoning could be made against the use of books on public transport if we were discussing this in the 1800s? Why are you fine with distracting yourself with a book, but reading the news on a smartphone is somehow different?
You seem to be trying to describe the point of my own post to me, I don't get why you would do that. I know the point of my own post.
As I have just written to someone else above - you are just proving the OP original article. Why not just try something different rather than pointlessly arguing about the intricacies of it all on the internet..
I see nothing in that post that is explaining anything other than why you calling being without a smartphone as liberating as what others may call “I have free time to waste”. Now, you can argue that maybe I should stop and smell the flowers sometimes, but usually when I have to do something it is work and I would much rather get it done as quickly as possible with the tools I have at my disposal.
Basically yeah, but I would rephrase it as liberation from constant reliance, or from always having the perfect answer, from a lessened use of ones mind, from necessary human interaction to ask anyone a question, or from spending any precious second not maximizing the amount of information and "productivity" you can achieve.
It's about being a human, in an environment, around other humans, with time to spare for original thoughts and just to enjoy being alive. I expect many people on this forum are the "productivity" and "maximizing" type. Not that there's anything wrong with that! We need those people! But I think we might all be able to benefit from truly relying on ourselves in difficult situations, instead of just asking the answer box to help us avoid any annoyance or unnecessary difficulty.
If you wish your life to be a perfectly smooth series of directions given by a silicon hivemind, feel free friend. Sometimes the bumps and the dirt are what make life worth living though. Sometimes the empathy of unnecessary difficult situations can create bonds and perspective that shiny chrome smoothness cannot. Persistent smooth perfect answers have their purpose and we wouldn't have invented it if not for its use but I find the rather strong opposition to experiencing and exploring one's humanity, whether this way or that, rather frightening. Almost sounds like it's the chrome talking and not the human.
Think of it as rearranging your life to have those quiet moments when you want them, with the people you want to have them with.
For example, I once used my phone to reroute my wife and I around an unexpectedly closed train station so we could spend a planned hour in an old cathedral. We were glad we were able to meditate and be alone with our thoughts in that cathedral instead of being alone with them trying to read unfamiliar train tables and chase down busy transit employees.
After that we used the phone to update our plans to meet a friend in that city. In the 90s we probably would have just gone home and missed seeing our friend for another few years. We had a nice, long conversation with her.
That doesn’t have anything to do with productivity and the only things we maximized were the most important leisure activities that day.
Your motivation is certainly a good one, to be clear.
I think there’s an assumption that if you’re using your phone regularly you’re never taking the time to have human experiences. For all but perhaps the most avoidant, I don’t think that happens in practice.
I walk alone for 1-3 hours a day. Usually I wear headphones and listen to podcasts or the economist audio - I have learned a lot about the world this way. You could argue it is just entertainment, but I suppose my old CS lectures were just entertainment, too. Having audio content helps make the walks more bearable, and those walks have helped me lose over 100 lbs of unwanted body fat.
Sometimes I take the headphones out to enjoy the sights and sounds. Sometimes I pause and enjoy the views for a while. If I see someone I want to talk to, I stop, take the headphones out, and talk. There’s no binary choice and I find that by sparing me actual reading time, this practice gives me more time to spend on things I care about. I do enjoy the nature exposure, but I don’t need 3 hours a day of focus on it - it really just doesn’t change much day to day or year to year.
I wish living in a perfectly smooth chrome existence was an option, but it isn’t. My phone and the internet fail often enough that I still regularly need to call a real human and talk. The maps are wonderful, but they still require a degree of interpretation, like when a rail line is closed and the shuttle replacement isn’t listed. Just the other day I had to bother an airport employee to figure out where that shuttle pick up was. Having had that experience I don’t think it makes me better.
I have empathy for unnecessarily difficult situations, that doesn’t make me want to maximize the existence of those. It motivates me to build better software, do better work, and contribute more to public efforts to make the world a better place for humans.
Again, there’s no binary choice, people should use every tool at their disposal to maximize their happiness. I’ve got a perfectly good phone, but I walked the streets of a new city for 13 miles, soaking in the sights and sounds, and making minimal use of my phone, checking every few miles to make sure I didn’t overshoot my targets (parks and botanical gardens).
Why is it liberating? I'm old enough that I used to live that way as a youth because I didn't have a cell phone. It was an annoying waste of time with zero benefits.
It's especially liberating to those young of us to have grown up with the phone always on all the time. Never get to hang out after school without everyone wanting to know where you are. Never get to roam the neighborhood without everyone wanting to know where you are. Never getting to encounter danger without extreme societal pressure to take the least risks and encounter the least amount of strange and difficult situations possible. Never getting to rely on your own ingenuity and tact because the phone can always answer better and faster. The phone does improve life in some ways, but it also strips us of others. If you had lived your adolescence without the god-mind constantly watching you, you might not understand what it's like to grow up these days. I'm sure you had your own difficulties but I wouldn't comment on those like I understand them.
I frightens me that we've set up our society to value perfect productivity over all else. It's unhealthy, at least for some. Maybe even life was worse on the whole before the connectivity singularity stole our privacy and our free time, but you cant say it was worse in every way. Why are we opposed to allowing others the ability to gain that perspective? Why should we tell someone that the way they discovered more of their humanity is pointless because it might "waste time". Do we meditate? Do we rest? I could just as easily say that spending all your time on your phone on a bus or transit is just as much wasting your time as is sitting and staring at the ceiling. The mind never shuts off. Could I ask anyone to repeat to me the important information they learned from that post on their bus transit 3 Tuesdays ago? Maybe they did learn something important and do remember. But maybe I came to a realization that I wouldn't have, without giving myself the space to think. Or maybe I met this beautiful girl who I just had my first date with. Or maybe I just sat and stopped stressing about everything that's bad in the world. Maybe I took some time to breathe so that I could be a more pleasant person for my child after a difficult day of work.
You could say that these things are all achievable through the phone and I think we can all agree there are marked differences between conversations over text and those in person, between an interesting point we read and an epiphany that we came to ourselves.
I don't want to be hypocritical tell you that your way is wrong or that your perspective is incorrect, just maybe a little push to think about what it would be like to be someone else. Who might have written that post? What might their life be like to make them think those things? What in my life has lead me to believe what I do? In my experience, these are the kinds of thoughts I don't have through the phone.
As an addendum, I'd say that there are many many uses for the phone, I would guess that you don't have a snapchat and an instagram to check and constantly worry about. But these days you can't be social or even participate in high school (college to a slightly lesser extent) without having one or both of those things (probably even newer ones I don't know about). It's not necessarily just freedom from google maps, but from the panopticon and extreme pressures to portray your life in a certain way.
Apps makes a difference for public transport in places like London, where computing all the required changes is totally non-trivial problem and basically can't be done in a close to optimal manner without a computer. So, the phone is saving you real time and money.
Why would you walk out the door before checking that the store is open, if the whole point of the excursion is to visit the store (and in this case, you don't have an idea when it is open)?
I live somewhere were having your phone out is dangerous so I'm forced to use it only when needed. The number one thing I use my phone for is checking bus routes (second is store times which can be very odd, especially with the pandemic). I know some routes off the top of my head but not the majority. Plus although I always plan where I'm going before hand so I know the streets (although many are missing signs), what time things are open, if the buses are actually working (apart from strikes, sometimes a bus line might be diverted due to construction/protests), often I end up going more places than I plan and end up needing to take a different bus than I had planned back.
I mean if I get my phone stolen or something I'll still be fine, but I don't get how having to hunt down road signs and depending on others to tell you the right info can possible feel liberating? I have navigated the city before it's bus app was built and internet was reliable, and it was not fun. Plus recently I've had problems with my contacts and because I can't stand my full prescription in glasses I can't see far away so it's been even more liberating to have my phone. I can quickly glance at google maps (even without internet and just gps on) and see where I am. Extremely useful in buses where I'm too far to see the road signs at all. I would hate having to ask the driver all the time to drop me off at the right street.
I think you’re misunderstanding the suggestion. The OP isn’t claiming the things you describe are dumb or wasteful or that you should never carry your phone. The suggestion is that sometimes doing without it can teach you interesting things, including about your phone.
I’m an avid backpacker (>60 nights on the trail most years) and I experience the same phenomenon (I don’t mean the phone, which is just a deadweight in the country). I sometimes just do without some piece of equipment and find out I’m fine. You often don’t need a tent, even in the snow.
It turns out less clutter makes much of the experience more enjoyable; you have fewer decisions to make and more “attention” to pay to other things which could be where you are or it could be something in your head you brought with you. It can also be a real PITN if, say, it’s raining and you foolishly don’t have shelter.
Do I bring a tent? Often. But it’s ok if I don’t.
And what is the phone but an infinitely large backpack full of clutter? Worse, much of that clutter is actively designed to distract you and imbue FOMO (suggesting new things precisely as you complete the old, ruining the cognitive desire for “completion”). Phones are great and I always carry mine around in town. But losing it would be inconvenient, not devastating.
This is like saying leaving home without your wallet is liberating. It’s true in a sense, but it’s also damned inconvenient depending on what you want to do.
Then again, if you truly feel anxious without your phone all the time, maybe it’s worth a shot ...
Well, clearly not having money is not comparable to not having a phone.
But you are just proving the OP original article. Why not just try something different rather than pointlessly arguing about the intricacies of it all on the internet
Is it different? You have posted the same ‘intricacies on the Internet’ article several times on this page already, so perhaps you should consider your own advice?
Not having money is comparable to not having a phone - my phone is my money and it is far better at being money than the plastic in my wallet.
You should give ‘The Pessimists Archive’ a listen. You might realize why hearing the same argument about why you should liberate yourself from {insert tech here} is tiring. The argument against smartphones is no different from the argument about umbrellas, refrigeration, books, mirrors, Walkmans, radio or frankly anything else that doesn’t come naturally with a cave.
It’s nothing personal. I’m just always disappointed how much purchase these knee-jerk, unthoughtful, anti-tech reactions have on sites full of clever folks such as HN.
I am a runner and when I go for runs I don't take my phone with me. I have a Garmin watch that has music storage (which I also use for podcasts & audiobooks) and some basic navigation/mapping functionality (which I've never used). I run semi-long distances, up to and above a half marathon for training runs, and never really felt like I needed my phone. I guess it would be useful for emergencies, and when I ride my roadbike I do have it with me, but that's primarily because riding is more dangerous. The main thing I miss on my runs w/o a phone is snapping a pic every now and then. I would not use it for anything else as I don't make any stops (I run non-stop), and quite often I don't even wear headphones as I like to enjoy the sounds around me.
I suggest you guys try it. And yes, that includes if you don't run/jog, _try_ that as well, phone or not.
You can switch to the PinePhone and do this if you still want a portable computer. Last time I checked there still isn't a turn by turn navigation program (although you can run gnome maps, which will give you a list of directions to memorize.)
IMO it's not "smartphones" but the OSes built by apple and google that encourage unhealthy and addictive usage.
None of my pre "smartphone" PDAs did this, and I don't feel myself sucked into the mindless addictive patterns on my PinePhone (although that may be because Firefox can be sluggish on it.)
The neoluddite take is kind of like beating a dead horse. Smartphones are a tool; how you use this tool is entirely dependent on how disciplined your mind is. Not everyone who has their first sip of alcohol will become an alcoholic. It is the same for smartphones.
The article’s take on China is weird too; do they not have smartphones? The author probably wrote the article on a Huawei phone that the vast majority of Chinese people use every day.
This not only came off as condescending, but also desperate and whiny.
The first paragraph (paraphrased) “I am writing in a BIG newspaper, and I was taught that when someone writes in A Real Serious Newspaper, I deserve to be read”
I look at newspapers like churches. Churches and newspapers are businesses in some ways, they exist because they meet the needs of their customers. I went to church as a little kid but I don’t as a man because it does not meet my needs, I have community in other places and I don’t need old white dudes yelling at me that I am living my life “wrong” (aka, not the way they think life should be lived).
Also, from an intellectual level this argument is extremely boring and stale. It has literally been made continuously throughout time since the Greeks and the beginning of our records of recorded discourse, and was probably made too before we have records.
> I don’t need old white dudes yelling at me that I am living my life “wrong”
I don't think the author of this article is white. Does that make you more receptive to his argument that folks who use their cell phones are living their lives "wrong"?
That's all to say - how are old white dudes relevant to this thread?
"smartphone" doesn't destroys anyone. It's the "how" someone chose to use it..
I'm a programmer, from India, learned to code from the Internet, spend most of the time in front of the screen, and I guess, it would've been better if the letter suggested some ways to prevent the "destruction".
Step 1: Turn off the notifications, will help you take control.
Step 2: stay away from the Facebook empire.
Didn't the inventors of the smartphone and internet startups do exactly what the author is suggesting? How would those ventures be successful without a large segment of the population addicted to the products they provide? Let us not overly worship the power of creativity. While creativity can produce the smartphone it also produces the consequences of smartphones being successful.
It honestly seems like technology affects older generations more than newer ones. Look at the people most susceptible to fake news online, vast majority over the age of 50. Younger people understand how the internet works; you can’t trust everything you read online.
When I was kid, I remember my parents yelling at me playing 'useless' games at the end of the street with my 'good for nothing' friends.
When I was a teen, I remember them not liking me watching "too much" of TV and grumbling about reading 'no good' fiction magazines.
Now this.. "get off the phone" advice.
The key is, the choice must come from with-in, like Diogenes of Snopes[1] tells Alexader the great to stand out of his sun.
Until the kids are capable of making the choice or until the kids turn into adults, parents and schools must create an environment that shows descent maker's alternative to phones. This needs lot of work on behaf of schools and sacrifices on behalf of parents.
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[ 2.1 ms ] story [ 203 ms ] threadThe generalization may be true, but concluding that there's no benefit or that we would be better off without would be a non-sequitur.
https://xkcd.com/2368/
That may not be entirely true. Dark patterns like Doom scrolling are employed by companies to keep you hooked on their apps. Also checkout Social cooling.
https://www.socialcooling.com/
3 Idiots (2009) and PK (2014) are my favourites. The best of the other recent Indian movies I've seen:
Barfi! (2012), Mardaani (2014), Lagaan (2001), Rocket Singh (2009), Dangal (2016), Dabba (2013), Black (2005), Rang de Basanti (2006), Taare Zameen Par (2007), Dhobi Ghat (2010), Secret Superstar (2017), My Name Is Khan (2010)
This says more about your lack of knowledge than his lack of fame.
Kidding aside, its going to be really tough to wean people off social media. It will be the defining problem of the world going forward. Things only get worse from here. There will be woke people who get off of the internet but not woke population.
The letter is for parents and old people.
I'm not against motivational articles or against critiques of modern smartphone usage, but this one seems to be to be mostly an emotional appeal with the wrong arguments. Paraphrased, "if you use phones, you won't make it anywhere in life, and you don't want that, right?"
Worse, video games and social media are now explicitly targeted by big business to get kids addicted as early as possible.
It's a mess and we're heading for a huge shakedown and re-orientation in a generation.
(At one point cigarettes were seen as a "not big deal" too.)
Which is a hell of lot more prevalent when the addictive behavior is driven by a centralized market incentive.
Fentanyl - invented 1959 - didn't become a problem until the Sacklers' greed and fraudulent recommendations to doctors drove the opioid epidemic. Peace pipes and tobacco weren't a problem until the industrialized mass production of cancer sticks drove the manufacturers to reuse literally every ounce of waste through chemical reprocessing. I can't find the research right now but one paper I read on historical gambling mentioned that there is far less evidence of gambling as addictive behavior before urbanization because of a lack of opportunity and strong ties in small communities that kept both gamblers and bookies in line. It wasn't until the innovations in transportation in the 19th century that real estate speculators started building gambling enclaves like Atlantic City, Las Vegas, and the casinos along (and on) the Mississippi river.
Showing ads - aka manipulating human behavior - is now the most profitable. The same thing is going to happen now: the purveyors of the addiction will continue to drive the dystopia to its ultimate conclusion until it gets regulated into the ground (all of the above), loses the largest lawsuit in history and gets culturally sidelined (tobacco), and/or everything but the gains get dismantled (Sacklers).
It's the older generation. They are the ones lacking critical skills and ability to understand what goes on Fb, etc
Edit: I don't see why this is so controversial. Younger people do stupid stuff on their phones, but they're more open to learning from their mistakes
The older generation has a more inflexible mindset and hasn't been on the internet/social media for longer (most of them, which is probably not so much the demographic here, even for older HNs commenters)
I see how a lot of people behave today and it's how I behaved and felt for a good amount of time. But that wasn't on the hate melting pot of Facebook, it was on more spread out and on more niche sites.
Or spoken in other words: some things are better left on a pub brawl table not as a hard statement on social media.
How many kids really understand what FB is made of? How many of them really understand what the internet is? They don't, it's always been there, who cares?
There is this misconception that just because a kid can swipe and type super fast on their phone they are "tech literate". As someone who taught tech in school I've seen the exact opposite.
When I was a kid I grew up between the city and the country
I knew about animals, how they behaved, what they ate and what was their role (cows for milk, chickens made eggs, pigs for ham)
Fast forward 30 years, my nephews know every burger place around and where to eat the best chicken snacks but have never seen a chicken or a cow alive, the younger one was shocked when he discovered that chicken nuggets and fried potatoes don't exist in nature and they don't grow at the supermarket
It might look an extreme example, but as a tech worker I see that younger generations have a way to using technology that is more immediate but is also more shallow
They take it for granted, like it always existed and usually don't think about the downsides much the same way I didn't think of the downside of using the car every time I needed to move
To make an hyperbole, there have been a generation that was born when fascism was established and for them fascism was normal
It's hard to see something from the outside when you are literally born in it and it's the only form you have experienced it
Perfectly described. And yes, this is a factor.
But though it is more shallow technically, I think it's a more profound connection socially (while lacking the life experience of the older generations).
Think of the "dangers" every parent warns their kids against. They're right in spirit but they're outdated in the technology/methods (and think they are immune to it - or maybe they never were)
The issue is what you do on a phone, not the phone itself.
In fact, phones make it a lot easier to create and not just consume, than televisions did back in the author's youth. And I bet there were similar anti-TV op-eds in newspapers in those days that the author would have rolled his eyes at.
The message should've been to create more and consume less. A phone let's you do either, the device is hardly related at all. You can't see what a person is doing when they're bent over their phone.
This needs to be said more and more with each passing year. I became aware of this phenomenon back in the early 2000s, with Facebook gaining popularity among my friends, and blogs were gradually losing steam -- people aren't creating anymore, but simply consuming media, and therein lies the problem: how can you express independent thought when your media consumption habits dictate your beliefs?
A nice essay on this was posted to HN last year.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20781463
This neglects to consider essential differences between people and the ensuing distributional effects of a particular treatment applied across such heterogeneity.
Are you sure?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_medium_is_the_message
I think some indie movies as well, but don’t have a handy reference on my phone.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cM8DcCoZulw
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAJwbyu-2mE
I’m sorry, what exactly is “digital wealth” supposed to mean?
digital - involving or relating to the use of computer technology
In this context, they presumably mean the abundance of resources that exist solely or primarily in the digital realm. Social media, Youtube, streaming services, and software / data in general as opposed to physical things like cars, houses, consumer goods, etc.
Now try that with tobacco. Indeed, in a very technical sense of the word, cigarettes nor mobile phones are not the issue. But telling people "just stop smoking" didn't do the trick.
Books without action can render useless. TV can consume countless hours and does eat lives. Smartphones are the same, but more so.
We must recognize the danger all these thing. Information without physical action is a danger.
Life requires balance. And everyone gets to decide what they do with their down time.
being synchronously social with other human beings is easily the last bad part of malls and phones.
tl;dr: There are no solutions, just trade-offs
There's a huge segment of the Indian youth population (around 30% iirc) that's underemployed or unemployed, that spends a lot of time on Facebook and Instagram. There's a reason India has the highest consumption among all countries in Facebook and Insta, yet one of the lowest ad revenue rates - advertisers simply don't find value advertising to these fellows.
I don't understand this line of thinking. Sure, it may not be the literal end of the world, but that doesn't mean that it won't cause a lot of damage before people 'adapt'. People have always adapted to wars, but that doesn't mean that the world wars weren't absolutely catastrophic.
And while I don't think that smartphones will 'destroy you', I think there's a good chance that it can both be very corrosive in all sorts of manners. I think smartphones are a lot more potent at sedating people and making them detached than novels ever could hope to be, which can have a very harmful impact on society at large.
At least there's some ability to interact with a smartphone, there's absolutely none of that with TV, and yet society survived.
I think it's kinda too early too judge (only ~60 years of widespread adoption and in this time the TV landscape has changed massively), but I think there's a pretty good chance that 'tabloid style' TV has caused a good deal more damage than the yellow press has.
> At least there's some ability to interact with a smartphone
Sure, but that also makes it a lot more addictive. You generally won't see people who are glued to their TV 24/7, but with smartphones that's not uncommon.
> yet society survived
Again, I'm not saying that society will just implode on itself, just that these things can do a lot of damage.
Thank you for the answer though, I appreciate consistency when examining the impact of media.
And I also distinctly remember the answer of Harald Schmidt, back then Germany‘s most famous late night show host, when he was asked whether he thought TV makes people dumb:
„With all due respect, I think TV makes intelligent people more intelligent and dumb people more dumb.“
20 years later, I couldn‘t have said it any better.
Too much population, too little work. Everyone has just stared coming online. They are discovering infinite porn, TikTok and youtube.
What do you think the letter does?
But I will agree with fpip. India has so many fundamental problems that will require serious government and public change.
My state will not have enough drinking water for 30%+ of its population by 2030. Prices of food will go up as ground water becomes non existent. How do you think that will impact people?
Educated people are fleeing the country. They are willing to take any jobs to get out before it's too late.
If everyone tries to be an engineer or doctor because that’s the only way to have prospects in life, something is broken.
I have recently gotten headfirst back into turntablism/vinyl DJ’ing, and leaving my iPhone in my room, just wearing my Apple Watch with me to tell the time and to do a quick voice reply to someone if it’s important enough. I’m trying to start reading books again. It’s scarily hard to keep that level of attention span again.
I’m an iOS developer for a living, and I think screen addiction should perhaps start to be considered a workplace hazard.
Worse off for me - previous to DJ’ing, my hobbies have been game/homebrew development and hardcore audio production / editing / engineering - all on my MacBook, of course, staring at a screen.
Looking at the actual ‘Screen Time’ reports became jarring. I actually still have a dopamine response that tells me to look at my phone when it’s in the other room. Thank God the watch can’t do HN or Reddit.
It’s like a signal in my head, wired there, like ‘hey; you’ve gotta use the bathroom’ but instead it’s ‘hey, pick up your phone and start scrolling.’
I’ve had issues with substance abuse in the past that I’ve moved past and worked through.
‘Doom scrolling’ has, by no exaggeration, been harder to kick for me than any substance or even cigarettes, which I smoked for almost ten years - it’s going to take years to unprogram what it took years for the developers of things like Facebook/IG/Reddit to program in the first place.
It’s messed up to think that people who have never faced addiction before may deal with this as their first go. It’s going to be a hard recovery for a world buried unproductively with devices in their faces all the time giving them a much quicker and more consistent dopamine response than cigarettes ever could.
- Sent from my Apple Watch
No, zoomer, Facebook is not a good use of your time. Get a PC and create content, rather than consume it. You have access to a miracle of modern technology, and you squander it on garbage.
No, boomer, phones are not the devil, and you're being a drain by refusing to learn basic tech skills, and people are getting tired of holding your head above water when you immediately forget everything we try to teach you and plunge it back in.
The problem isn't what the new generation is using, it's what they're using it for.
The older generation's aversion to technology and deliberate lack of effort will only cause them pain in the future, and it causes pain to countless grandkids right now :^)
For a newspaper to write it, it must be acceptable somewhat.
As a youth today I'd be more worried that you are seen as so weak that they can talk to you this way.
Western society does jab away at the youth (https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/avocado-toast), but not this bad and the youth fight back.
I don't mean take your phone anyway but don't use it. That is not the same thing.
The value in this experiment is not to have your phone to fall back on. Initially you feel anxiety, but it soon becomes quite liberating. Having to look at road signs to navigate, relying on personal interaction or reading notices to find things out etc etc. Sounds old fashioned but it improves my quality of life when I do it.
Phones have value. That’s why people use them. Pretending they don’t and that we’re all brainwashed doesn’t change that reality.
Here’s an example: I want to take public transport to a grocery store. I walk out the door. I don’t have my phone.
First of all, if I don’t check the opening hours of the store before leaving, I now have no idea. The whole trip may be for nothing.
Secondly, when planning my trip, my phone would help me suggest what line and where to switch, if necessary. It would alert me in real time of any issues, again with alternate suggestions. When traveling: no music. No audio books. Just the organic, wonderful and inspiring sounds of the city. Not to mention all the wonderful people on public transport you’re aching to know better.
When I get to the store, I may have forgotten my shopping list. And even if I brought it, I have no way of getting in contact with someone that may want to add something to it. If I find a new product I don’t recognize and I’m unsure of whether it’s overpriced, I can’t compare to any other vendor. I also can’t check reviews from other people.
I’m sorry if I sound cynical, but sometimes I feel like the spread (but not necessarily the preaching) of this whole luddite idea of smartphones ruining us is mainly fueled by people young enough to have grown up with them being everywhere, because I’m in my mid 30s and I remember what life was like without smartphones, and for the most part, it sucked.
Now try the same line but with heroin, or fast food, or whatever people use to their detriment...
Besides, anything that has value also has an opportunity cost, which can be much more important than the value inherent in the thing...
>Here’s an example: I want to take public transport to a grocery store. I walk out the door. I don’t have my phone. First of all, if I don’t check the opening hours of the store before leaving, I now have no idea. The whole trip may be for nothing.
Yeah, it's a wonder how people managed to live and visit the grocery store in the dark ages of the 90s and early 00s... All these people going out of their homes at 02:00am only to find the grocery store closed...
"I'd better be saddled with a device that can be addictive, that I spend hours on end each day on, that everybody I known can harass me at any time, any where on, that keeps tabs on all kinds of things including my every movement
-- lest I repeat this visited-a-closed-store blunder...
I'm not saying that a smartphone is not immesely useful -- I use mine for notes, video, photos (including pro work), phonecalls (duh), messaging, and so on.
I'm saying that "gives us things like grocery store times or gps routes" (or many combinations of such things) is hardly an argument for smartphones as "indispensable", nor a reason not to consider their, often serious, downsides (behavioral, cognitive, social, privacy, etc)
The capacity of being flexible is valuable. Yes, having the world in your pocket is valuable when something jumps up and goes "boo". However, most people should not need to Google-search "what do I do after 'boo'?" every single time.
Yes, and here's the key: they might still be wrong.
I'm not saying this is the case. I'm saying that this is a possibility. "I took an informed decision which is not due to ignorance" doesn't mean the decision can't still be wrong.
Not to mention that most people just adopt shiny new stuff, hardly pausing to indeed make informed decisions...
I truly do not believe I am wrong for having a smartphone in my pocket when going to the store. I understand the structure and behavior of mobile apps and mobile operating systems far better than most.
> Not to mention that most people just adopt shiny new stuff, hardly pausing to indeed make informed decisions...
Now we are back at the ignorance claim! I've got a PhD in mobile security. I've been working in this space for more than a decade! I assure you I have done more than "hardly pausing".
People claimed that bicycles would cause the destruction of society when they were introduced. Can't I just declare that all of the skeptics are ignorant luddites using the same arguments you are?
That's technical knowledge though.
But there's another thing when it comes to ignorance or not, that's not tied to "how they work".
The understanding of their social/political/etc implications.
Someone who even designs smartphones is not necessarily savvy to the latter. If anything, his whole career gives them an incentive not to be ("it's difficult to make somebody understand something whose career depends on not understanding it").
>People claimed that bicycles would cause the destruction of society when they were introduced.
Well, they were not far off :-) Though that's more like a "people have been wrong about X in the past, so they can't be right about Y now".
Honestly if I'm with my child I frequently leave my phone at home. We can both concentrate on each other that way, and there's rarely anything more important than that. My wife has sometimes suggested I should take a phone with me one particular day, in case she wants to change (working) plans at the last minute, but otherwise we're happy without.
And in case you perhaps didn’t actually read my comment, I pointed out the fact that I was one of those people who visited grocery stores in the 90s, which is why I know that doing it today is easier than it was back then. That’s the whole point. Falling back on childish exaggeration like “oh I wonder how ANYONE managed to do this before” obviously doesn’t disprove the fact that what was possible before is now still possible but easier.
You've missed the whole point. I'm answering the crap argument "Phones have value. That’s why people use them." - showing that people use things that don't have value (and can even be hamrful) all the time.
It's not about the relative danger of phone vs heroin. It's about "people use it, thus it has value" is a crap argument.
In fact, I also included fast food (which people don't overdose from), on my counter-argument, which you conveniently ignored.
>And in case you perhaps didn’t actually read my comment, I pointed out the fact that I was one of those people who visited grocery stores in the 90s, which is why I know that doing it today is easier than it was back then. That’s the whole point.
No, the whole point is that it's only marginally easier, to the point of hardly being worth it just for those kind of conveniences, while creating its own problems, which can have a much worse impact in one's life than "I missed the grocery store open times"...
http://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2018/dopamine-smartphones-...
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/11/171130090041.h...
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S235285321...
Stores are pretty much open business hours, or 24 hours, they follow the same pattern. Or just show up and it is closed. Go somewhere else.
Public transport runs to a schedule. Just show up and transport will show up within n minutes anyway, whether you know the time or nor. Or just use the timetable at the station.
Yes, no music, just your thoughts. but take a book if you want.
Write down your shopping list on paper.
All I have just described is why it is so liberating.
Don’t you think it’s pretty obvious that this exact line of reasoning could be made against the use of books on public transport if we were discussing this in the 1800s? Why are you fine with distracting yourself with a book, but reading the news on a smartphone is somehow different?
As I have just written to someone else above - you are just proving the OP original article. Why not just try something different rather than pointlessly arguing about the intricacies of it all on the internet..
It's about being a human, in an environment, around other humans, with time to spare for original thoughts and just to enjoy being alive. I expect many people on this forum are the "productivity" and "maximizing" type. Not that there's anything wrong with that! We need those people! But I think we might all be able to benefit from truly relying on ourselves in difficult situations, instead of just asking the answer box to help us avoid any annoyance or unnecessary difficulty.
If you wish your life to be a perfectly smooth series of directions given by a silicon hivemind, feel free friend. Sometimes the bumps and the dirt are what make life worth living though. Sometimes the empathy of unnecessary difficult situations can create bonds and perspective that shiny chrome smoothness cannot. Persistent smooth perfect answers have their purpose and we wouldn't have invented it if not for its use but I find the rather strong opposition to experiencing and exploring one's humanity, whether this way or that, rather frightening. Almost sounds like it's the chrome talking and not the human.
For example, I once used my phone to reroute my wife and I around an unexpectedly closed train station so we could spend a planned hour in an old cathedral. We were glad we were able to meditate and be alone with our thoughts in that cathedral instead of being alone with them trying to read unfamiliar train tables and chase down busy transit employees.
After that we used the phone to update our plans to meet a friend in that city. In the 90s we probably would have just gone home and missed seeing our friend for another few years. We had a nice, long conversation with her.
That doesn’t have anything to do with productivity and the only things we maximized were the most important leisure activities that day.
Your motivation is certainly a good one, to be clear.
I walk alone for 1-3 hours a day. Usually I wear headphones and listen to podcasts or the economist audio - I have learned a lot about the world this way. You could argue it is just entertainment, but I suppose my old CS lectures were just entertainment, too. Having audio content helps make the walks more bearable, and those walks have helped me lose over 100 lbs of unwanted body fat.
Sometimes I take the headphones out to enjoy the sights and sounds. Sometimes I pause and enjoy the views for a while. If I see someone I want to talk to, I stop, take the headphones out, and talk. There’s no binary choice and I find that by sparing me actual reading time, this practice gives me more time to spend on things I care about. I do enjoy the nature exposure, but I don’t need 3 hours a day of focus on it - it really just doesn’t change much day to day or year to year.
I wish living in a perfectly smooth chrome existence was an option, but it isn’t. My phone and the internet fail often enough that I still regularly need to call a real human and talk. The maps are wonderful, but they still require a degree of interpretation, like when a rail line is closed and the shuttle replacement isn’t listed. Just the other day I had to bother an airport employee to figure out where that shuttle pick up was. Having had that experience I don’t think it makes me better.
I have empathy for unnecessarily difficult situations, that doesn’t make me want to maximize the existence of those. It motivates me to build better software, do better work, and contribute more to public efforts to make the world a better place for humans.
Again, there’s no binary choice, people should use every tool at their disposal to maximize their happiness. I’ve got a perfectly good phone, but I walked the streets of a new city for 13 miles, soaking in the sights and sounds, and making minimal use of my phone, checking every few miles to make sure I didn’t overshoot my targets (parks and botanical gardens).
I frightens me that we've set up our society to value perfect productivity over all else. It's unhealthy, at least for some. Maybe even life was worse on the whole before the connectivity singularity stole our privacy and our free time, but you cant say it was worse in every way. Why are we opposed to allowing others the ability to gain that perspective? Why should we tell someone that the way they discovered more of their humanity is pointless because it might "waste time". Do we meditate? Do we rest? I could just as easily say that spending all your time on your phone on a bus or transit is just as much wasting your time as is sitting and staring at the ceiling. The mind never shuts off. Could I ask anyone to repeat to me the important information they learned from that post on their bus transit 3 Tuesdays ago? Maybe they did learn something important and do remember. But maybe I came to a realization that I wouldn't have, without giving myself the space to think. Or maybe I met this beautiful girl who I just had my first date with. Or maybe I just sat and stopped stressing about everything that's bad in the world. Maybe I took some time to breathe so that I could be a more pleasant person for my child after a difficult day of work.
You could say that these things are all achievable through the phone and I think we can all agree there are marked differences between conversations over text and those in person, between an interesting point we read and an epiphany that we came to ourselves.
I don't want to be hypocritical tell you that your way is wrong or that your perspective is incorrect, just maybe a little push to think about what it would be like to be someone else. Who might have written that post? What might their life be like to make them think those things? What in my life has lead me to believe what I do? In my experience, these are the kinds of thoughts I don't have through the phone.
As an addendum, I'd say that there are many many uses for the phone, I would guess that you don't have a snapchat and an instagram to check and constantly worry about. But these days you can't be social or even participate in high school (college to a slightly lesser extent) without having one or both of those things (probably even newer ones I don't know about). It's not necessarily just freedom from google maps, but from the panopticon and extreme pressures to portray your life in a certain way.
So, in the spirit of the original article, I buy it.
I live somewhere were having your phone out is dangerous so I'm forced to use it only when needed. The number one thing I use my phone for is checking bus routes (second is store times which can be very odd, especially with the pandemic). I know some routes off the top of my head but not the majority. Plus although I always plan where I'm going before hand so I know the streets (although many are missing signs), what time things are open, if the buses are actually working (apart from strikes, sometimes a bus line might be diverted due to construction/protests), often I end up going more places than I plan and end up needing to take a different bus than I had planned back.
I mean if I get my phone stolen or something I'll still be fine, but I don't get how having to hunt down road signs and depending on others to tell you the right info can possible feel liberating? I have navigated the city before it's bus app was built and internet was reliable, and it was not fun. Plus recently I've had problems with my contacts and because I can't stand my full prescription in glasses I can't see far away so it's been even more liberating to have my phone. I can quickly glance at google maps (even without internet and just gps on) and see where I am. Extremely useful in buses where I'm too far to see the road signs at all. I would hate having to ask the driver all the time to drop me off at the right street.
I’m an avid backpacker (>60 nights on the trail most years) and I experience the same phenomenon (I don’t mean the phone, which is just a deadweight in the country). I sometimes just do without some piece of equipment and find out I’m fine. You often don’t need a tent, even in the snow.
It turns out less clutter makes much of the experience more enjoyable; you have fewer decisions to make and more “attention” to pay to other things which could be where you are or it could be something in your head you brought with you. It can also be a real PITN if, say, it’s raining and you foolishly don’t have shelter.
Do I bring a tent? Often. But it’s ok if I don’t.
And what is the phone but an infinitely large backpack full of clutter? Worse, much of that clutter is actively designed to distract you and imbue FOMO (suggesting new things precisely as you complete the old, ruining the cognitive desire for “completion”). Phones are great and I always carry mine around in town. But losing it would be inconvenient, not devastating.
Then again, if you truly feel anxious without your phone all the time, maybe it’s worth a shot ...
But you are just proving the OP original article. Why not just try something different rather than pointlessly arguing about the intricacies of it all on the internet
Not having money is comparable to not having a phone - my phone is my money and it is far better at being money than the plastic in my wallet.
You should give ‘The Pessimists Archive’ a listen. You might realize why hearing the same argument about why you should liberate yourself from {insert tech here} is tiring. The argument against smartphones is no different from the argument about umbrellas, refrigeration, books, mirrors, Walkmans, radio or frankly anything else that doesn’t come naturally with a cave.
I suggest you guys try it. And yes, that includes if you don't run/jog, _try_ that as well, phone or not.
I'm pretty good with not using my phone, though.
None of my pre "smartphone" PDAs did this, and I don't feel myself sucked into the mindless addictive patterns on my PinePhone (although that may be because Firefox can be sluggish on it.)
The article’s take on China is weird too; do they not have smartphones? The author probably wrote the article on a Huawei phone that the vast majority of Chinese people use every day.
The first paragraph (paraphrased) “I am writing in a BIG newspaper, and I was taught that when someone writes in A Real Serious Newspaper, I deserve to be read”
I look at newspapers like churches. Churches and newspapers are businesses in some ways, they exist because they meet the needs of their customers. I went to church as a little kid but I don’t as a man because it does not meet my needs, I have community in other places and I don’t need old white dudes yelling at me that I am living my life “wrong” (aka, not the way they think life should be lived).
Also, from an intellectual level this argument is extremely boring and stale. It has literally been made continuously throughout time since the Greeks and the beginning of our records of recorded discourse, and was probably made too before we have records.
I don't think the author of this article is white. Does that make you more receptive to his argument that folks who use their cell phones are living their lives "wrong"?
That's all to say - how are old white dudes relevant to this thread?
Step 1: Turn off the notifications, will help you take control. Step 2: stay away from the Facebook empire.
...
When I was a teen, I remember them not liking me watching "too much" of TV and grumbling about reading 'no good' fiction magazines.
Now this.. "get off the phone" advice.
The key is, the choice must come from with-in, like Diogenes of Snopes[1] tells Alexader the great to stand out of his sun.
Until the kids are capable of making the choice or until the kids turn into adults, parents and schools must create an environment that shows descent maker's alternative to phones. This needs lot of work on behaf of schools and sacrifices on behalf of parents.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diogenes_and_Alexander
I think due to smart phones nobody is buying https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chetan_Bhagat novels :)