My smartphone functions as a watch, notetaking device, and communication device. I rarely get lost now that I almost always have a map. It is a music device, which is really helpful considering I walk and take busses for most of my transportation.

The sole reason I've not had to carry around a wordbook is because I have a translation app on my phone.

It is much easier to choose to not carry a purse or bag, which sometimes makes me safer.

Not to mention that I have internet on my phone, which is better than phone books ever were. Looking stuff up saves money and time if you use it correctly.

You shouldn't expect folks to talk to you at the grocery store: That wasn't exactly a universal thing everywhere. Seems like this is just you missing something that others don't - and not everyone needs this stuff to fill their social interaction quotas.

> Looking stuff up saves money and time if you use it correctly.

Living in a pod like in Matrix saves money and time too, if anything it's the most optimal way to live

People been complaining about walkmans, comic books, DND, rock music, rap…

Raise your hand if you’ve blown airplane smog in others neighborhoods from flying lately. Going on road trips?

Being sedate on a phone might actually be good for the planet and thus future of the species.

Is it social media screwing people up or the meta awareness of how shitty existence is and how few fucks we seem to give despite all the rhetoric about caring?

Yet, many apps on it are addictive, that i would prefer not to be. Those things I don't want in my life, just like access to drugs. But it is tough, as these apps are mostly connected with other people, friends mostly... and i want that too.

- In my daily commutes, I dedicate my smartphone screen time to creating art and short animations.

- If I ever do feel the urge to read news, I'll pull up HN via the Harmonic app. If I stumble upon an interesting post with healthy comments threads, I'll bookmark it to read on a properly sized screen when I return home.

- My monthly data plan is purposefully capped at 4GB. I use an app firewall to whitelist the most essential apps while everything else is blocked by default from accessing cellular data.

- I don't use streaming services at all but I do occasionally pre-fetch longform podcasts for later consumption. I also disable all phone notifications and wear a "smartwatch" to tell time, track my step counter and monitor barometric pressure in that order.

If you need to suppress your thoughts by using a tool while being alone and not doing something (to be pleasant), maybe you should do something about these thoughts rather than suppress them?

Also, sometimes when you're waiting at the doctor's office you're waiting for important news that would trigger anxiety in the healthiest among us, and distracting yourself is a great strategy in those moments.

Not everyone is scrolling through endless feeds, either - I'm more likely to play a game. There are more than two things you can do with a phone.

The main issue with waiting is that I'm just waiting. I don't like waiting and don't don't see an issue with doing something so the time passes more quickly.

If you don't like something and have the tools to make it a little better, why would you not use them? Especially if it makes you a bit less irritated if they are running late - it makes things better for everyone.

You might believe that, a lot of people do. However, from what I understand the actual science doesn't support is assumption.

In short, for eons, humans lived in the shadow of boredom. The brain evolved in that context. That is, life without boredom has no historical precedent. When boredom is habitually removed you are doing the brain a disservice. You are stifling creativity, insights, and other growth that comes from the seeds planted by boredom and "down time."

Put another way, the convenience of constant access to your device comes with an opportunity cost. And often we're too distracted to consider the loses due to that cost.

Just because someone passes time while waiting doesn't mean they don't have downtime. I can entertain myself while in a position of waiting and still have downtime each day - I cook and clean and take walks and things. And I promise I still have creativity. It allows me to do non-representational art.

The reason I'm more pleasant is simply because I'm not annoyed at the waiting bit - which isn't a thing with most downtime.

I*m not sure everyone in the past was bored. There was stuff to do then, too, and some of that boredom was discouraged. After all, we got sayings like "Idle hands are the Devils playthings"

Please feel free to revisit your answer once you've done the necessary amount of research.

"There was stuff to do then, too, and some of that boredom was discouraged."

Yup! This ^^^ is exactly the point. Prior to that something (constructive?) to do, there was boredom. Pile on enough boredom and the brain finds "answers". And the opposite is true...no boredom...no answers. So we agree then.

The problem here is, your timelines are too short and your extrapolations too shallow. Perhaps that's a symptom of a lack of boredom. See?

I've sat here and taken fixed something annoying - waiting for appointments. I fix that by doing things like playing low-effort games. You seem to think this is about "losing control" or something and it isn't like that. If you lower the amount of things that annoy you - and there always will be those things - of course you are more pleasant. You know, in a general sense. It isn't like I'm sitting here treating the staff badly. I'd get worse service - I'm an immigrant, and I really don't want things to go awry.

You've obviously misread. It isn't like I don't have boredom. I know boredom well enough to know that it isn't all productive or even possibly productive.

I don't think that everyone just "finds answers".

Creativity and "Answers" requires more than simple boredom - boredom isn't a magic pill. Heck, you don't even need actual boredom, just time for your mind to wander while you are doing something with low mental effort. Again, this doesn't mean games while waiting at a doctor's office are bad.

Did you get this opinion from others, or is this your own rationalization?

  Living’s mostly wasting time
  And I’ll waste my share of mine
  But it never feels too good,
  So let’s don’t take too long.

I really just want to know though: is this something you have decided makes you more pleasant to be around, or have others told you it?

It sounds like your phone is preventing you from the very normal human interactions that made society pleasant.

There’s no amount of asserting that others are uninteresting that can convince me that a society is better when strangers only interact transactionally.

I'll add that not everyone needs to learn a language to make use of wordbooks and translation apps. Vacations exist. Temporary work assignments exist, the sort of which are much shorter than the time it would take to learn a language to even an intermediate level. Heck, my required language classes lasted 2 years at 18 hours a week of classroom time, which is definitely longer than work assignments.

And no, forced pleasantries at a gas station doesn't make people friendly. Plus it is labor for the cashier. I shouldn't be shamed for not paying attention to everyone on a bus and listening to music instead. This stuff isn't people being nice, it is people doing obligatory thing. A heart-felt thanks isn't the same as the one your mother made you say - greater society is similar. And I'll add that it isn't really making society pleasant: That sort of smalltalk isn't universal. I moved from the US Midwest to Norway, which really hasn't expected folks to chat up cashiers or talk to strangers on the bus. Society here isn't unpleasant, though.

It also demonstrates respect for people of the country you're traveling to.

I’m in the age group that is just old enough to remember adult life before everyone had smartphones.

Honestly, it’s getting weird to read people’s unrealistically idealistic descriptions of life before smartphones. I don’t recall people striking up conversations in grocery lines before smart phones, nor would I have been interested in it.

I think people also downplay how much smartphones just replaced rampant TV consumption for people who like to be entertained constantly. The same people who can’t entertain themselves without their smartphone and who consume toxic content would probably be sitting in front of TVs and watching Jerry Springer type shows instead of scrolling /r/relationships or watching Fox News talking heads instead of whatever weird political thing they’re consuming.

Smartphones changed many things, but the idyllic offline-first fantasies I keep reading about weren’t reality before smartphones either.

If you find yourself unable to moderate consumption, then ditching the smartphone is a good idea for you. However, I reject the idea that all techies need to reject technology and smartphones and embrace an extremist anti-position on the matter. Personally, I handle smartphone usage just fine as do most of the adults around me.

People should recognize when they have a problem, but projecting their own solution on to everyone else is about as appealing as the person who had a problem with drinking too much trying to insist that nobody else should drink any alcohol at all either.

I also use my smartphone for important things like maps, taking photos, keeping lists, and even paying for groceries if I forget my wallet. The way some people talk about smartphones as if they were just social media scrolling devices and nothing more is entirely foreign to how I use my phone.

I think this dim world view of smartphones is a product of excess. Sure, you wouldn't have many random conversations with strangers at the grocery store, yet they did happen. I suspect they happen a lot less often these days. While those random conversations with strangers were not always welcome, I don't recall them being received with as much hostility as seen from some of the commenters here.

As for people projecting their own solutions on everyone else, I have mixed feelings about that. Ideally people would be able to curb their smartphone usage independent of the world around them. Yet that is easier said than done. You're going to have a challenging time curbing your smartphone usage if the social expectations of your friends or expectations of your employer depend upon using a smartphone. To use your alcohol analogy, it would be like an alcoholic trying to give up the bottle when their friends and colleagues meet up at the bar every night. It's not so much a case that everyone needs to stop drinking. It is a case of the people around them needing to respect that alcohol should not be a fundamental tool for social or professional interactions.

You’re suggesting that because one person struggles with smartphone addiction, all of their friends and professional acquaintances should also give up their smartphones and not use them for social or professional interactions?

The alcohol analogy is apt, because I’ve had a couple friends struggle with alcohol addiction and recover. One of them tried to push complete alcohol abstinence on everyone else, insisting that it couldn’t possibly be used responsibly.

Yet the rest of us did use it responsibly. They didn’t understand how we could simply choose not to drink most nights (or weeks, or even months if we wanted) and how we can choose to drink only a single drink and then be done. They insisted that the entire concept of drinking was flawed and uncontrollable and that we all needed to acknowledge that it’s not working out for anyone. That we need to give up completely, hard stop.

And that’s exactly what some of these extremist anti-smartphone arguments are suggesting: That everyone’s consumption is uncontrollable and negative, that nobody can control themselves, and that the only possible solution is to go back to dumb phones. It’s a severe failure to imagine that anyone else’s behavior might differ from their own, or a failure to accept that maybe their own problems don’t extend to everyone else in the world. It’s certainly comforting to believe that your own problems aren’t a personal failing but rather a feature of being human, but the truth is that many of us do use smartphones with moderation just fine.

To an extent, I suppose so. That is not to say that everyone should abstain from smartphone use, but they should show some consideration in how they use it. For example, should they be using a social networking app for communication when a voice call or SMS will do? Likewise, should that staff meeting be held in a bar when it could be done on the business's premises?

Modern society is definitely more deliberate in how people interact. You lose some poetic spontaneity but gain in peace and order, which make society scale up. I'm not saying it's all good but it's a trade-off.

Maybe, but what I'm saying is that, if they were to do it today, as the parent comment wistfully longs for, that would be what the locals have to put up with.

Heh, knock on wood. It's an election year.

It doesn't seem obvious to me that this is true. Is there data about this?

Now everyone is in their own social / information bubble, oblivious to their own surroundings. We are more polarized, lonely, and with less real life friends.

Telling people not use smartphones is like telling them to not use the Internet. People will need to figure out the distractions and social media with their phones.

Best is to not have the app and use it through the browser to avoid mindlock

I do. You may not quite be old enough to have seen/participated in this. Or maybe it wasn't happening where you live for some reason? (E.g., this was probably more common in the urbs than the sub-urbs, due to other alienating forces in the latter).

> people also downplay how much smartphones just replaced rampant TV consumption for people who like to be entertained constantly

It was (mostly) not possible to have a TV with you at all moments, on the bus, in line, in the toilet. This meant lots of times where people were with their thoughts or one another. Also, phones have not replaced TV but overlay it. Many (most) now watch their TV (even if streaming) while also layering distraction from their phone.

> Personally, I handle smartphone usage just fine as do most of the adults around me.

Good for you! I'm curious, what's your average phone usage in hrs/day?

IMO, the degrading effect of smart phones (and the distraction machines of the attention economy more generally) is something that should be discussed and problematized. If some are good at self-moderating, their contributions to the discussion may be especially helpful.

> I reject the idea that all techies need to reject technology and smartphones

Just to clarify, rejecting smart phones as they are currently designed and implemented as bad technology is not the same as rejecting all technology per se.

> projecting their own solution on to everyone else is about as appealing as the person who had a problem with drinking too much trying to insist that nobody else should drink any alcohol at all either

This is an interesting analogy b/c ["No level of alcohol consumption is safe for our health"](https://www.who.int/europe/news/item/04-01-2023-no-level-of-...). I doubt that smart phones are as unequivocally toxic as alcohol, but I do suspect that the current way they are used and developed may be, esp. thanks to gamification, nudge design, and surveillance. Research is coming out on this, but I think there is good reason to not assume it is systemically innocuous as you think it is.

However, b/c living in an inattentive society may actually be worse for everyone, it's possible that a better analogy may be smoking in public or drunk driving: if you smoke in public places or get behind a wheel, everyone is at greater risk.

> I also use my smartphone for important things like maps, taking photos, keeping lists, and even paying for groceries if I forget my wallet.

Imagine a utility that enabled these important functions but did not also constantly disrupt your attention with push notifications, harvest your data, or present the temptation of hours wasted in toxic digital fun-houses! :D It's possible!

1. Translation

2. Maps and Directions

3. Ticketing Services

4. Ride Hailing Services

5. Weather

6. Camera

7. Making calls from anywhere to anywhere

None of those are necessarily what people think of first when they hear "smartphone", but without them traveling would be a pretty difficult experience. I know firsthand, because I traveled prior to having these things. I had to deal with the expense policy at work trying to figure out how to get and handle cash in multiple countries so I could pay for a taxi and risk getting ripped off, or buy a train ticket. I had to carry around a phrase book and hope my pronunciation was close enough to get things done without offending anyone. I had to deal with paper maps, and get lost, and hope I made appointments on time. I had to roll around a wheeled pelican case with camera gear to get any decent photos, taking up precious space and making me stand out. And for the weather, well, I just looked outside and hoped I brought the right clothes.

I don't use social media, except Hacker News (if that counts). I don't really do any of the things you probably think of when you think of smartphones being problematic, but having this devices has made my life immeasurably better. So much so, that it's probably the most essential thing in my travel kit.

I do resent things that require smartphone though. E.g. parking or ordering in some places. And especially if they require your device to be certified as locked down by the Google-Apple duopoly

My current flip device (Sonim XP3+) is mil-spec tough (in the sense of "Is tested to a range of military standards and passes"), lasts a casual week on battery (or two, if I shut it down at night, which I frequently do), and I can use it just fine with gloves on - which isn't a problem because the usable temperature range is radically wider than smartphones too. It also has a far louder ringer and speaker than almost any smartphone out there.

But more importantly, to your second point:

> I do resent things that require smartphone though.

The way to fight this requires "not carrying a smartphone." If you obviously have a smartphone and refuse to install the apps to do [whatever], you're just being cantankerous and can be safely ignored. When you pull out a flip phone and act baffled, it really surprises people. I don't think a lot of people under the age of about 30 even realize there's anything that's not "Android" or "iOS" out there (or if they do, they're still shocked that anyone would use it). So because I object to "smartphones required," and I'm old enough/stubborn enough to help counter that world, carrying a flip phone is a way for me to help fight back against the "smartphone as default way of interacting with all reality" thing that's been creeping in for quite a few years now, accelerated with the touch-free stuff during Covid.

The same happens when I show them my Librem 5 running PureOS and ask for a Linux app.

I got trapped by this over the weekend. I had a date to a hot new restaurant in town. When we arrived, I discovered that not only do they not provide actual menus, requiring you to go to a website instead, they also don't let you order and pay except through that website (Toast).

I was livid. But I was on a date and so felt forced to smile and pretend everything was cool, and subject myself to what turned out to be a privacy policy and ToS that I would never have agreed to under any circumstances.

But lesson learned: now I need to call ahead to establishments to ask if they force their customers to use that sort of nonsense, so I won't get trapped again.

Not for me. I don't use social media (I'm even one of those few people who spend less than an hour or two per day using my smartphone at all), but smartphones are still a real problem for me.

I also find it fascinating from an engineering perspective. I wonder what other apps they've managed to integrate into the flip phone?

I want an actual dumbphone, but I can't find any on the market anywhere.

https://koshercell.org/collections/dumb-phones

Though there may be other features of a Kosher phone that don't make it a good choice for somebody who wants a dumb phone but doesn't live within a specific type of insular religious community. I'm not sure.

I DONT WANT TO TALK to people in grocery line, especially when I don't have a phone. I perfectly ok to just stand quietly.

> they're utterly toxic for teenagers

sometimes, and still we have to be sure that its a phone and not society.

I do! My day is almost always made better by a random encounter with a stranger. I wish I was confident enough to start those interactions myself, but I always inevitably think back to messages such as yours, and my anxiety gets the better of me.

Having kids helps inasmuch as my eldest will talk to every kid she sees and that usually means at least a hello to the parent.

Of course people were reading, and/or wearing headphones (mostly younger people), but not all of them. And many were open to conversation even though. Sometimes you read a book to pass the time, but you can be as well interested to a random exchange with a stranger. I was also reading in the train and often wearing headphones, but that didn't prevent conversations from happening. I think that people were less taking book-or-headphones as a signal that you don't want to be disturbed. The experience could also be relatively different depending on what the train population is (e.g. whether the train is filled with tired commuting people or with people coming back from a week-end break).

I'm not taking the train as much recently, but people are clearly more isolated into their smartphones now. And have to say, sometimes discussions still do happen.

Funny enough I was at a playground a few weeks ago and my kids envied another kid's sled, they talked and the other kid was happy to share, and I talked to the dad who had also moved here from Ireland and even had similar interests (Green party member, etc.). Sure, usually it's a pleasant hello and then not much, but sometimes you meet people you get on with really well. I don't think that would have happened if I had just been sitting on the bench looking at my phone while my kids played.

> most of my chance interactions lately come from talking to other parents while my kids play in the street or playground.

I think there's a signal here that's the difference. If I'm on a bus, I probably don't want to talk to anyone. Similarly, if I'm in a grocery store, I don't want to talk to someone in the baking aisle, I just want sugar. But if I'm out with my kid/dog, I know that's an inherently more sociable situation that may end in an interaction.

> Sure, usually it's a pleasant hello and then not much, but sometimes you meet people you get on with really well.

I've a dog and live in Edinburgh, I've found that the people I get on with are people I see repeatedly. Neither of us made the effort the first time, but after 2 weeks of seeing each other every morning at 8:30 in the rain and the dogs saying hello to each other, you can end up talking. I immediately have more in common with this person than going to the same destination as them, for example!

I do agree that the last point is true - but see OP's message. I don't want to talk to you in the grocery store. If I'm standing there with Earbuds in, and you make Smalltalk with me, don't be surprised if I totally blank you or seen confused.

By the way, pubs aren't one of those really, as they're too unstructured.

> pubs aren't one of those really, as they're too unstructured.

I'm not sure what you mean by "third spaces", then.

It's more than the past 3 years. People really started coming unhinged in late 2016, by my observations. But the trend has been increasing for a while, and I'm willing to point a pretty sharp finger at the various social media, news, etc companies who are enabled in their "pour liquid oxygen on the fires of division for stoking outrage in the pursuit of more ad views" by things like the smart phone - because now someone is connected 24/7, by default.

Host firepit nights and invite people. I've yet to find a better solution to getting good actual conversations going than to have regular firepit nights (right now, I have one a week, and would like to get another few per month going this summer with different groups of people). Yes, some people will look at you like you're nuts, and others will turn into solid friends.

Fundamentally, I don't think we're going to fix the problems of smartphones and consumer tech (in the general "surveillance capitalism" sense) with more of that stuff.

Are we really at that level of discussion ? Smartphones, and the web, clearly have a magnifying effect on many topics which are detrimental in a lot of cases

Human nature didn't magically change in 2007 when god emperor Steve Jobs shat out the first smartphone

Its always the simplest way to forbid something, but I think we have to be more caution with easy ways.

"it's just a tool" is level 0 of argumentation. What is the tool used for ? What are the people in control of said tool getting from it ? Who's benefiting for it ? Who's getting abused by it ? &c. We can collectively make decision about things, we've done it on thousands of different subject for thousands of years, history didn't stop in 2007

Look, if you just want to win this discussion then please imagine that I agree with you, that my comment is "oh, Im so wrong and you so right" and go fight in comments with someone else.

But i suspect there is much more and many people are not like that. It should be richer and not so monotone.

I’d think of giving up my smartphone, but that’d mean I’d not be able to use WhatsApp to communicate with family and friends that are on it. Heck the parents group at my kids school is on WhatsApp. I’m not going to make everyone switch to “this other special” app. I gotta be where others are in this context.

Another is Maps - it is modern convenience that is hard to live without. Not only do I get turn-by-turn navigation, but I can quickly check whether the shop I want to go to is open or not. No, a Garmin device on a car doesn’t really solve that elegantly.

Thirdly, majority of my actions are on a web browser and it often happens when I’m mobile. Sure, I could remember things and then find them when I’m at my desk - yeah, I’m not going to remember that..

Fourth - my phone is my camera. I have pictures of my family memories, daily utility stuff.. even quickly taking a picture of a design I see somewhere as inspiration to stash it in my Notes. I can’t imagine giving up that convenience.

I’m however conscious of the bad effects of having the social drug on my hands. I don’t have Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, Snapchat, TikTok, games or the like Apps on my phone. My battery usage report says 70% of the time was spent on web browser, and my mini iPhone lasts 1.5 days on a full charge.

But as someone who has never really had a problem with my smartphone, taking photos of a map and trying to pan around on a dumb phone sounds like pure torture. I can’t imagine it working well for any of the locations I actually need to pull up a map for, which are almost exclusively far away and require long sets of directions.

Though your point about the phone/map telling you if the shop is open or not is a pretty strong advantage

In 2022 I did a year long stint on a Nokia 110 4G and I carried a Canon PowerShot G7X Mark 3 around. It's a one inch sensor compact camera that fit my pocket just as well as my smartphone did (and since there's nothing to do but make phone calls and text with a super shitty UX that phone lived in my backpack). The UX for a camera is more annoying depending on how and why you take pictures. It does force you to be a little more mindful and focused on what you're doing though.

whatsapp works great in the browser on a laptop. if you only have a dumbphone you can use your number to register the whatsapp "app" on any tablet and can then log in on any other browser you want to use it on. works super nice.

I had used WhatsApp in the browser on a desktop some years ago, at web.whatsapp.com, but when I tried the same site recently from a mobile browser, it redirected me to plain whatsapp.com, and asked me to install the mobile app. I guess that was because it detected that my browser was on a mobile phone, by the user agent header.

  - installed the whatsapp "app" on my crappy old android tablet that i hardly ever use
  - used SMS to my dumbphone to link the installed app to my phone number
  - opened "web.whatsapp.com" on my laptop browser
  - scanned the QR code in the android app to link the browser session to my account

i have been using web.whatsapp.com on laptop for long time - pretty sure it's 3-4 years at this stage. maybe i am wrong on that.

i also find the browser/laptop whatsapp much nicer to use - copying/pasting etc. is so much easier than a smartphone, for me at least.

There are very large benefits to having one, but I think that the drawbacks, of the sort you're talking about as well as the privacy/security issues with them, are larger than the benefits. They are a net negative. And I don't even use social media.

It wasn't always so. This equation became unfavorable just a handful of years ago.

And the fact that it's hard enough to give them up that I need a transition period gives even greater urgency to the need for me to give them up.

I like having a smartphone. And as I have no kids, I only go home a few hours before I am to sleep. I can't have my workstation in my car, but the phone suffices most days.

But your opinion got me thinking: what gadget would I replace my phone with? Maybe a flip phone, a kindle, and one of those AI rabbit gadgets.

Maybe some secret cabal of psychologists are actually behind it to raise their revenue.

[1] https://nypost.com/2019/08/13/big-tech-is-using-psychology-t...

If nothing else it makes it obvious who is trying to plug themselves into the matrix so you can stay away.