I am so glad to see this backlash. It's been a long time coming.
We've tried smartphones out for the past... oh, decade and change. They've been around longer, but were niche enough that they didn't dominate society, and even around the start of the iPhone era, "Crackberry" and such were common enough terms (with "Put all your devices in the center, whoever picks theirs up first buys the next round" being a fun game to play in certain company).
The results are solidly in: They're an utter disaster for most people, and for society at large. In no particular order, they ruin social interactions in public situations (think "talking to people in the grocery line" - though I've seen fewer people on their phones lately and can get some conversations going), they're utterly toxic for teenagers (especially teenage girls - studies vary on just how bad it is, but "awful" is a good start), and on through the ages.
I think it's important for the "techie sorts" to very actively reject that which smartphones (and most of consumer tech, really...) has become, and that's one reason I carry a flip phone instead of a defanged smartphone - it's visually different and stands out as a "... wait, you carry one of those?" conversation starter.
I've been trying very hard to get back to an offline-first life. And dumping the smartphone is a key step there.
My smartphone has replaced things that I used to carry. It is a tool. And as a bonus, I can pass time while waiting - doctors office, etc - which makes me more pleasant.
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.
That's good for you. Now do teenagers spending 6+ hours per day on average taking notes and looking at the time ? or is there something else going on for _most_ people
> 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
How’s it different from getting home from work and watching TV all night? Except that TV is censored for thin skinned sensibilities by the networks?
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?
Side note… I find it kind of ridiculous that my comment got flagged. There are many similarities here. Higher level entity controlling your existence, world entirely dictated by that entity, “true self” just temporarily existing in the provided world but it’s not the “primary” plane of existence. I really struggle to see how this is problematic to discuss.
Yep, i agree, it is a universal tool, a swiss knife, so to say. That is what i pay for.
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.
> I can pass time while waiting - doctors office, etc - which makes me more pleasant.
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?
It's not always running from your thoughts. Sometimes it's just nice to be occupied with something pleasant while you're waiting.
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.
Right? There were, and still are, magazines in many waiting rooms or TVs. If I want to meditate or sit without distraction it's probably not going to be in a waiting room or at a restaurant.
I tend to read books on mine in such situations. I can sit alone in the woods quietly without any issues, but reading something I brought seems preferable to flipping through the magazine stacks or staring a gray wall.
Reading books is somewhat different than scrolling through endless feeds and numbing yourself, though.
I also prefer to read books in these situations, or face with the thing which makes me uncomfortable. I don't like to have a puddle of thoughts which fester and attack at the most inconvenient times, making my life harder than it should be.
I don't need to supress my thoughts. I don't know why people jump to this. I do things quietly all the time. Perhaps you shouldn't assume this sort of thing and do something to see others in a more positive light.
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.
> I can pass time while waiting - doctors office, etc - which makes me more pleasant.
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.
You are stifling creativity, insights, and other growth that comes from the seeds planted by boredom and "down time.
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"
I'll tell you what, next time you're at the doctor, and you lose control and intentionally side step boredom, use your device - like the early Homo sapiens did? - to do some research on the value of boredom, on not using your device as a crutch, etc.
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.
Yes, smartphone are a tool. They are tools that come with costs, though, and whether or not the costs are worth it depends on your particular situation.
I found that to be a strange reason, as if being pleasant were the goal (hello, Willy Loman!), and the value of smart phones, and not doing something actually valuable with one’s time. In that sense, my smartphone can help make better use of my time in waiting rooms, but of course, that’s up to the user. You can choose to waste your time.
If you find something that makes you no longer mind waiting (and therefore more patient) or makes you not be so anxiety-ridden when you get your appointment (like a doctor's appointment)... Wouldn't you be more pleasant, and that pleasantry would come more naturally rather than forced, would it not?
Smoking can also make you mind waiting less, and help you cope with anxiety during an appointment (though I would really like to see a source on the negative correlation between phone use and anxiety, because I don't believe it exists). Does that mean that lighting up in the waiting room makes you more pleasant to be around?
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?
You complain about people being friendly. You complain about having to actually learn a language.
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'm not complaining about learning a language. I'm simply stating that I have had a much better tool that can help me - which covers more than a wordbook could and is faster and means that I wasn't carrying around a book. Merely a phone/watch/communication device.
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.
If I'm going for a two weeks vacation and know I will never return - is it a reason to learn that country's language, further than hello/thank you/bye?
I think so, yes. There are tons of benefits to learning other languages even if you never travel at all. Traveling is a great opportunity to start picking up a new one.
It also demonstrates respect for people of the country you're traveling to.
There is no reason to learn the language of every country you visit for a short vacation, though. You'll do just as well learning a something convenient in your own country. In the US, this would usually mean Spanish.
> The results are solidly in: They're an utter disaster for most people, and for society at large. In no particular order, they ruin social interactions in public situations (think "talking to people in the grocery line" - though I've seen fewer people on their phones lately and can get some conversations going),
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'm in the age group that is just old enough to remember adult life before everyone had cellphones. And yes, it wasn't an idyllic ago. People my age were constantly texting on the phone, mashing the alphanumeric buttons multiple times simply to get a single character. Before that teens used to hang out at home on the phone (or, in my case, tying up the phone line with the modem) chatting with friends.
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.
> 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.
> 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?
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?
I wish I had a photo to share, but there's a museum on Bere Island in southwestern Ireland about the island's people and history. It's a TINY island with a few hundred people on it. One of the exhibits shows pictures of how people would gather at the one street corner (I mean, it was a dirt path, not a "street" as you imagine it) and dance and play music on Friday nights until late. And then how that died out after TV showed up.
That's sad, but on the other hand - I bet nobody now has to deal with broken bottles, urine, and the other dreck that festive gatherings tend to produce.
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.
I think some people dancing on a street corner in the 40's and 50's is a far cry from the junk you see today. Given that this was before plastic was commonplace I doubt there was too much persistent litter, and if someone pees in a bush I don't really care.
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.
I’m old enough to remember before everyone had a cellphone, let alone a smart phone. People interacted more in real life, you would chat with random strangers throughout your day. It brought people closer together, there was more of a community, and things were less polarized. Sure you would meet some crazy people, but it gave you something to talk about back home. You would also meet interesting people and even get some interesting experiences.
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.
It's a dual-use lean back and lean forwards device. Lean back technologies like the TV and reddit are the problem. Your smartphone use is lean-forwards. For others it's lean back. Phones have accelerometers in them, maybe they could determine if you're leaning back and enforce a time limit if you are leaning too far back.
Also, I don’t think of smartphones as the distraction problem since the distractions are also on laptop and tablet. There are only a couple app that are only on phone, but there are also ones like Reddit and Hacker News that I don’t use on phone.
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.
Totally agree. While I certainly spent too much time on reddit, there is so much more. I can add to your list messaging with friends, quick payments, uber/train/flight apps, 2FA auth, spotify, quick queries to chatgpt, tracking workouts. I even use instagram mainly to keep in touch with acquaintances outside of my close friend circle and learning about interesting events.
Instagram is the only point I’ll disagree on - it’s mostly become promoted content with friends content representing a fraction of what you’re being exposed to
Best is to not have the app and use it through the browser to avoid mindlock
Things have really started changing with when radio receivers became popular. Before them, there really was no technology for easy, cheap, endless, captivating passive entertainment. TV was radio on steroids, and Internet and smartphones are even more captivating.
> I don’t recall people striking up conversations in grocery lines before smart phones, nor would I have been interested in it.
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!
I'm curmudgeonly enough that I'd tend to agree with you, however as someone who travels often I don't think I could ever give up my smartphone. I actually had a smartphone and some other similar devices well ahead of them being popular, and the reasons pretty much have not changed. Here are the things I don't have a reasonable alternative, because it's not just the capability, it's the capability backed by the Internet that is valuable:
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.
Really it's just social media that's terrible. If all the social media apps go away, you still get left with all the above and can contact people you know. Algorithmic recommendations and flame wars with strangers are the worst things about smartphones — and they're not limited to them either.
Yep. It's kind of annoying to see people be so fatalistic about their self control that they think the only solution is to throw the baby out with the bathwater. I carry my smartphone everywhere for the useful functions detailed above, but the closest I get to social media is some idle HN commenting if I'm unexpectedly waiting around somewhere. It's really not hard to just not spend all day on Twitter of whatever. The device is just a scapegoat. It's like blaming a microwave for a poor diet, ignoring the usefulness of on-demand heating for better uses
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
Once you've gotten rid of a lot of the more aggressive functions of a smartphone, I don't find the tradeoffs of carrying a large, fragile glass screen worth it.
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.
> I do resent things that require smartphone though.
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.
You're still stuck carrying around a device designed to collect as much of your personal data as possible. Any kind of cell phone will cause your location to be tracked (where you live, where you work, where you sleep, who you're with, etc) but smart phones are packed with more sensors and many non-social media apps are filled with ads and do everything they can to steal as much of your data as possible too
Not all smartphones are designed to collect as much of your personal data as possible. GNU/Linux phones aren't. And they have hardware kill switches to stop cell tower tracking whenever you need it.
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.
As an aside, I know for a fact that 4 (ridesharing) is possible without a smart phone... if you speak Yiddish. In Williamsburg, Brooklyn I saw an ad for an integration between flip phones and Lyft geared towards the Chasidic population many of whom believe that it is forbidden to own a smartphone but OK to have a flip phone. I haven't dug into the internal reasoning from a Jewish legal perspective, but from the outside, it's a fascinating place to draw the line.
I also find it fascinating from an engineering perspective. I wonder what other apps they've managed to integrate into the flip phone?
Funnily enough, if you're shopping for a "kosher phone" you can actually choose between a smartphone with a limited number of apps to fit in with your religious strictures, or an actually bonafide dumb phone.
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.
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.
I'd love to have phone / no phone sections ( or chat / no chat ) in places like subways, airports, etc. I love taking to random people but don't want to bother then if they don't want to talk.
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.
When visiting London I noticed they have something called a "happy to chat bench", which you're supposed to sit on if you don't mind someone trying to strike up a conversation with you. I'm not a resident, so I'm not sure how useful they are in practice, but I found the concept interesting.
Have those ever existed though, really? I used to take a long bus or train most weekends, before smartphones were everywhere, and the vast majority of people were using earphones or reading - not talking to strangers.
I did long train journeys weekly between 25 and 15 years ago, approximately. I've chatted with a lot of people, and had quite some interesting discussions.
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.
It depends on where you are. I found that older people in Ireland (not ancient, just didn't grow up with phones) were often very happy to chat on the bus. Now I'm in the Netherlands and most of my chance interactions lately come from talking to other parents while my kids play in the street or playground.
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.
That weekly bus/train was in Ireland, funnily enough.
> 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 used to value a random encounter with a stranger. Now, the median person is likely to be 1. Disturbed, 2. Obsessed with politics, 3. Belligerent for no reason, 4. Ready to whip out their phone camera looking for “content” or 5. Generally offended/Scared of the idea of talking to a random stranger. The last 3 or so years have turned America into a giant mental asylum and it’s starting to be not worth it to talk to a rando.
I live in an area where people will talk to you as you're walking by. In my experience, no, the median person is not Disturbed, obsessed with politics, belligerent or filming.
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.
Small talk isn't one of these, however.
"Third spaces" (guided meeting place that's relatively loose and not work or home) are sorely missing because running one is not very profitable.
By the way, pubs aren't one of those really, as they're too unstructured.
> The last 3 or so years have turned America into a giant mental asylum and it’s starting to be not worth it to talk to a rando.
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.
> we have to be sure that its a phone and not society.
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
A nuclear bomb is just a tool, fentanyl is just a tool, an AR15 is just a tool, and guess what ? all these things are heavily regulated
"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
Now you suddenly shifting your arguments into 'its not regulated enough'. And now you yourself using level 0 argument that we implemented regulations in the past.
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.
It is just a theory, but i think, apps were often written by people, who want to avoid conversations with strangers, who can exert some kind of power, who say no arbitrarily, because they can. At some point it took off and it became business as usual and since then its rolling.
But i suspect there is much more and many people are not like that. It should be richer and not so monotone.
As is most things in life, the balance is the hardest thing to achieve.
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.
Dumbphones have cameras, so if you can't or don't want to remember a map, you can take its photo. My short term memory if good enough for that. Random installable apps are really the only edge smartphones have.
This kind of compromise probably sounds reasonable to someone trying to break an intractable smartphone addiction.
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.
I guess the idea is that over time you'd learn to navigate without needing the turn by turn instructions that a smartphone spits out - like how people used to do it. It wouldn't just be to break smartphone dependence, but to gain a sense of direction if that makes sense?
Though your point about the phone/map telling you if the shop is open or not is a pretty strong advantage
Serious question: Is there a dumbphone that has a camera that is even remotely near a flagship from the last year or two? (Pixel/iPhone/Samsung) I wouldn't realistically carry around a camera everywhere because of bulk/UX, yet I (and most people) do care about having a pretty decent camera to take photos day to day.
Part of the reason modern flagships take such great pictures is computational photography. A dumbphone almost by definition can't do that, even if the optics were equal.
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.
i have been back on a dumbphone for quite some time now. i use the web almost exclusively on laptop - when i am mobile i don't want to be connected to it.
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.
It's possible since at least 2 years, maybe more. You still need a smartphone to create the account, but apparently you don't need the phone to be online, at least not all the time, not sure if it keeps working if it's offline for months. (note I'm not a Whatsapp user, so maybe it changed again or I didn't fully see something...)
you don't actually need a smartphone at all. i discovered this by accident when my smartphone died. here is what i did.
- 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
so, i am now happily using web.whatsapp.com in my laptop browser day to day and all i needed was a crappy android tablet and a dumbphone to set it up.
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.
I can't speak for anyone else, but for me, getting rid of my smartphone is very important.
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.
When TikTok first came out, I thought it was ridiculous that people would just keep scrolling short videos for hours. I got sick one day, check it out, and spent half a day scrolling. I immediately uninstalled it.
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.
Wait till you see folks with fashion smartwatch being constantly immediately interrupted with all stupid notifications, its like advanced OCD factory for almost 0 added value. Then they turn it off, but usually this won't last, you can't brag about it so much and that 2s dopamine kick is missing.
Maybe some secret cabal of psychologists are actually behind it to raise their revenue.
The videos coming out of people walking around, driving, on the subway, or otherwise in public places with Vision Pros interacting with invisible computers I hope is a shocking enough image that we don’t go down that road but I guess it’s just going to become what people see as normal.
If nothing else it makes it obvious who is trying to plug themselves into the matrix so you can stay away.
I'm not convinced it's not just a viral marketing stunt with each of those videos being "paid" actors. It's heavily in apple's profit interest if people stop thinking of those things as cringey to be seen with. But honestly I'm not convinced anyone other than the ubiquitous 'clout chasers' and 'scamfluencers' actually thinks it's acceptable to wear one of those in public.
I'd love to quit my smartphone and have looked at options like Lite Phone to replace it. The only issue is my smartphone is now my GPS, my payment method, my home lighting controller, my car/house key, and my health tracker. Plus, was a convenient way to keep tabs on work messages.
Half a decade ago I eliminated all my social media. Then about a year ago I started by removing work email and messaging from my phone.The next step will be having a designated spot for it to stay while I'm home.
I don't know if I will ever revert back to having a thick wallet and a pocket full of keys, but maybe someday I can evolve to look at the smartphone as a utilitarian device without the addictive qualities.
> The only issue is my smartphone is now my GPS, my payment method, my home lighting controller, my car/house key, and my health tracker.
If you use GPS only for navigation in a car, get a Garmin or something similar.
Payment: Is it that hard to use a CC like most people do...? I only recently used my phone for payments (lost card and was waiting for replacement), and did not find it any more convenient than using a card.
Lighting: Do you need to do this only at home or away from home? If the former, buy a Google Home (albeit that has its own issues...)
Car/house key: Sorry, no experience with this. I'd be terrified of using my phone that way.
Health tracker: No experience with this, so I don't know how you use it and what the alternatives are.
> Half a decade ago I eliminated all my social media. Then about a year ago I started by removing work email and messaging from my phone.The next step will be having a designated spot for it to stay while I'm home.
Good steps. I never allowed work stuff on my phone. And if I take it out at home, I'll leave it wherever I took it out. I have a PC so I don't need the phone (and yes, it's great that the PC is not mobile). I use my VoIP line as my main phone, so I have those all around the house. People know I may not answer my cell phone at home due to me not hearing it ring.
> thick wallet
How thick is thick? 1-2 credit cards, 1-2 debit cards. Not that thick.
Not OP, but in a similar place for the phone somewhat dominating on the go stuff. Its just incredibly freeing leaving the house with only my phone. These days it can handle payment most places. It is my library card. My bus pass. My car key. My camera. My paperback novel. My guide. My gym pass. It lets me know when my bus or train is running late. It lets me know when that store is going to close, or if its even open on a Sunday. All the while providing music while on the go and entertainment when sitting around.
When I've got my phone, I don't need my keys. I don't need my wallet. I don't need a book. I can have a whole night out with the only thing on me is my phone, other than a few bucks stashed in my shoe for emergency bus fare.
My battery lasts 2 days. If I'm away for a night I pack a charger along with my toothbrush and clothes. I genuinely cannot remember the last time I was caught off guard by this.
> Or lose the phone?
Short term - same as if I lose my keys or my wallet. It's a giant pain in the ass. longer term, doesn't matter, new phone + restore from backup. I don't need to phone my bank and cancel my cards, or change the locks on my doors in case my keys were pickpocketed and I'm targeted.
> Or it gets wet and won't turn on?
Many smartphones have been ip68 rated for the best part of a decade. Note that to not turn on, you're realistically talking about submerging it, not just being out in the rain. Maybe I live a more sheltered life than you, but finding myself unexpectedly submerged is about as extreme a situation as I'm going to find myself in, and not one I plan for other than being able to swim.
Fwiw, my 2022 IP67-rated Samsung phone failed after a few mild water splashes recently. It's supposed to be resistant to 1m submersion for 30 minutes, but failed with much less water exposure.
I was stuck without essential functions until I could get it repaired or replaced. Luckily I was able to get it opened, cleaned and dried and a new screen fitted by a local repair shop within 2 days.
Without my phone, I can't pay things on my credit card sometimes (some payments require phone app 2FA), and I can't login to several of my bank accounts (they use authentication by mobile app even for web-based banking on my laptop).
It doesn't really run out of batteries. I'm not talking about going to the moon, I'm talking about going across town. It charges pretty quick, and it can charge in the car, so I'm rarely out and about with it less than 50% charged. Which is good enough for at least 8 hours of active usage with its current battery health and age, a good bit more if I bother stretching it.
What happens if I lose my wallet? What happens if I lose my car keys? Its not like these other things are immune to "what if it gets lost?" Sure, there's a bit of risk tying it all to one thing, but in the end I'm not talking about being more than a few hours walk to home or a friend's house. And like I said, I usually carry enough cash in my shoe to cover a half day fare.
At least for my car, I do have a backup code I can type in and access it.
My phone is waterproof. Its durable enough, its fallen out of my pocket while riding my bike before and been fine. I did have a problem of breaking phones in the past, but since waterproof phones and far more durable screens have been a thing I haven't really lost any to damage since. The last time I broke a phone was 2012. It seems like if I managed to break my phone I'm likely to be picked up by an ambulance anyways.
My macro point was that the smartphone introduced several very sticky conveniences, so I kept my smartphone instead of adopting a light phone or similar device. Instead, I am working on treating it as an appliance or a utility device vs. a constant extension of my arm.
For example, my two vehicles can be accessed via a smartphone key/app or a card in my wallet. So my wallet is slimmer than before, but it has a credit card, vehicle access cards, insurance, license, etc. I now carry one credit card instead of multiple physical cards since my phone wallet has several to choose from for tap to pay.
I can unlock my home remotely or via a phone tap, watch tap, physical key, passcode, or remotely. Most phone lighting controls are convenient instead of getting up and going to the switch. But the phone allows for finer-grained control of light temperatures, brightness, electrical usage, etc.
If I was determined to rid my life of a smartphone, I could sell my vehicles, buy a non-smart lock for my home, and stop tracking my workouts and diet with the phone app.
At the moment, ditching my smartphone isn't an option. I'm taking steps to treat it like any other appliance or a utility vs. an entertainment or consumption platform, which is where I believe the addictiveness lies.
> Most phone lighting controls are convenient instead of getting up and going to the switch. But the phone allows for finer-grained control of light temperatures, brightness, electrical usage, etc.
Again, Google Home gives you most of that...
Fortunately for me, the for factor + UI of phones always sucked for me, so needing to use it for anything is a deterrent. I dislike small screens, and dislike non-physical keyboards. After decades of efficient PC usage, using a phone always feels like a speed bump.
It's good to have data on the go when needed, and good for camera. For everything else, it feels inferior. And whenever I find a really neat use for the phone, the Android Police clamp it down and break it (e.g. the AutoMagic app and automation in general).
Take sleep tracking: I tried and failed to note those times when I wake up. I'm usually too foggy to remember, and later in the day, it's too much effort to reverse the times out of environmental cues. Obviously, I don't have a consistent sleep schedule - otherwise, I wouldn't care about tracking it in the first place. And, of course, manual tracking doesn't work when I wake up in the middle of the night and go back to sleep an hour later, because half the time I don't remember it happened until next afternoon. However, my smartwatch is able to record all that for me, with 95+% accuracy, which over the past year or two gave me some important data to contextualize my day-to-day energy levels.
Or take pressure monitoring. My whole life, I've been suffering from acute chronic cannot-form-a-habit-to-save-my-life-itis, (now also known as "treatment-resistant part of my ADHD"). There's no way in hell I can stick to daily (or worse, less frequent) measurements using cuff-style upper arm monitor. It may be portable, battery-powered, trivial to use, but it's still too much of a hassle. What I can do is use it to recalibrate my smartwatch every couple weeks, and use that to take measurements - I still can't form a habit, but at least something I can do within couple seconds of remembering it. So, thanks to the watch, I get some data, where otherwise I'd have none, and that's all because of convenience factor.
Or just look at the popularity of fitness bands and watches. Some people derive value from those automatic measurements. Of those people, many (most) wouldn't otherwise bother if they had to use a stopwatch and a notebook instead.
I'm not so much interested in how difficult it is to track something as whether the data and its granularity maps out onto real change.
I went through periods of wanting to make changes in my life, and I thought it was all about figuring out a perfect system.
It turned out that the bigger problem was actually overthinking, and it was that overthinking itself which wanted more data and more methods.
In actuality, what helped was removing as much friction as possible. I have no data about my sleep except for the clear fact that I wake up earlier and spend almost no time rolling around my bed before getting out of it. I don't need either a watch or paper to tell me that.
I don't say that as a way of critiquing your methods, just wondering if you notice real, considerable change as a result, the kind that you don't need to minutely keep track of because it's so obvious.
Or to make it not personal, is there a known correlation between the popularity of fitness tracking devices and significant weight loss across populations?
I'm pretty sure you can deal with 2fa on Kai OS feature phones. They also include Gmail, Google maps, and WhatsApp access... on a tiny screen where you won't get sucked in for hours.
However, they also come with a ton of tracking, and are a disaster for privacy.
> maybe someday I can evolve to look at the smartphone as a utilitarian device without the addictive qualities.
Good luck.
You won't though, "because sekhurity" - the trend points at everything using your phone as a second factor, and not even via the authenticator app, but vendor-specific push notifications, on a remotely attested phone. Banks and media companies are pushing hard for it.
And this in spite of the National Institute of Standards and Technology in the US strongly recommending against using SMS as a 2nd factor authentication since 2016!
Why yes. Because SMS isn't good enough, the sekhurity industry decided everyone needs to use apps instead, since they can communicate over SSL and are harder to spoof, and then threw in remote attestastion for extra sekhurity.
You can get a lot of those things n an Apple Watch. I like to go out with just my Apple Watch sometimes. It covers your GPS, payment, and health tracking use cases. I’m not sure if the lighting controller and house key would be covered.
> The next step will be having a designated spot for it to stay while I'm home.
Sounds like a good compromise, like a basket where you put all your keys you need when leaving home.
I think the core issue with attention is ultimately the same as with infinite scroll, and the reward mechanism.
For me the unease can be felt as soon as I unlock phone, it’s like a bunch of candies and there is this implicit feeling that you need to do something, to interact with something.
Then there is this angst like when you get physical mail and you anticipate who it might be from back when we wrote more letters. Only now with smartphones it gets repeated endlessly throughout the day.
Can we really force ourselves to slow down ? To live a simpler life ? I think it’s not possible until profound changes in our society such as basic income.
The smartphone in a sense is symptomatic of the rat race. It’s the only way we found to make things better when better is « doing more things in less time ».
As others have pointed out alternatives, you can also just ask yourself whether the convenience of those things you listed in total are worth more than the drawbacks. If you constantly lose time by mindless scrolling, if you are unable to focus anymore, if you start suffering from FOMO all the time, if you social interactions and friendships suffer etc. the question is whether the comfort of those conveniences are worth the drawbacks. And some very obvious point about that: All of the things you mentioned, you didn't have 10 years ago. Was your life that bad (becaues of the lack of those things) at that time?
> The next step will be having a designated spot for it to stay while I'm home.
I put my phone charger in a drawer by drilling a hole in the back in order to run a power cord. I found that just having the phone on silent and out of sight helps a lot.
It also helps with clutter, instead of having a ton of random devices and cables, all of that mess is in a drawer that doesn't bother me.
I appreciate how this article acknowledges that once an addicting device is in our hands, we are to some degree at its mercy. So the best intervention is environmental: get rid of the device.
I employ a lightweight version: in my home is a "charging station" where it is easy to place a device and then forget about it. Some days I don't even see my phone until noon. If I drop my device at the charging station when I walk past it or when I get home, it's likely I won't pick it up for many hours. This practice has been a game changer for elongating my attention span and conducting myself with greater presence.
Notes:
- There's no downside to this strategy; I still have a 2-factor auth device, maps for travel, music for car rides, convenient contactless payment, etc.
- The charging station should be away from the main living areas and bedroom – mine is in a hallway's open cupboard near the main entrance.
- The "charging" part of the charging station is a misnomer, you don't have to charge anything, but the label serves as an enticement to drop off the device.
I do this, though using a different term for the station. Mine is called a "key catch" since I also plop my wallet, keys and the rest of my EDC on this shelf that is also fitted to charge my phone.
My trouble is that it's not necessarily the phone I'm addicted to, but screens in general. I have a tablet that floats around the house, and my laptop is never far away, so without the phone in hand, I'm reaching for one of those two preferred devices.
The justification is that I'm not playing games or endlessly scrolling social media. If I'm on my tablet, I'm reading news or a book. If I'm on my laptop, I'm working on a project or learning something.
I view my devices as tools, so any use of them is intended to inform me or further my understanding on something. Still, I arguably spend too much time on all of them collectively and I am not clear if this is healthy or not, but it does make me happier than my actual job or going out into the community which inevitably involves spending money I don't need to spend. Of the people who know me and understand this, nobody seems alarmed by my behavior.
I mentioned that because I deal with substance abuse in my life as a 12-year-sober recovering alcoholic. When we start applying the word "addiction" and it's barbed hooks to things like technology, I take notice. I'd argue that it depends on what you are doing with said device. Doom scrolling? Gambling? Eroding your self-worth by comparing yourself to people on Instagram? Watching vapid YouTubers read listicles from Reddit?
The activity matters...BUT, is the person performing the activity getting some joy from it without harming themselves or others?
It's a sticky subject, to me, but one worth discussing.
I have an e ink smartphone, specifically a Hisense A9. It has the same screen as a Kindle. It is wonderful for productive stuff like reading, messaging is passable, and videos are pretty much unusable. It's wonderful, I've read so many books now.
It has Android 11 as of today; with no information of upgradability. I would not ever recommend anyone to use such an outdated OS in today's world even on their secondary phone. It's just unsafe.
If it is to be used as a "reader" device then, well, whatever. But in that case why not just use a "reader device" then.
This sort of overemphasized paranoia about security is something which makes me, I dunno, irritated. If you decide to go to extreme, everything is unsafe but you don't want an old device even as a secondary device?
I'd rather work on my paranoia than on getting a fully secured device.
By the way, I am writing this on a mobile with 2 GB RAM and running Android 9 as my other mobile got broken.
I considered the Hisense but talked myself out of it because of Android and lack of updates.
Part of me thinks I should just go for it, because I read a lot on my smartphone and miss Android’s Moon+ Reader - with Goldendict for Startdict/Lingvo dictionaries, it made a killer combo for reading foreign language texts with many new words.
Videos being unusable would be a fantastic QoL feature.
I've tried reading on phones, reading on tablets, etc, and the problem is that there's always so much else to do - or, at least, things that interrupt you (SMS messages and such on a phone).
I moved... oh, 10+ years ago, I think, to a Kobo (e-ink reader, not Kindle, far more hackable and open, swallows everything except some DRM which I strip on a desktop). I now have several, as they're just such good devices for reading text. I've also moved a lot of my "web reading" to them via Pocket, in which I send a link to Pocket and get the article, on my device, as long form text without any of the nonsense that's in most web articles (most images work, but not all).
It's far better than trying to have a combo device. And my 10+ year old Kobo Auras still work just fine for reading.
Same. I have a Kobo Libra (I bough a Kindle Basic before this and it's so locked down I switched). I put Koreader on it (easy process) and I used it more than my phone. The current book is at most a button press away. It's lighter and more ergonomic than the phone too.
I also have a dedicated audio player (Shanling M0). Great for listening to an album before sleeping or for focus sessions.
I prefer having dedicated devices. The phone is only for communication, taking photos, and quick browsing. And some of the desktop apps I use have their mobile counterparts so I can do a quick tasks without getting the laptop. And I think that suits its main purpose for me, a PDA.
Onyx Palma plus my iPhone SE dual carrying is the ticket.
I use the phone as a 4G hotspot, Apple Music, plus apps such as Uber, Waze, wallet, etc. No social networks (LinkedIn and Reddit only on desktop browser), no messaging.
Apple Watch replaced with Casio GShock (solar powered and automatically adjusted via radio, expect it to last 20 years)
Palma has WhatsApp and telegram, outlook (closed most of the time) and reading apps.Podcasts too.
Most sites are consumed via RSS. PDF to Readwise for read later, notes on desktop Obsidian.
I can use Organic Maps in the Palma, and most tickets via QR. I try to force myself not to use the iPhone at all on the street except one of those cases (recharge public transport ticket, camera, payment, etc)
I found the following 3 measures quite helpful to make my smartphone less intrusive in my daily life:
1: I don't bring my smartphone into my bedroom. My bedroom is a personal and intimate space, no need for the outside world to barge in via smartphone.
2: I disable or silence every notification I get. The only time my phone draws my attention is if I am getting a phone call, my wife texts me, or if I get a Pagerduty.
3: I uninstalled or disabled all social media apps.
Number 2 had the biggest impact on my family and work life. When I spend time with my kids, my phone only rarely interrupts me.
My phone is like yours, it only rings for a certain few. I do not know what "Pagerduty" is, but I purchased numeric telephone paging service [to a "beeper"] and give this number to the few important people in my life that need to be able to get my attention.
Surprisingly, paging services still exist across metro-US, even in 2024 [I use pagerdirect, no affiliation].
#4: I rarely leave my house with a cell phone, and it is heavenly. Asking anybody to "leave their phone behind" invokes constant anxiety in most travel companions...
Skip pagerduty. When I was oncall I carried a regular pager. Cost about $10 bucks a month, took 1 AA battery per month, very reliable, clipped onto my belt, and it gets service Everywhere. basements, underground garages, top of the towers. And it beeps VERY loudly.
It is unfortunate that the phone hardware companies have an interest in you using their phone more, otherwise they'd make it easier to manage your phone usage better. The screentime app in iPhone for example is so easy to bypass as a user even when you were the one who limited certain apps usage. I want an app that strictly locks away my access to an app and also suppresses notifications. Is that so hard to build?
It also needs to be a default functionality of browsers. The ability to limit time on websites.
My wife and I both have iPhones and MacBooks as our primary computing devices, and have setup blocks for each other’s phones.
So we voluntarily (I have to stress, this is something we both are 100% on board with, don’t be a creep) set a passcode, and from midnight to 8pm our browsers are locked down, we can only use a few apps, and we’re focused on the kids or work. The only problem with this is overriding it requires us to be together in person, but over a few weeks we’ve hammered it out pretty well. Each one can ask the other to unlock stuff, but just having that little extra hurdle goes a long way in helping reduce screen addiction.
The only criticism I have of it so far is my wife gets really weird when everything unlocks because she’s in sort of a mad rush to watch her shows, haha.
I never found Screentime usable because something like turn-by-turn navigation would count against the global screen time, with no option to exclude it. worthless.
You can specify the apps and domains that screentime tracks. I have set a daily time limit for social media and certain domains like news sites and hn but don‘t include maps, mail or messengers
Apple Maps can display directions on the lock screen. It seems to also work with turn-by-turn navigation. Does this count toward the global screen time?
I had this exact problem and I found an app called ScreenZen, which is built on top of Screentime in iOS and you can use it to block specific sites and apps pretty effectively. It just minimizes the app and doesn't let you access it.
I am now using it to easy off some sites and I've set a couple of 7 minutes sessions per day and I've limited my time time considerably in the last month
I'm using "Freedom", which locks my Mac and iPhone and includes apps and websites and I think blocks notifications. I don't use it as much as I should, but I think it does the things you said? Not "default functionality" though.
Focus modes are meant to be exactly that, although it doesn’t prevent you from getting out of it. Do you really need something so strong? If so, why not consider just locking away your phone or getting rid of it?
The strategy that has worked for me so far is to delete all any addicting app (entertainment, social media, etc) that has a web version. I still can access them with browser, but the experience is not the same, so after a while, I get bored, and close them.
Well I am screwed, then, because I already only access everything via the web browser on my phone, I don’t have any entertainment or social media apps… but I still browse hackernews and Reddit too much.
Try using any extensions which let you block websites (even better if there's a schedule). I found a lot of my browsing came from just muscle memory opening it, which once you disconnect, actually ends up being fine.
Of course, the companies fight back, e.g. Facebook messaging isn't (last I checked) available through the Facebook-in-the-browser; it requires the Messenger app.
https://mbasic.facebook.com - at least for now a cut down version that still allows messenger designed for those with low bandwidth.
I would be curious to hear your experience - it's been functional for me for quite some time, but just recently it's had a banner declaring that it was going away....
This is correct for messenger.com itself, but you can access Messenger through Facebook.com - it's just another tab on the website. If you don't want to visit Facebook.com, though, then yes you're out of luck.
I would rather not go back to a flip phone, so good on anyone that can and is happy with it. I do not miss T9 texting. What worked for me was I shifted my mind to stop thinking of my phone as a daily necessity and more as a multi-function tool. Screen Time helped to identify the apps I'm using the most. I started with deleting the time wasting apps - Reddit, twitter, tiktok, instagram - all gone. If it's really important, I'll go on a computer or use safari but otherwise I just don't care for anything happening on there anymore.
For awhile I would pick up my phone, realize there's nothing interesting on it and go do something else. I've read 6 books so far this year. I'm on pace to 5x my reading from last year. I'm watching movies or tv with complete attention, where I used to be confused as to what was going on cause I'd be on my phone.
Whatever helps you get rid of your unskillful habits, keep at it. The rest of the world is always going to be vying for your attention, it's yours to spend how you choose.
I don't mind it. It's easier to do half-blind and just sanity check your results.
But more importantly, it's been a thing I use to move some longer form interactions to email. I won't have a long form conversation via text anymore, I go to a proper keyboard.
I just checked the Screen Time statistics, and my average daily screen time last week was 18 minutes, the week before that was 22 minutes. I've never been in danger of becoming addicted to smart phones, just like I've never been in danger of being addicted to alcohol or gambling: none of them really appeal to me that much. But there are plenty of things I know I am addicted to, and I'm pretty sure the way to treat that addiction is to address the underlying issue for which the addiction is a response or a coping mechanism. Not to buy something and then pat yourself on the back. I very strongly doubt that just buying a flip phone is going to fix it; sorry folks (seriously).
This ignores the fact that many of the apps people use are designed and A/B tested to maximize time spent/wasted. The fact that it happens to not work on you does not mean it works for everyone.
Sometimes an addiction really is because something is designed to be incredibly addictive, not because of some underlying psychological issue with the user.
The problem is that most of these apps have good and bad stuff on them. I get a lot of value out of high quality content on youtube, but I also have to try really hard to not get sucked into watching an endless stream of garbage youtube shorts.
Also even if you delete the apps, most people are in social groups with people who still use them and send links to content on them. It’s hard to avoid them entirely.
The user is more likely to turn to a drug or their phone if they find their life unsatisfying but that doesn't alter the fact that the drug/phone can be far more stimulating than any experience they'd encounter 'organically'
That's the issue; the real world can only offer up so much so fast. Drugs and the scroll can offer it faster. Expecting people to turn away from that even when it's visibly harming them isn't reasonable; we know for a fact it doesn't happen, people overdose on fentanyl and then immediately go back to buy more.
I think we agree that things are addictive. Perhaps we disagree on the practical approach to resolving that. You aren't going to rid the world of fentanyl or cell phones. So now what?
The physical world is hard to manipulate; the digital one less resistant to legislation.
India banned TikTok by legislation and made it stick. Rule that social media properties are either dangerously addictive or enemy cyberweapons and ban them.
> the way to treat that addiction is to address the underlying issue
Given that a very very large number of people are _visibly_ addicted to their phones, what would that look like, what action would you propose, what resources would be deployable?
Are you saying that a majority of the population have an 'underlying issue' that needs to be addressed? What is that issue?
There are many making money using manipulation and I certainly don't condone that. Hopefully we can push for regulations where it makes sense.
Even still there will always be obstacles in life to overcome. CBT has been helpful for many so it may be a place to start. CBT can help one understand the underlying issue and replace the vice with a healthier coping mechanism.
I think this focus on their being an 'underlying issue' is problematic; many times there is no underlying issue, these are just normal humans with normal brains being totally normally affected by a product that's designed to be addictive. They don't need therapy because there's nothing wrong with them, in fact if there was something wrong with them they'd be less likely to become addicted. They just need to remove themselves from the influence of the addictive substance i.e. put the phone down, socialise normally and build strong bonds with their family and their local community.
People by and large don't need therapy and to pathologise and dwell on nonexistent issues, they really just need to hang out more with other people and realise that what they're seeing online isn't representative of reality.
It sounds to me that we are in agreement on outcome, only that you feel that everyone can get there on their own. In fact you're almost describing CBT without naming it.
I guess my main issue with CBT is seeing it mentioned so many times on reddit, and reddit is such a pathological place that I've come to feel anything mentioned there must be some sort of scam or trick.
I think one action is this, talking about it, raising awareness. To some it might be obvious that being glued to a tiny screen to the point that you need to constantly look at it while you're driving is a problem, but in some circles it's normalized.
I have seen a number of motorcycle delivery drivers in the city in which I live who have _two_ phones on holders on their scooters - one for the delivery app, one for tiktok. They jam up the traffic lights because they don't notice when the lights go green because they're literally glued to the tok. It's genuinely disturbing.
I'm a fairly calm person and not many things produce anger in me, but seeing someone on their phone while driving is one of the few things that make me rage.
The topic that interests me more is the effect on the general population of addictive apps so if you're going to one-track this onto your pet peeve I'm gonna peace out; it's pretty obvious that using the phone while driving is a bad idea, there's just not a lot left to say on the topic, it's all been said... more interested in discussing a new and vibrant topic than something that's been literally done to death, I mean, people were probably ranting about cellphone drivers on usenet in 1995...
I don't have a problem, I'm just unsure as to why that conversation went the way it did; we're talking about addictive apps and all of a sudden the topic is phone use while driving? Okay I guess but... what conversation are we really having here and why? Odd.
An addiction is a layer of defense. It keeps you distracted from those underlying issues. If you remove part of it, you're not "fixing the problem and patting yourself on the back", you're getting a break from it in order to better look at those underlying issues from a distance.
I couldn't live without SMS and navigation, so I kept my smartphone and just disabled my browser and removed all social media apps. Occasionally I have to re-enable my browser to scan a QR code (including for parking as the article mentions), which annoyingly reminds me how to circumvent this restriction, but it hasn't really been a problem so far. I already had Kindle on my phone, and I also installed the Wikipedia app and Dropbox so I can quickly look up facts, browse articles, or read a book or paper when I have nothing else to do. The main effect is that I spend most time on my phone reading stuff I actually want to read instead of aimlessly browsing the web.
Thanks for reminding me Wikipedia has an app. I need to use that more and the fast food internet less. I’ve often thought that a Wikipedia archive could be a great desert island choice. It’s the Library of Alexandria on a thumb drive. I guess it’s about 150gb now with images. So much human knowledge there!
>Each article would take a little over two minutes to read for an average adult. Reading all of Wikipedia would take about 140 000 hours, which is 5800 days, or almost sixteen years. That's assuming that you're reading 24 hours a day! Reading a standard eight-hour workday seems more reasonable.
Do people really want to quit their smartphone? I certainly don’t. It connects me to people, provides information, and lets me capture information when I want to. I do not feel overwhelmed by it. I do restrict notifications to specific apps and people. The rest, I check on a couple of times a day. Why would I want to quit?
I think a more accurate statement of the need is that people want their lives back, and the smartphone is a clear symbol of the ever-connected world, where not noticing a message for 15 minutes can turn into disaster, where you are expected to Always. Be. Available. That’s what people want out of, in my observations.
We talk about habituated phone users - people who sit there refreshing their social feed for 14 hours a day - and while these are troubling cases, I don’t think they represent the majority of people who say they want to give up their smartphone.
In which case there actual issue would be worker's rights, and once again a bunch of people have run off to fight the wrong battle because they're scared or can't even conceive of the real one.
I’ve been off and on into conlanging since I was a young child, and when the smartphone started becoming a thing with later Blackberries, Treos, and then with iPhone and Android, I began using the same word to mean leash and phone in most of my languages.
I have never allowed anyone to expect that kind of responsiveness from me, especially 24x7. The closest you get would be phone calls from my spouse and even then, if I’m in meetings I may not respond an hour or so and that’s not a cause for concern. At work, I have all notifications turned off except for badges or meeting notices. Even then I only check things like Slack or email at most once an hour.
People don’t want to quit smartphones, they want to quit what’s in them and that can be hard. Sometimes you just have apps that are a time sink. You can obviously delete them and call it a day, but sometimes you want to keep it around for a small use case, but then want to limit your usage to a minimum, which can be hard because these apps are literally designed to make you spend as much time on them as possible.
This triggers my "learn some self-discipline" instinct.
It's such a learned helplessness statement "oh no, I can't possibly not open the reddit app 30 times a day. Save me from myself."
Like, I get it, it's not easy but it's also a pretty basic part of being an adult. Like brushing your teeth, eating healthily or doing exercise (which is to say: if you think "I have problems with those too" then the problem really isn't your smartphone).
This is like saying to addicts “Just stop smoking crack”.
Everyone knows smoking crack is bad for you. A lot of people want to quit but are unable to no matter how much “self discipline” they have. And app developers have teams of people dedicated to making sure you stay on these apps longer and longer.
Your smartphone is in absolutely no way like smoking a physically addictive hard narcotic.
Again: learned helplessness. You've picked a comparison to ensure that you have maximally separated any notion of your own culpability. Drug addicts who get clean start by recognizing that they made the choice to start, and need to be mindful of the choice to quit, outside the physical addictions which drive it.
The answer for them isn't "I need the crack dealers to all go away first".
Addiction to smartphones, porn, shopping, eating, coffee, gambling etc. all work on the same neurological pathways. While it’s not the same as a drug addiction, “just don’t do it” isn’t that straightforward. People have to go to therapy and rehab to get rid of some of these, but somehow when it comes to smartphones, the opinion is that “it’s not that hard”.
People can go to therapy and rehab for being addicted to their smartphones, but all of those things are voluntary activities. You have to choose that you want to get better.
Externalizing the locus of your problems is itself a pathology: "I receive too many notifications from social media apps" in a normal person leads to "so I just silenced them all" or "that's why I don't install social media apps, who needs that?".
The first thing anyone does in this topic though is externalize the problem: it's not a problem with them, it's a problem with the broadest possible generalization of a thing. They're not incapable of having a smartphone, everyone is.
People fail therapy and rehab all the time because of that expectation mismatch: you don't go in and "they fix you", you go in and put in the work to fix yourself, with some assistance.
If a factory is polluting the air, the water, if you can't sleep because it makes loud noises at night, you don't tell people they should get air masks, or water filters, or take melatonin, or to just move somewhere else.
If you live in an area that a corporation is about to deforest, you don't just tell individuals to just plant a tree.
If you live in an area where traffic lights don't work, the streets are full of pot holes, you don't tell people to just drive better and get a jeep, or to just walk places.
The internet is a shared space, and you have to consider who you're siding with and why. You initially said this "triggers your learn self discipline" response. Did you stop and ponder why you have that trigger and why you feel so strongly about shifting the onus from powerful corporations towards individuals?
"The internet" is as present in my life as I want it to be. No one is forcing you to install apps which notify you, or to post on social media. That's your choice.
Thus proving my original point: the immediate reaction is to try and externalize the problem, despite the fact that it is entirely being driven by your own choices.
You've carefully constructed your example once again to make yourself the idle victim: powerless against those evil corporations who are just forcing those alluring social media sites on to you. As though you exert no control or dominion over your smartphone or it's applications, or how you use them.
"Alcohol is as present in my life as I want it to be. No one is forcing alcoholics to drink or to buy wine. That's their choice."
Given that you ignored pretty much all of my points and instead doubled down on your bootstraps mentality I'm just gonna say your empathy is very atrophied.
The language of addiction is psychological language that may leave people feeling hopeless, particularly if they view themselves as biologically-chemically determinative beings.
Perhaps the language of idolatry as used in the Bible (reflecting thousands of years in the Jewish and Christian traditions) may be more helpful. What many see as addictions may in fact be an underlying spiritual condition of serving something as an idol, or a God-substitute. The only way to break that is repentance, turning from the idolatry to the living God. But this gives hope, because as people we are able to do exactly that.
We are more that a bag of matter and energy. We can exercise responsibility over our actions.
The doctrine if sin and the language if idolatry actually can give hope, as the possibility of repentance and belief is always there.
You can substitute it with any addiction. Try replacing it with porn instead. It doesn’t matter. Your analysis is cruel and lacks empathy into how addiction actually works.
You wouldn’t tell a depressed person to just stop being depressed either and that they lack the discipline to be happy.
Except crack and other drugs form physical dependencies which leads to withdrawal. Smart phone addicts have a more psychological battle. That's the willpower/self-discipline part. How do you build discipline? Practice! So, yeah, it can be as simple as telling yourself "just stop using the apps" as often as you can to build up the skill.
Conversely there's aspects of screens that are not present in crack, such as widespread acceptance and even encouragement, hijacking of our most prioritized sense organ, etc.
If you were to design a visual drug, as a concept, you wouldn't get very far from the current state of affairs.
It's now well known and accepted knowledge that "addictions" have heritable elements (specifically in the transition from initial to problematic use). This has been proven by repeated studies of families and twins.
The preponderance of substance abuse addicts in recovery that "swap the witch for the bitch" and adopt behavioural addictions also support the genetic basis for addictability (my word).
I am a behavioural addict in recovery (4442 days today) and when I consider my siblings, parents, their siblings and their children (my first cousins), there's a >50% incidence of addiction to either smoking (>2 packs/day), alcohol, sex, food, gambling, or drug use. Half of that cohort have more than one addiction and among those almost all share a substance addiction with a behavioural addiction.
I appreciate that this is just one family and is statistically irrelevant. However because I've been around people dealing with their addictions for so long and spoken to so many, this is not an uncommon familial pattern among addicts.
I'd also add that in my clan there are many instances where one sibling is an addict and another isn't. This is not learned behaviour (though the introduction to addictive pathways/behaviours etc is often as a result of environmental and psycho-social factors).
I’m not sure what your point is here. The adult thing to do if you’re an addict is to move as far away from your addiction as possible. That is what self discipline looks like.
I'm surprised more people are not talking about the main reason I keep a high end smartphone in my pocket : photo quality.
I got rid of social media apps a while ago, and except for Spotify I feel like I could manage without a smartphone; but none of them have a good enough photo quality for me (that and the icloud sync)?
Well, indeed in that case it doesn't matter as much. But with 2 kids, taking high quality photos is number 2 on my phone whishlist, right after being an actual phone
No, but this is a big reason for your average person that your typical HN commenter might overlook. :) Most people I talk to these days notice the camera quality as one of the main upgrades on new phone, and the behavior of caring about the person with the latest and greatest phone taking the group picture is almost universal. I think this especially applies to parents/families.
I was never in the "heavy smartphone users" category, but one thing I found that nonetheless shrank my usage significantly was switching to the "Niagara" launcher app (Android). If you are somebody that doesn't want to keep getting "sucked" into your phone, I cannot recommend it highly enough.
I also switched to Niagara Launcher, and it's great especially with the new icons update (everything looks so consistent)! It decreased my usage as well but I still find myself going back to old habits whenever stress mounts, despite having Niagara Pro, enabling Morning mode, and Notification summaries. Any tips you could share that have helped you further decrease your usage?
Do not put the apps you want to reduce usage of in your favorites. The act of pulling them out of the alphabetized list or searching for them when you want to use them adds just enough (for me) friction that it becomes a necessarily deliberate action.
Niagara is very clean and a unique take on launchers. I don't need to fiddle with "home screens" anymore and just have my most used apps right there. And for the less frequently used ones, it's just one swipe with my thumb (see the demo) or with a more targeted search. The launcher was designed of having one hand (primarily thumb use) to use in mind. It prevents me from going down the rabbit hole of adjusting widgets and swiping a lot to find things.
It also has a new update on icons. I finally now have consistent icons even for rare apps (e.g. specific to your country/locale) after a long long time. It honestly feels a lot better when specific apps (designed to catch your attention with the "notification dots") don't stand out.
Last year I got all into trying to, idk what to call it, "un-tech" my life. I started excitedly telling my wife I was going to get a one of these dumb phones and start using it. The next day a broken car on an incline rolled back into my car damaging it. I had to pull out my smartphone document the whole thing with pictures. I got a whole "what would you do with your dumb phone" and dropped the whole thing.
There is probably a middle ground like this article suggests that's more realistic. Just take the addictive stuff off, control notifications, add timers, add friction where you can etc. Just leaving my facebook account logged out basically killed my random scrolling habit.
It's funny how reality tends to "test your resolve" with things like that.
I've got a flip phone (Sonim XP3+) with a viable camera in it. It's not amazing, but it's more than good enough to document stuff like that, and I can send things with a computer when I get back home (though admittedly, I carry a powered off laptop with me often enough - that plus tethering off my phone gets me a backup for just about everything I could want, though I almost never use it).
Or just carry a cheap point-n-shoot digital camera in your bag. I've started doing that too - the rugged/tough variety are well suited to banging around with you until you need them for something.
I use my smartphone mostly like a computer for work; research or look up stuff I want to implement. I don’t have dead-scroll social media apps installed and I don’t call; people can send text via different chat apps because that’s async so no chance of distracting me. It’s always on dnd or sleep. Done this for almost a decade now; works well.
Some years after publishing Digital Vegan [0] I still get occasional
messages from people thanking me profoundly for helping them get free.
Maybe I got a few things right. AFAIK the review epub [1] has been on
the torrents for ages.
I feel like i would like a phone with the sim and wifi module ripped out. Perhaps just bluetooth so my files can get auto transfered when i get home. Phones are great note takers and recorders but the social media and communication aspects can be problematic.
Exactly. Where can I get a device that I can use away from home, fits in my pocket, and does not receive calls/texts? I value the camera, the GPS, and occasionally the data (not OP).
Minus the camera thing, I'd almost say a PinePhone-esque device is the fit, given the dodgy telecoms stack (which isn't a dealbreaker to you). Otherwise, though, sounds like a phone in permanent airplane mode (or at least, without a SIM inserted) is the move for you.
iPhone 12 mini is my first smartphone late 2023. I have used iPads for ten years. Love how the iPad freed me from sitting at the PC.
Now similarly I wonder if I’ll ever buy iPad again and just buy a good smartphone. Can go airplane mode anyway if I want to.
iPhone is kinda like a iPad mini with the SIM card stuff.
The convergence is inevitable, Apple Pay is great. My banking app is easier to use on phone than on PC WTF phone doesn’t require me to swipe card in some physical card trader, just type in a short code.
It only makes sense someday the phone will be like your ID for everything.
IMHO the core unease here is not really the device but just how apps are built, especially social media, which itself is symptomatic of a distorted way of life (cf koyaanisqatsi)
I've been using the Cat S22 as my main device for the past month or so and have found it to be pretty much exactly what I was looking for.
It's a flip phone that runs android, so can still use whatsapp, signal, email, maps, use rideshare apps, scan qr codes, and play music, but is limited enough that I'm not scrolling on it during free interstitial moments. The screen is too small to really be useful for reading the internet or using something like instagram, but I'm not totally cut off from friends and family.
I've used other dumbphones in the past, notably the Punkt MP01 and the Light Phone II and the Cat feels like one I could use indefinitely and not have to have another device handy. The only exception I would note is that I recently got back from traveling to a foreign country and a city I'd never been and I think I would have rather had a smart phone there.
It's a shame Nokia/HMD Global seem to have dropped KaiOS for their latest feature phones. I'm struggling to find a viable VoLTE-compatible alternative to my 8110 4G.
In the early noughties I had saved a woman from being hit by a train: she had been texting and walking without minding her surroundings. That scared me, and I vowed to never become like her.
I got my first and only smartphone in 2020, mostly to get a inexpensive, decent digital camera — because simple cameras that are not smartphones are not made any more. I had been evaluating different models for several months, and mostly been disappointed with how bad the smartphone landscape is compared to computers.
I chose the one I thought was the leastbad (Google Pixel 4a).
The biggest problem I have had without a cellphone is with other people who just blatantly make assumptions about how I have/use it.
I had to start using SIM cards in late 2022 only for 2FA to my online health records.
I'm using my iPhone at home. I need it, because in my country there are banking apps and government apps which are almost mandatory to use.
My car has some crappy navigation which is good enough along with my memory for most of my routes.
Other that that, I bought vintage samsung phone and using it as my main phone.
Sometimes I'm carrying my iPhone, but not often. I also don't use it regularly for stuff other people use like instagram, etc. My work chats are in the browser and my auxiliary chats can live with one-two check-ups in a week. And if someone need me, he can just call me.
I didn't really made it a crusade or something like that, I just found at some point that I don't need smartphone for most of my use-cases. Ordinary phone battery works for few weeks. I have watch on my wrist to check on time.
Smartphones have certainly made my life significantly worse. I'm so glued to my smartphone that it has even replaced other kinds of time-wasting considered to be frivolous. I don't play video games, I don't watch TV. I'm just scrolling all the time. It's hard to explain to my therapist that, no, I would like to spend more time playing video games. From there I think it will be much easier to build in more time for reading books or being a good partner and parent. The smart phone feels like the biggest obstacle.
Of course I know that it takes two to tango, and if I didn't have treatment-resistant ADHD the phone wouldn't have it's hooks in me the way it does. Back to the treatment drawing board, I guess.
In a lot of cases I'd argue getting rid of the thing costs you more than you'd gain but in your case a year long retreat might help a lot. It sounds like your phone (and the services running on it) is literally siphoning away your life, maybe getting rid if your home internet connection (gasp!) should be part of the consideration.
check out How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy (Odell, Jenny) ... the punchline is that it is always there, you just have to find a reason to not want it.
Also, going through the feature checklist on https://www.dumbphones.org/ made me realize how many of these things are so helpful. I checked all the ones I would want, and there were no dumbphones that supported them. GPS Navigation, Group Text, Hotspot, WiFi Calling, Rideshare, Camera, Calendar Sync. And, if it can do all those things, its not that dumb.
That's why I liked my blackberry so much. It was a tool first and foremost, whereas consumers now want a multimedia delivery experience. I didn't care that BB fell short at that, but the market did.
I did this back in 2012 after using Android and iPhone for the previous 4-5 years and despite really finding it a good experience, even then it was becoming difficult to live without maps and a camera. I've been thinking about it again, though, and the one thing I've tried to find is a decent keyboard phone for texting. I don't mind going without a browser, etc. on my phone, but I do find communication via text to be valuable and I don't want to go back to T9 or a phone keypad to try to do it.
Same story for a lot of people: Smartphones are indispensable because of like 5 utilities, that come attached to like 50 more things that clamor for your time and attention.
Super useful:
- Maps / Travel
- Messaging/Calling
- Camera / Gallery
- Search / information lookup
- Banking
- Authentication
But then there's:
- Ads everywhere
- Notifications clamoring for attention, even from the useful apps.
- 10 flavors of social media (which has to include HN, even if it's less intrusive than most).
It's like the utility and connections it gives you are bait. I seldom feel at rest, never fully trusting an app on my phone to want to give me the best experience possible.
I was a relative early adopter of smartphones, and have used one for most of my adult life (since university). For me it is an incredibly useful and almost irreplaceable daily tool:
- photography and audio recording
- note taking
- maps/navigation/compass
- email
- file management
- messaging/audio communication
- tickets and traveling
- language translation (does anyone have a recommendations for a less privacy invasive tool similar to Google Lens translation?)
- calculators
- emergency flashlight
- fitness and health tracking
- time keeping/alarms/timers
- weather
- quickly looking up information online
- reminders/calendars and task management
- books (both text and audio)
- music storage and playback
- banking/finance/payments
- passwords and token management is far more convenient
I’m also on call for work 24/7, so quickly having access to employer’s and customer’s communication service, software, and files is a requirement.
All of these tasks could be completed using multiple different tools, but with immensely greater friction and difficulty. It amplifies and augments mental capabilities.
The downsides as I see them so far:
- Constant access to data, distractions, news, communication reduces ability to focus and can create mental fatigue (but I already had issues with focusing anyway, so the benefits of time management outweigh the cons)
- Social media…enough said
- probably reduces memory and mental capacity as its easier to simply look something up or run a quick calculation than to remember data or do mental math. So while it can augment mental capacity, it can also become a crutch. Like every new technology there are both benefits and cons. It requires leveraging the new technology in a way that benefits you, and mitigating or managing any negative impacts.
It's not the smartphone as much as the negative synergy between many to many shortform social media and the always there smartphone that is creating all of the damage.
If you uninstall every social media app from the smartphone and configure every one to one communication app to silent mode most if not all of the negative impact that your smartphone have on your life will probably go away or become trivial issues. But then again that's kind of like turning your smartphone into an dumpphone, and decrease the need for a big new expensive one every 18-24 months.
The problem with smartphone centric asocial media is that they discourage one to one and longform messages so what you get is the equivalent of a crowd of people shouting slogans at each other and while that can be tremendeusly entertaining it's mentally draining and rarely lead to closer relationships or constructive dialogue.
Add to this is the fact that.there is indications that being bored is actually beneficial to long term mental health.
When my last android died in a freak accident all I had was a spare iPhone mini. I find simply not having a good screen size for reading has cut down on my usage by easily half. I suspect e-ink phone users probably have similar effective phone aversion.
iPhone text prediction constantly messing with me didn’t help either. I’m sure it’s tunable somewhere, I just don’t care anymore.
I also have a small iPhone, but have had the opposite experience; text looks great thanks to the quality and resolution of the display and I far prefer it to my laptop for reading, with the exception of PDFs (my iPad was great for those).
Probably not popular to go off on this branch but...
The Problem is not the tool. The problem isn't even the users per se. The Problem is that the "curators" (?) of the experience(s) provided by the tool have their own best interests in mind. They're not working to better us, they have their own self-serving agenda.
I recently read "Stand Out of Our Light". To paraphrase what was for me a key paragraph:
"Some of the best and brightest experts on human behavior are being generously funded by some of the most influential and wealthiest companies in the history of the world...to tilt as much as possible in their own favor (not our own). Given that reality, we don't stand a chance.'
I came up with a practical way of moderating your smartphone. Turn off the sound and alerts. If there are a few people you need to let through (wife/kids/boss) then put them on a white list. Log out of all your social media accounts when you're done with them immediately. Log in when you want to check them, that pain point will reduce your usage, especially if you're smart and have turned on TOTP or other 2FA. That's pretty much all it took.
Tell ya what I want (and actually built a prototype of, but gave up on in favor of alcoholism mid-pandemic): a Bluetooth A2DP-enabled, Wi-Fi capable podcast playing device. I don't want to have to go power on a computer to sync my player with the latest episodes, and I also don't want to be stuck with wired headphones like it's 2007 again. Give me that and I will walk away from the smartphone with little to no negative impact on my life.
Smartphones are awesome. You can use them to play chess, read books on the go, pay your bills while taking a dump and send your mom pictures of your baby.
If you want to reduce your addiciton to your smartphone you should analyse the psychological origins of your addiction. Quitting just your smartphone feels a bit like treating the symptom, rather than the cause. That said, modern psychology is often dismissive of causes bc they are harder to empirically study, and this kind of thinking has really dominated pop psychology now
Wait, do people get their smartphone out of their pocket or look at it while in a meeting? I am working remote nowadays but pre covid I would have found this rude and that person would have been called out during the meeting and asked to keep attention or leave.
Obviously when everybody is talking from their laptop in a videocall, source of distractions and the lure of multitasking is much stronger.
I've considered trying to reduce my smartphone usage by getting a cellular AW. I need to be reachable in emergences, want to be trackable by family, and want to be able to navigate and take an Uber if needed. But not having an easily-scrollable app interface would help me cut down on mindless internet consumption.
I’ve often been keen to try this, but I’ve never been convinced the battery life is long enough. From reading Reddit anecdotes, sounds like 11-12 hours might be possible with minimal usage - would that be enough for you?
Most of my time-wasters (games, forums, youtube) are better on the bigger screen, which helps keep it from leaving the house with me (and keeps my smartphone usage down, in turn). The apps are there, but I don't pull out the phone for much except texts, pictures, or when I'm stuck in a quiet waiting room.
I think it’s weird how we talk about phones like they are the problem and not social media. I love my phone, it’s one of the most useful things I own. I also had problems with wasting time and attention on social media and I solved it by uninstalling whatever apps I felt had a negative effect on my life.
I'm an early anti smartphone person. I have an old RAZR v6 and love it.
For starters:
Don't bring your phone to the grociers, to walks, turn off all kinds of notifications, read mail once a day, or week. All kinds of apps that require your attention should be removed/muted.
having used a candybar nokia during early 4g smartphone era, things like not being able to find your way in a new city and paying unreasonable price for international phone calls are not something i'd like to go back to.
i believe that once you disconnect social media and games from your phone usage, you take care of 99% of the issues people have with modern devices. i understand that doing that also is a big task, but so is going back to flip phones of the past.
personally i am plenty distracted without my phone, and i get my fair share without using it a lot. but in my profession i cannot afford to get rid of all tech altogether. i hope there are ways people go about it.
I bought a KaiOS device a few years ago and use it mostly on weekends. It supports basic messaging and internet browsing, so I won't get lost if something emergent happens.
No news, feeds, or any other unnecessary stuff.
The article is about spending less time on your phone in order to be more present in-person. Calling that "anti-society" is wild.
That said, I'll agree that it is increasingly difficult to participate in some spheres without specific apps. The article discusses this too. It is an alarming trend that excludes those who are unable to or cannot afford to use smartphones.
I would say if one cannot live without a smartphone (for stuff like banking and all + instant messaging) a good middle ground between a dumb and a smartphone is a kaios (formerly FirefoxOS) phone + an android or ipad tablet for home. KaiOS phones usually have a small screen and are underpowered which limit the appeal of browsing and doing too much shit on social medias but the basics are there:
- google maps
- whatsapp
- a web browser
- wikipedia
- note taking
- audio player
- a small camera (not for nice pictures but to snap information)
- 2FA OTP app
Usually all the stuff you might really need an android for (banking, healthcare, whatever) can wait for you to be home but you can still decide to bring a tablet in a bag when you know you will need it for a specific task (or when travelling).
I just have a smartphone but with no addicting apps on it. I find having features like mobile banking and a basic web browser are necessary to stay efficient. Also mobile 2fa (not sms)
The real killer is the lack of an authenticator app. I'd be interested to know what other people use for that purpose if they're not carrying a mobile.
I use my password manager’s built-in TOTP generator, and a Yubikey whenever possible. There are some SMS-only services but that’s a very small minority.
As important as this issue is, I have to wonder if it has eclipsed desktop addiction, after all both are just manifestations of browser, or rather internet addiction.
Oh, absolutely. A desktop is far, far less "fanged" than a phone. It's not with you all the time, and it generally can't send notifications if you don't have a webpage open (I know there are the "web notifications" every shady site wants to use, but they're off by default, vs on by default for phones).
Going back to a desktop computer that you turn off regularly (so there's some friction waiting for it to boot) is one of the best ways to approach the internet these days.
Yeah, but these days almost all white collar workers are on a desktop at least eight hours a day, and when you go home at night wouldn’t you prefer the form factor of a larger screen rather than a handheld one?
I prefer the form factor of board games, paper books, and such things over any sort of digital devices in the evening. So form factor isn't a big deal.
I'm trying to recover an offline-first life, in which I only use digital devices for interacting with other people (or, occasionally, communicating about such things - it's been an intermittent theme on my blog, and I've got a lot more "offline project" posts coming up soon, about charcoal, rock dust, and other related things).
Mobile devices have hooked a lot of people who weren't interested in desktops or laptops. They also created the ability to use the internet or play games in places people would have been unlikely to use computing devices before, like at a restaurant or on the bus. I’d ask how much it’s related TV, but on the other hand I often see people doing both at once.
That’s fair, and I’m sure compulsive use in public isn’t great, but it feels like such addiction is comparatively less time spent than an office worker who’s on a desktop for the majority of the day.
I like my smartphone and just use it consciously. How about less black/white? I don't want to quit it. And I don't think most people don't want to either, they probably just want to quit behaviour/apps and not the whole thing. It connects me to my family and friends very well. Pictures, voice messages etc. I can dump my thoughts into a notes app to be transferred into my journal later on. I can check insta for a bit of motivation (using it mindfully!). I only have hiking, offroading and trailrunning content and I'm happy with that. Checking some nature motivates me. And if the algorithm tries to fuck me over (which happens very fast), I let it be. Works for me.
There is nothing wrong with smartphones, it is what people use them for. Remove social media from your phones and you are good. If you are unable to delete social media apps then you have an addiction problem. Consult a doctor or just simply become a responsible adult.
I recently switched to a flip phone in January as an experiment. My main goal was to eliminate my scrolling habits in any form of downtime, as I was becoming increasingly unhappy and noticed it was affecting my eyes negatively.
Most of the benefits came from the friction the device itself causes. The texting experience was terrible, so I texted less. The internet browser was laughable, so I just pulled out my laptop when I needed to look something up.
Did I enjoy the flip phone? Absolutely not. The experience was terrible. But I did learn some lessons.
It made me appreciate my smart phone for what it was - a computer in my pocket. The more I can think of it as a tool to use at my disposal, the less of a distraction the device itself becomes. By disabling notifications for every app, I essentially get the same experience as a flip phone. I browse the web through apps to do a specific activity when the need strikes. Other than that, it stays in my pocket (or more likely at home, in the couch cushion).
Plus, I also learned that I like the idea of memorizing directions more than using turn-by-turn nav. It makes me pay more attention to the roads and I gain a better familiarity with my area.
the cat phone looks sick! wish it was available for verizon customers. i've been using the light phone for a while but tired of carrying a gps everywhere.
I would like to see a pure pocket computer. No baseband, just a computer. No need for mobile data.
Ideally, I would have two devices: a mobile phone and a pocket computer.
Sometimes I might carry the computer. Other times not.
"He said he slept better, felt more productive at work and had more meaningful communications. Mr. Epstein, a Hasidic Jew, said his choice of device was not unusual in the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, which encourages the use of "kosher phones" with limited internet access."
