"Those who might check their phone’s map when lost are instead being encouraged to ask for directions."
Having Interrailed across northern Europe and travelled within a variety of cities without an internet-connected phone, I am now confident in declaring that the average local is terrible at giving directions! Attempt to ask how to get to the nearest metro station or bus stop, for instance, and each of the friendly residents you ask will direct you in an entirely different direction. Of course, you'll also get your fair share of unsolicited travel advice: in Brussels, I believe I have now heard more instructions for effective fare-dodging than I have actual directions!
As a result of the typical denizen's questionable geography knowledge, I've now made sure I have a good offline map before embarking on any journey. If I know approximately which railway or bus lines I'll need to use, I'll download timetables for them as well. Of course, I could print out a dozen maps in advance - there's nothing inherently electronic about a map - but spurning maps entirely and asking for directions just won't cut the mustard!
I still remember the first day at university. My plane was delayed, and I missed the first day orientation. The bus dropped us off somewhere in the campus. With no map, no guide, hungry and thirsty, I spent the next 2 hours looking for the dining hall by asking for directions, to no eventual avail. Luckily, in the end, two good-hearted seniors took me to pizza and walked me to my dorm.
When I got the map the next day, I realized that all the roads are curves and circles, and intersecting at strange angles, and the buildings aren't situated as blocks. It's almost impossible to follow instructions like "walk straight for two blocks and then turn right", especially at night.
As far as navigation goes, I'll take GPS over asking for directions any day.
> Having Interrailed across northern Europe and travelled within a variety of cities without an internet-connected phone, I am now confident in declaring that the average local is terrible at giving directions!
Decades ago some friends and I were in Nuremberg and we went to the tourist info kiosk to ask for directions (Americans speaking German), having just arrived on the train. We went outside and I wanted to go one direction and my good friend the other. We argued, in got way more heated than we’d ever been before. Finally he said to me - yes, you are right, that is the direction he said we should go, but that’s not what he meant. To this day I still don’t know what Ryan picked up on that I didn’t, and even Ryan would agree my German is better - but I was wrong and Ryan was right, and the guy at the info kiosk was 100% wrong.
I think asking for directions is often conceptually wrong. Everyday knowledge tends to be implicit rather than explicit. People living in organically grown cities may think in terms of adjacencies, not directions. If you want to go from point A to point F, one route goes through B, C, D, and E. Except that points B, C, D, and E may not have names, or the name is irrelevant in everyday life. It may even be difficult to describe what those places look like.
My memory is just incompatible with direction-giving. In one ear, out the other. I need a map to navigate an unknown place.
This is also my issue with the "put your camera away, live in the moment!" crowd. Well it's have my camera out or have no photo anchors to bring memories out of whatever fog they fall in to.
How is a poem not documentation? How is a photograph not art?
Rhymes are how epic poems were memorized before the advent of a form of writing capable of recording something of length.
Put your experiences to light verse and musical accompaniment and you’ve got something even more memorable!
Do you remember your photographs when you’re not looking at them? I remember my songs! I remember where I was when I wrote them and who I was around.
I remember writing a song about the man who brought a shotgun to the roof of a hospital in SF and was killed by a SWAT team.
I remember the song I wrote about the Google barge and the security guard I talked to there one night.
I remember the song I wrote on a beach in Hawaii, the song I wrote about my hometown and the lackluster reunion ski trip that reminded me why I left my hometown.
I don’t take many pictures and I don’t have the best memory, but I have vivid memories of the sights and sounds of the places I was when I was looking up and around and writing. Where I was decidedly not looking down at a device and rather living untethered and soaking in the world around me.
I haven’t had a data plan on my phone for about 8 years and the primary reason is so that I can observe and experience!
>> "How is a poem not documentation? How is a photograph not art?"
I'll just stop you there. You've either misunderstood me or really want to get into the philosophy of recording ideas, and I do not. I have a way of recording memories that works for me. Let's leave it at that and move on.
For sure, you can do whatever you like. I’m just pointing out that there are more options than just taking a photograph. Some might be more memorable, if that’s your intent.
>> Having Interrailed across northern Europe and travelled within a variety of cities without an internet-connected phone, I am now confident in declaring that the average local is terrible at giving directions
I really can't speak about northern Europe, but giving wrong directions to foreigners is practically a national sport in Spain.
Also, in my experience, the average French of any age, not for the life of them, would even consider tainting their lips and betraying their cuisine by speaking English. They learned English in school, alright, it's a choice. So, to navigate, you'd have to be able to converse in French somewhat fluently. Especially, outside a large city.
Chauvinism might play a role in some rare cases but it's often just that we don't dare to speak English and risk making mistakes, because of how languages and actually everything is taught at school here. We also somehow focus a lot on grammar, which I personally loved, but that just blocks a lot of us.
Outside a large city it might also be that occasions to practice English are vanishingly rare and when you have never really practiced outside school, it doesn't quite work out.
Now, I'm still a bit surprised. Many, many people can speak some English just fine here, especially younger people.
Some years ago. I am not a native speaker either, so both sides would have been struggling a bit. At least back then, people really didn't want to speak English. Though, in Paris random French strangers on the subway were usually fluent.
My French is weak, but I can passably order and do routine tourist comms. In a cafe in Paris, I started to order and the waiter stopped me with the very amusing, “Monsieur, please. We do this in English; it’s easier that way…”
From my experience, that is a popular opinion, but mostly perpetuated by people who only went to Paris, and didn't bother to learn at least a couple of simple phrases.
I got through France just fine while hiking and hitchhiking on my almost nonexistent french, mainly speaking English and German.
Just starting with "bonjour" or "ca va?" often lead to people offering me to sleep in their homes instead of under my tarp, especially in small towns, where the older population doesn't see many outsiders, and is therefore generally interested in having something to talk about. Of course their English and German is rather limited, so it takes a long time to communicate, but it felt very rewarding whenever it worked.
In my experience, always ask girls for directions, not boys. A boy will never admit that he doesn't know the answer so he will gladly send you off in any direction. A girl on the other hand will try everything in her power to get you in the right direction and will have no problem admitting it if she doesn't know where it is.
I was at a very nice hotel recently in the countryside where car sharing apps don't work and the trains in that country are notorious for not arriving. I needed to get a train to a near town, a very very well known place and it was at least a 3-connection trip. The young person at the desk said, oh I don't take public transport (I guess they cycle everywhere and never leaves the area without their Mum?), and proceeded to start looking at Google Maps. Horrified, I said please find me someone here who knows how the transport works in the area. They didn't understand what I was asking so I walked away and figured it out myself (got a taxi to the nearest station with the busiest lines). I'm still surprised given how I can imagine how anyone lives in that area without taking a bus or train to get further afield.
Maybe they had never been afield? I was once having dinner at a small restaurant in a village in northern Iceland. The server had impeccable English with an American accent. I got to talking to him and learned that he had never in his life (he was probably in his mid 20s) left his village. He had never even travelled to the nearest town/city.
I was more concerned with the lack of training by the hotel, everyone arrives either by private car or taxi via the local train system and in a hotel of that calibre I simply expected better awareness from the front desk. I have nothing against that particular person. So regarding this french village, I hope they give residents decent directions training to help the lost travelers if they expect them to go without their phones.
I... use Google Maps a lot for day to day public transportation, in France. Most of the transport systems are integrated it works wherever I go, in Ile de France but also plenty of other cities, including smaller cities like e.g. Chartres. YMMV
Went to Porto too recently, same experience. Very cool, especially as a first approach when you don't know the city enough to plan and orient, or if you are like me and spend hours wandering randomly deep in cities...
I'll typically use Google Maps even if it's a route I travel often. Even if you know the area, if you're going to be assisting a guest in getting directions, it's worth checking in case there are some changes you missed (eg delays, maintenance notices).
So it's pretty ridiculous to be offended because someone figured they'd check online before giving you information. Especially if the trains are notorious for not arriving.
Why wouldn't you want to be checking for the latest information in that situation? They can't telepathically obtain information that the train is going to arrive.
In this case the person was missing crucial local knowledge about the train system that Google doesn't have and did not have awareness of the problem they potentially were sending me into - it wasn't about trains not arriving but which station was the best one to be stranded at if a train was missed. I knew enough of that area to be cautious, the hotel attendant knew less. Maps will often give public transport directions that simply are inconvenient because it doesn't know the human realities of a trip (changes require crossing a busy road, or waiting at an isolated bus stop or unmanned train station, or that walking one block over gets a better bus) and I'll always take a local's train and subway knowledge over Maps.
This is an interesting idea: Voting on the norms of society even if not strictly enforceable. I would love a referendum on tipping in my American state.
The proposed solution that at least 54% of this village have recognized is that the internet has really eroded societal bonds. The optimization of everything, coupled with the easy on-demand connection provided by phones is a big problem for society. It's like eating cake all the time, its easy and feels good in the moment but it will likely have negative societal impacts.
I'll speak for America, but I am sure it isn't unique here. The optimization of everything to short term profit & loss coupled with phones has made society pretty unpleasant.
- Grocery stores have removed handles from bags and most tellers.
- Extremely uniform big box stores are primarily all that are left
- Shopping is fully online
- Workers have been reduced as much as possible to automata in low status jobs.
- Due to the quality and quantity of data, of all goods are priced to the absolute max society can bear and wages are suppressed to the extent possible as well.
- Connection with society is primarily done through a screen and id ephemeral
I could go on. The point is that in concert, this has seriously changed our society even if any single change alone would be positive.
Phones are simply a symptom of a society that is lonely and disconnected and a biological psychology that makes adaptation to this change hard/impossible. It's not neccesarily negative, but we will see how this shapes society when gen-z and gen alpha are in their 40s.
Interestingly the article mentioned that some young people raised an
objection that they had "nothing else to do" without their phones.
In response the mayor promised new investment into sports, recreation,
libraries and book sharing... In other words, there's more going on
here than just the "phone ban", but a broader attempt to reconnect and
rehumanise the village life.
My concern is that even with the social and financial will to restore
a more convivial lifestyle, those young people won't be able to
engage. Having been raised by screens they are already so
psychologically altered (damaged?) as to be lost.
The assumption that life can "go back" may be misguided, and that
makes this an experiment worth watching.
Here's an article discussing a recent law change here in NZ banning phones from schools. The upshot seems to be that more normal human relationships come back pretty quickly, although this is still very recent so it's hard to tell definitively.
Amazing. Adaptation at work. Hard to believe how well that
went. Bookmarked for further research, thanks. Maybe that explains a
deep fear latent in the tech industry. That in reality someone could
say "Enough. No more smartphones!", and a whole generation could just
turn around and say "Okay. No worries. What's next?"
I’m pretty sure (like 99%) that you can unlearn social media and phone bad habits if forced to with minimal fuss. Just go on a month long camping retreat (sans screens) and you’ll see how quickly we adapt.
Your perspective is as always refreshing and unique. Thank you :) I hope to do my reading outside of jail and I still haven't installed TikTok and never will but I think my kids would be happy to agree with your position (probably minus the jail bit too).
It was once said that the only time in a man's life that he will be able to read Proust's In Search of Lost Time is in jail. So I had someone send it to me and of course I was released the next day.
p.s. I exaggerated slightly, it took me 3 days before I installed TikTok. I'd watched silly viral videos that appeared on the news for years and so I was intrigued about it. I've loved it ever since. Just gotta get it set up right so your filter bubble is what you're into. I get half my tech news from HN and the other half from TikTok.
I used to read 500 books in a single summer as a teenager. I don't know how much free time you have in prison, but I can totally see doing 800 books in just a year or two.
Heh - confined for the summer gives a bit of an incentive, sorry about that.
All the same it's a high number, .. I'm guessing more than a few were light pulps and the best you could find given the library at hand?
I read a lot of books, several thousand, from 12 to 17, and kept a log of them - later I worked in (and led) a team that digested a few thousand technical documents a day (with a heavy dose of computer assistence to find|pick out key parts), there's a lot of material you can fly through quickly and not miss much, there are rare books that can take a year or a lifetime to fully digest and finish with.
I would have classed myself as a bookworm when I was younger, but there's no way I could have read anywhere near that many books in that timespan. I would say that whilst I believe you, you're also an extreme outlier with that figure.
Not dissing your idea, which is accurate, but I can't not-find it funny to then remark that most Americans couldn't even take a 2 week vacation without cheating with sick days.
My thoughts are that sure, when you are living and working alone, as
happens to many of us at times, it is possible to successfully apply
"force". Like making objects of temptation unavailable, maybe using a
time-locked safe or taking a week away at tech-detox bootcamp.
IIRC Johann Hari in "Stolen Focus" seemed to think this only ever
created a temporary relief, a bit like dieting and then gaining
rebound weight.
What I wrote about in Digital Vegan was based on my interaction with
heroin addicts, and is all about the friction that comes from peer
pressure and groups that reinforce (mutually enforce) behaviours.
Friends are a bigger problem than self-will in the arena of addiction.
External force, even in peer relations, tends to have the opposite
effects.
We did the same, but only because a medium-sized city in a Midwest state offered nothing for young people to do. We could go bowling or go to the movies.
Last week I met friends at a board game cafe / bar (I live on the west coast now) and there were tons of college students enjoying coffees and beers and pizza. There was still alcohol, but it wasn’t the point of the evening. When I was their age, we got loaded to forget / escape our boredom.
What I’m saying is that there’s a positive outcome that can be reached through community investment.
> there were tons of college students enjoying coffees and beers and pizza.
So what are High School students supposed to do? They often don't have the money to go spend to hang out someplace, and even if they did, can they actually get there? Maybe with an hour of transit time each way or with a friend's parent who can drive them.
The complaint of "I don't have anything to do without my phone" is probably coming from a younger group than College Students in general.
given the epidemic of sexlessness and general delay of adulthood among young people I don't understand the demonization. Smoking, drinking and getting into some trouble have been important rituals for a long time for a reason.
Now we've traded it in for solipsistic, depressed, pill hooked anti-social teens because of an obsession with health at the cost of everything else. The pandemic of course did its part to accelerate that trend. Hitchens anticipated it a generation ago.
Your body will recover from some stupidities in your teens and young adulthood, having your mind glued to your phone instead of having a real life for your formative years, not so sure.
I think that as long as a) the effects of the measure were well communicated and b) there were no significant impediments to actually voting, then the percent that vote is immaterial and the result of the vote should stand for everyone.
After all this is the way the US conducts its elections. Many elections have very low turnout, yet the results are binding.
I think there's a difference between the result being binding, and that the vote stands for everyone.
Abstaining leads to your opinion not being represented, which is to be expected. It doesn't follow that therefore other people's vote hence represent you.
For the vote mentioned in the article, which is non-binding, non-enforceable, and ridiculous in its scope, I'd guess that most abstainers' real opinion on the matter, is that it's a waste of their time to participate.
People have their own reasons for silence, even when a referendum is nonbinding. Interpreting that silence as consent or approval is the moral equivalent of a bulldozer.
Either it will negatively affect the bottom line and stop, or diners will get used to it and it'll continue.
Or it'll actually boost profits from people having the menu on their phone for dine-out ordering, allow the restaurant to update pricing more easily matching their costs, and of course the savings from not having to print physical menus.
I just play dumb and ask for a physical menu, claiming that my phone broke this morning. Adapt the experiment for the number of people. With 2, the other one might say "and I'm out of battery". 3 could be "mine I forgot at home". And 4+ people are already too many to reasonably expect customers to share a single phone between them all.
It's all just a social experiment which hopefully ends up trickling up and making owners aware how stupid it is to expect everyone to bring a phone in their pockets in order to being able to order food.
Some times it's not even a lie: as part of mentally cleaning up from an intense addiction to social media, I've forced myself into offline mode and purposely leave the phone at home from time to time.
One time my phone was getting terrible reception in the restaurant, and couldn't download the way-too-big menu file. I ask the server for a paper menu, and apparently they'd went all-in on paper-free, so no menu for me. Instead, the server had to present their iPad to me so I could see all the software buttons for the items I could choose from as they scrolled through. Ridiculous. The next time I went they had paper menus.
It's for fun. I just want to have them making the effort to realize that they shouldn't drop physical menus altogether.
Also some times I didn't feel like doing the theatrics, and upon asking for a menu, they'd say "it's there in the QR code, please scan it" and leave me to it, as if they had done a good job. Not on my watch!
As a counterpoint, most people use their phones daily while sitting on the toilet and very rarely sanitize it. You may be diligent in keeping it sanitary but the past 50 people who kept their phones on the table while reading the menu probably didn’t (and the wet rag the bus person wipes the table down with probably doesn’t do much either).
I do not believe that most people use their phones on the toilet at all, much less daily. It would be incredibly stupid to risk dropping your phone in the toilet just so you have something to look at for the <1 min it takes to do your business.
I just dealt with this the other day. One of my favorite restaurants kept the menu "books" but when you opened it up it just had a QR code. Tease... So I went to the counter and asked for a paper menu, which they provided. While my friends are struggling to figure out the online ordering system, I ordered directly through the waiter. All seems to be well and I'm feeling smug. Then my friend comments that they can't figure out why there is another item on their order, an item that just happens to coincide with what I ordered. facepalm So I ask the server to put it on a separate tab, to which they responded "I already did." Ok... So we'll have to figure this out later. After I eat, I walk up to the counter since I don't expect to receive a paper bill from the server as everything seems to be online now. I ask to pay for my meal, and they say they don't have any such item open on the tab. facepalm I walk back to table, and later my friend and I go back to the counter so they can show the staff that my item is on their tab. We can't figure it out with the staff, so we decide I'll just pay my friend for my portion. Except my friend's tab is already closed apparently and my item wasn't on it? Gah... Third time's the charm, I ask the server for my check, which they bring out. It has a QR code to pay online, no chance I'm messing with that. I walk to the counter, present the bill, and the server is able to ring up my tab. Way too much hassle associated with just ordering and paying for food. I suppose next time I know all the dance moves required for things to go smoothly, but I came to eat, not dance. Grrr....
I love how if you pay for your whole grocery order on Amazon with food stamps (because you are below the poverty line) Amazon still recommends you pay a minimum $10 tip from a debit card on your order.
Nothing is more American than taking government money and then not paying your workers enough on top of it requiring your customers to determine if your workers receive a fair wage or not.
It's like how CA taxes you on your unemployment insurance income.
I'd like to see some expansion of some of the points. I'll take a stab at a couple of them related to shopping.
First, in a physical store, if I wasn't familiar with that location I'd often have to pester a store employee for information of where a product is located. Now I pull up the store's app and it tells me the aisle and often bin location. Saves me time, lets the staff do their regular job (stocking shelves, etc), and it works out good for people who have a difficult time navigating social interactions with strangers.
Now the negative of this -- stores can have less staff (as they aren't getting pestered as much), and the staff they have doesn't really have to know the products that much (so you lose out on a 15 minute talk with a retired plumber working the plumbing aisle at the hardware store, getting sage advice). Flip side of that is sometimes you can get better advice by looking it up on your phone, but quick internet research isn't something that everyone is really good at.
Online ordering -- yes, I can now get access to things that were never available to me before (unless I happened to be in a very high population density area that could support certain specialty stores). Years ago I had always wanted to try something like Vegemite, and finally ran across a very small jar in a World Market store in the city. Now I can order multiple jars of the stuff on Amazon for a reasonable price.
The negative of this is once I needed an air filter for my lawn mower (about 10 years ago or so?). Craftsman mower, so I went to Sears. Couldn't find it on the shelf, grabbed an employee, they looked it up on their computer and basically ordered it for me on sears.com and had it shipped to my house. Had to wait a few days instead of fixing my lawn mower right then (like my Dad would do back in the day, by grabbing a needed part from the local small town Ace Hardware or similar). Heck, I couldn't even get a headlight switch for my (at the time) 10-year old truck from Autozone without ordering it. (But today I'd just model it and 3D print the thing).
Most of this is just "things were better when I was young". It's nostalgia for a past that might have had some advantages for some people, but was also worse in a lot of ways.
40 years ago if you lived in a small town and had nerdy or niche interests, you were mocked, bullied, and socially isolated from your peers. Now you can find thousands of other people who share your exact passions and interests and connect with them through the internet.
The status quo is always defended by people who are well adapted to it. But the status quo doesn't work for everyone. The internet age is making life a lot better for a lot of people who were previously marginalized.
I'm sure that when Gen Z gets old, they'll be nostalgic for the good old days of TikTok and Instagram. They won't understand whatever new VR metaverse their children live in, just like Boomers and Gen Xers don't understand the current situation. It's a story as old as time, but the world will move on and continue improving.
This is also what comes to mind with all of the "just go out and socialize like the good old days" suggestions. Being an introvert I'd still rather just stay indoors and enjoy my niche hobbies, if anything I'd be less social due to not being able to meet people with similar sets of interests to share spur of the moment thoughts with.
Hell, the way I got even more into tech (in the very early smartphone days) in the first place was because my friend group - which isn't easily changed when you're not an adult - was not very accepting of my hobbies/interests. I still remember the mocking I got for not being able to match the quality of a AAA game or mocked for tinkering with electronics by people who were 100% confident in their opinion that cheap earbuds would spontaneously explode.
There's also the mention of asking for directions instead of using map apps, have we already forgotten how frustrating an experience it used to be, trying to find a place, getting vague and often wrong directions, circling around the same place until finally getting the right directions?
I'll believe it when I see a French court actually enforce this ordinance. It seems too vague and rights-limiting to be more than a publicity stunt.
I also chuckle at a French government trying to encourage people to spend more time in public. Throughout history French governments have famously tried to keep people from taking to the streets. Most every revolt began with a conversation in a pub or coffee shop.
Is this how we use the term "scrolling" now? I mean, I get "doom scrolling", but now just bare "scrolling" connotes addictive attachment to social media on a mobile device?
Sounds like it's more of a campaign than an actual ban.
> It is not enforceable by police – officers could not stop or fine people scrolling in the street because there is no national law against smartphones – but the mayor describes it as an incitement to stop scrolling and guidance for limiting phone use.
It sounds silly on its face but these things can have impacts. Say that a store bans the use of phones. Is this ordinance a defense against a discrimination suite brought by someone kicked out while using a translation or vision app? The store would say that it was simply acting in support of a local ordinance.
Eh even then, if I'm sitting on a park bench smoking and you sit next to me, there's a certain measurable harm that you get because I'm smoking. But if I'm just scrolling HN on my phone? You can sit there and not be bothered at all.
> there's a certain measurable harm that you get because I'm smoking
Do you really believe that? Do you actually believe you get a "measurable harm" due to a few minutes of so-called "second hand smoke"? Does ANYONE actually believe that?
I'm not sure how people just buy into small memes and make no use of common sense, whatsoever.
After twenty years smoking and close to a decade quit I still can't smell it but want to light up one of my own. (I'd say 'bum one', but even so evanescent an unplanned interaction seems to take people the wrong way, these days...)
I'd still call it the same way you would, if anyone gave me the chance. Wouldn't even have to think it over.
I live in Manhattan and I would not describe the scene here as 'zombies on phones'. If there is noticeable anti-social trend here it would be headphones, not scrolling.
If, instead of scrolling HN, you talked to me, both our lives would improve.
Human contact, even with strangers, has a profound impact on health, mental state and quality of life. This has been researched and proven over and over. We are simply wired to function in social groups. Our current state of individualism is rather exceptional, and a cause for many issues with (mental) health.
So, yes, you scrolling HN has an effect on my health, because the reverse is unfortunately true too: loneliness (and isolation etc) have a negative effect on humans
> If, instead of scrolling HN, you talked to me, both our lives would improve.
I'm wholly in sympathy with the idea that public life would be better if we spent less of it on our phone, but counting every good deed left undone as a harm done is a very dangerous road to go down.
I wasn't seeing it as a "good deed left undone" but as a normalized state that has been unbalanced by phones and individualism. That the norm is a place where humans talk, collaborate, and have deep connections in small social groups. The way humans have lived for millions of years.
I guess looking at it from a more practical perspective of individualism being the norm from which we should break through good deeds, is a far more effective and realistic way. Thanks.
I wouldn't chat with strangers sitting on a bench with or without a phone. I say this as someone who often walks in parks without taking out my phones. If there's a claim that my not talking is affecting other people's health, I'll counter claim that such a burden of socializing is a kind of peer pressure, and it is negatively affecting my mental health.
> We are simply wired to function in social groups.
A stranger on the bench is not my social groups. I have my friends and circles to whom I talk, and that's good enough for me. Talking with utter strangers on random occasion is stressful to me; I'm quite certain that I'm not wired to do it.
> If, instead of scrolling HN, you talked to me, both our lives would improve.
Citation needed. The cohort that wants to talk to random strangers in my experience 1) significantly overvalue their opinions 2) seem unbothered by any behavior or body language saying "please leave me alone" and 3) are not nearly as interesting as they think.
Just because I'm outdoors doesn't mean I signed up to be bothered by randos.
> If, instead of scrolling HN, you talked to me, both our lives would improve.
It might be just my big city upbringing but the random people chatting me up in public almost always want something from me I would rather not give them. Most of them want my literal money. Either by scamming me or by just begging. Those who don’t usually want to tell me about their faith and try to get me converted.
Not saying it is all interactions. Have a few positive ones too, but the wast majority is not.
The reason I am very skeptical about talking with strangers is evidence based and has nothing to do with phones. In fact it predates smartphones by decades.
The idea that baning phone usage is going to make people less lonely is in itself preposterous. If you see me on my phone in public most likely i’m talking with one of my friends. If you are feeling so lonely that you want to force me to interact with you instead of them, then maybe you are the one who has a problem? Like join a club, invite people over for some board games or volunteer.
I grew up in a small suburban area where a lot of my learned behaviors came from being a mall rat. Since that was the major place I socialized (in the arcades), you quickly learned how to try and signal you're not willing to talk or engage with people. Mainly because malls had a ton of smaller stalls staffed with sales people who would immediately try to pull you aside if you even gave them a side glance and try to sell you a phone plan or other things.
I believe this is most likely a big city mindset (for good reason).
After living in London a few years and returning back home, I realised how defensive and wary I'd become of stranger interaction.
In London people might be trying to pickpocket you or sell you something, but in smaller towns I've found most of the time people are genuinely being friendly or asking for directions etc
It might come as shocking, but it used to be the case that one could meet new people in the street, because the probability of positive human contact dwarfed the scammers or beggars you describe.
Couples that met on a bus commute was a trope with a basis in reality; nowadays everyone's isolated, headphones on, eyes glued on a phone. The first reaction to human contact in public spaces is one of distrust and defence.
> The idea that baning phone usage is going to make people less lonely is in itself preposterous.
It's not magic; it's a signal, a public statement.
> It might come as shocking, but it used to be the case that one could meet new people in the street, because the probability of positive human contact dwarfed the scammers or beggars you describe.
That sounds good. I was in my early twenties when smartphones went from a curiosity you heard about on the TV to a reality in many hands. Scammers and beggars masively outweighted positive random contacts even before. Phones and headphones did not cause this where I have grown up.
One of the most famous experiments that prove exactly this were done in the NY subways. (In the eighties) on mobile, so don't have a link to the paper at hand.
As an introvert the last thing I want is random people deciding that me trying to enjoy some peace on a park bench is license to try to "improve" my life by talking to me. Almost every stranger who has thought they were "improving" my life by talking to me, has either had no impact, or actively made it worse.
Plus, it's such a culturally dependent thing, Americans are known for always engaging in little bits of random conversation and pleasantries with total strangers, but other cultures can see it as either cheap and shallow or weird and creepy, and of course if someone sees it as either of those, it isn't going to help their loneliness.
> If, instead of scrolling HN, you talked to me, both our lives would improve.
Talking to random strangers in public is generally very awkward and unpleasant for me and I don't see how subjecting myself to that would improve my life in the general case.
Me too. But science tells it's the reverse. Obv. statistics, so it doesn't apply to your personal situation.
Yet, I, introvert++ have had the best moments when travelling, talked to random strangers or exchanged beers, music and stories when stuck in transport. This still comes out as net positive for me in all the decades of having awkward conversations, unwanted attention or just social interaction. I won't give up those hundred of situations that made me uncomfortable for the few that truly changed my life.
The last thing my introverted-ass wants to experience is someone assuming that they're making my life better by randomly chatting with me on the street.
I spend all day at work talking with people, being in meetings and having said human contact. Outside of work I prefer to control that contact, hence why I walk around in public with big obvious headphones on.
But smoking is banned in certain places punishable by fines. So, why not publicly scrolling while walking down the street? You can't drive while distracted (ignoring the fact every dumbass does it), so why not make distracted walking punishable?
Lets ban walking while talking too then, that is also distracted walking, and as any fast walker can attest to, people walking slowly while absorbed in conversation and hogging the entire width of the sidewalk are only second to people weaving through pedestrians on bicycles in causing trouble.
Amen. There's about a half dozen sidewalk activities I would want to stop before I got to looking at a phone. Talking loudly, walking multiple people abreast, stopping without "pulling over", using any kind of vehicle (unless required for mobility), walking out of a door into the sidewalk without paying attention.
People on their phones rarely get in my way. I live in a big city and walk everywhere and it really isn't a problem. I wonder if people in smaller cities/towns are less adept at walking and using their phone, because people seem to get very upset about it. I only get upset when people stop in the middle of the sidewalk, which sometimes involves a phone and sometimes not.
I suppose "by some measure" means "by none whatsoever"? Tobacco sales are at lowest point for 50 years, and even occasional usage is close to 50y low.
I remember when you couldn't go anywhere without smelling cold tobacco, even in trains and buses, not even talking about might clubs and restaurants... Now even outside many smokers are considerate and will avoid smoking in your direction, especially when you have kids, which was definitely not the case 20 years ago!
But among youth the prevalence of smoking is increasing again, even if they buy less tobacco.
ETA: I guess you are objecting to my "worse than ever" characterization, and you are probably right, but it's shocking to drop into France where youth smoking is visibly more common than it was 15-25 years ago, mother-daughter smoking is a thing, young adult smoking might be only 40-50% but that's hard to differentiate from 100% and it's 10x higher than some other western nations so it seems crazy.
The word "ban" is doing a lot of work here. As I read (and commented)
earlier it's merely an informal decision by the village mayor that
smombies are to be discouraged.
The headmaster of a school who says no to phones probably has more
clout.
What amused me in that article was the kid who said he needed GPS to
find his way around... in a village of 2000 people.
Before smart phones came along I walked around reading a book. I carried one in my pocket at all times, and any moment I wasn’t forced to speak to someone I whipped it out and read. With the palm pilot I started reading project Gutenberg books on a device. With the iPhone I switched to kindle books.
Antisocial does as antisocial does, and no right wing ban on it will prevent me from scrolling, whether it be on vellum, wood pulp, or oled.
> The village has also approved a charter for families on children’s use of screens: no screens of any kind in the morning, no screens in bedrooms, no screens before bed or during meals.
Yikes. Who actually wants the government regulating something like this?
If there's one thing the French are particularly gifted at, it's sticking the government's nose deep, deep where it strictly does not belong.
Even more amazing: when that happens, no one seems to notice that a huge line has been crossed, because by now, they've been shafted that way so many times, it's just fairly normal.
Being friendless has a higher negative impact on lifespan than smoking. It's not a big stretch to link phone use to the huge increase in depression, anxiety, and poor social skills. And just like smoking, phone use in public isn't limited to the person using it. You can't exactly have a conversation with someone who is on their phone. I find myself pulling my phone out whenever my companions also do so.
If this seems a bit heavy-handed, it's because damaging and addictive habits require collective action to stop. No one walks down the street in San Francisco and tries to convince heroin addicts to stop for other peoples' good. No one tries to tell drunks and alcoholics to stop overdoing it.
They are definitely early, and possibly the first place to do this, but they will surely not be the last. Our youth have been ruined by cheap, omnipresent, and never ending social media content. This is a step in the right direction to make public spaces social again.
Strangers out on the street are largely out doing something or going somewhere and are unlikely to want to strike up a conversation.
People who are friendless ought to get a job, volunteer, get a hobby, join a group, go to a social space instead of expecting strangers to entertain them.
You aren't entitled to other people's time. You should try to earn it by doing something together with people that both enjoy. I volunteer at a cat shelter for instance. Feed some cats, play with the kittens then shoot the shit with the other volunteers.
I never understand where it comes from, this idea that an unplanned social interaction in public necessarily constitutes one person choosing to waste the time of others, or that no one ever has any choice but to let an unwelcome interaction persist indefinitely. It gives the impression of a somewhat socially impoverished style of life, but I assume that's no more accurate a perspective than anyone else's.
I think this opinion differs both geographically and generationally. Uban/young/northern people are less apt to want to socialize with strangers. Neither preference is inherently wrong I tend to think the strangers you are discussing know better than you what is or isn't a waste of their own time.
For practical purposes most folks just aren't apt to have anything useful to contribute in 3 minutes. I'm 43 and I don't think I have EVER got anything useful out of such an interaction. It's just pure social petting like monkey's picking bugs off one another and I don't get anything out of it nor feel obligated to do it when walking around. I don't feel socially impoverished because I have actual social interactions in contexts which I feel are useful or beneficial.
My theory is the people that have more need of such social petting are aggrieved at changing social standards. It's just not my problem.
"Like monkeys picking bugs off one another" is a hell of a thing for a hominin to say. I take your point about geography and generational change, and I don't think you're wrong, but I'm also not at all convinced this is a healthy habit for a species remarkably social even among primates.
I'm not sure how to address the idea that prior acquaintance is a requirement for speaking to anyone, or being spoken to.
I remain unconvinced this is other than an impoverished way of looking at the world. If anything, it seems much more to me now also a self-impoverishing one.
That's not the claim, the claim is that "prior acquaintance" is a pretty big part of social grooming.
I'm just saying to be slow to use monkey habits as a reference when critical pieces are so different. I'm not particularly arguing about what humans should do. Merely pointing out that the human situation is more unique than previously implied.
I didn't introduce the figure, only riffed on it to try to make my point more clear. If it's become a distraction, we should indeed discard it. That said, unique or no, I don't think a situation in which no one is willing to speak to or be spoken to by anyone they don't recognize is one that's especially ordinary for this species either. Certainly it has been anything but in my lifetime, and not only for happening to grow up in a place that wasn't Boston or Seattle.
One of the things I've loved about Baltimore for the quarter century I've lived here has been exactly that it differed in this, but lately that hasn't seemed very much to be the case, and that bothers me, especially to see happen in such a relatively short time.
I'm not inclined to haste in accepting it as normal, especially in the wake of a pandemic that seems to have significantly accelerated a process of cultural disintegration in at least the US. Things were not like this at all five years ago, and it legitimately frightens me that people seem to struggle to remember that, because it means I have to wonder what else may have come to be thought normal five years hence.
If I go to a cat shelter it's to help cats and interact with cats, how dare you steal that time from me with your simiesque jibberjabber!
There's nothing specific to any context† that would let presuppose that anyone's up for socialisation. The only thing in common is that two people have volunteered to feed cats. It is just as much a commonality as me noticing someone in a bus or park reading a book and saying "hey I've been meaning to read that one, WDYT of it so far?".
The only way to know, is... to address the person, thereby taking a risk at either robbing them of a bit of time, or - $deity forbid - meeting someone nice, if for a fleeting moment. They are of course at liberty to turn the attempt down, a perfectly valid response that should be treated with utmost respect.
† well, except things like parties or blind dates.
It puts you in the same space at a time when your attention isn't fully engaged by other matters nor the task at hand with the same person for hours every week.
Furthermore at least some conversation is apt to be started for functional reasons.
This creates the space, opportunity, and time for meaningful conversation and interaction. Contrast this to standing in line for food together for 2 minutes with someone you aren't apt to ever meet again.
I don't get where this hyperbole comes from. Wasn't every generation "ruined" by this, that or the other thing? We need to maintain some perspective. The youth are the more relevant ones here, not us.
I would note that friendship has never been defined by the casual and vapid interactions at the grocery store. My longest lasting friendships have been ones I formed on irc 30 years ago and still go on, despite only rarely speaking face to face.
People who don’t understand something that didn’t exist when they grew up assume it must not be possible. People assume that games crush creativity, that social interaction online is not actually social interaction. These same biases based on “the way we did it” show up in the RTO debate and other areas of society that are being changed with a new mode of interactions.
Human beings are remarkably adaptable, and I don’t think for one second that online interactions are necessarily worse. I do think we are going through a transient period where as a society we adjust, and transient periods are rough. But as we learn to exist with these new modes of living we, as a social whole, will simply adapt how we interact and live, create new social rules about how to best exist with these new tools.
As we did with language, written words, books, newspapers, telegraphs, radio, telephones, television, etc. Every one of these was greeted with fear and disdain, and social disruption as we settled through a period of transformation. This one is no different.
Hand wringing and bans and teeth gnashing will happen, won’t help, and won’t alter the course of a single thing. Better, IMO, to lean into learning how to live with these advances in a healthy way and teach your children that. Banning them from learning the complexities of a new social medium until they’re old enough to get into serious trouble will only hurt your kids.
> As we did with language, written words, books, newspapers, telegraphs, radio, telephones, television, etc. Every one of these was greeted with fear and disdain, and social disruption as we settled through a period of transformation. This one is no different.
My position doesn't come from resistance to change. It comes from seeing statistics like this: https://nypost.com/2023/06/19/number-of-teens-who-dont-enjoy... and from seeing how social interactions in person have degraded as smartphones became pervasive.
>Banning them from learning the complexities of a new social medium until they’re old enough to get into serious trouble will only hurt your kids.
And yet this is exactly what we do with alcohol. You cannot buy or consume any until the age of 21. Do you think we should simply trust children to self-moderate alcohol consumption?
This is my point about transient periods. What makes us believe that this trend is more than social adjustment to major change? That as a society we don’t have good social coping mechanisms for the new modes of communication and that over time we will adjust as we adjusted to all other disruptive changes?
I don’t think children are, by and large, heavy drinkers regardless. These laws are more rooted in prohibition and Puritanism than science. Society prior to age laws didn’t collapse, and alcohol was available to children for at least ten thousand of years. In fact America generally has significantly worse problems with destructive alcoholism than the rest of the world, where the relationship with alcohol isn’t as obsessively restrictive.
If your world view is formed by an article in the New York Post, and doesn’t even start to account for correlation vs causation, I don’t really know what to tell you.
And yes, we should trust people to learn self moderation for alcohol. It works very well across most of Europe. Puritans should be fucked off at every opportunity.
From my perspective the ban has to be a plus. At least the mesmerized wouldn't be blindly walking across roads whilst glued to their screens and frightening the hell out of motorists who are trying to avoid them.
So it's not going to work, because they would not need it if people could gone without phone, and people who can't won't stio just because a bunch of other people will tell them it's better.
Social pressure doesn't work with addicts. Espacially if said addict are to a tool that also makes some tasks 10 times faster.
It's considered rude to interrupt someone who's reading. Reading takes you out of a social situation. When someone is on their phone they're still present enough to talk to. They're very different activities.
This is the very definition of small government. Anything less is no government, and the only people who, after seriously thinking about it, seriously want no government, are organized criminals, extreme sociopaths, and extreme survivalists who are already living in isolation.
Fifteen years ago I pulled out my point and shoot camera while on tourism in a random city in Turkey. I wanted to take a picture of a beautiful flower bush outside a shop. The shop keeper rushed out and scolded me not to take pictures and proceeded to tell me to appreciate the beauty with my eyes.
The moment stuck with me. Of course he was right. But he was fighting a cultural tsunami.
From the beginning of adulthood to about mid-20s I was a "live in the moment" kind of guy. Then I started taking photographs. The latter is a way better way for me to live life. Now, sometimes as I walk to my desk the photo display switches to a moment that brings me joy and memories. It's really wonderful. Big fan of photographs.
And there's so much of Turkey I wouldn't remember without the photos. Good times good times.
I went to three days of a convention in 2016[0]. By the end, the whole thing was so vivid in my mind I could walk around it in my head and remember every little detail. Eight years later, blurs of shapes and colors and sounds are all I have without the photos I took and the words I wrote. Taking notes helps, but a photo captures all those details I don't think to note in the moment.
"Those who might check their phone’s map when lost are instead being encouraged to ask for directions."
Having Interrailed across northern Europe and travelled within a variety of cities without an internet-connected phone, I am now confident in declaring that the average local is terrible at giving directions! Attempt to ask how to get to the nearest metro station or bus stop, for instance, and each of the friendly residents you ask will direct you in an entirely different direction. Of course, you'll also get your fair share of unsolicited travel advice: in Brussels, I believe I have now heard more instructions for effective fare-dodging than I have actual directions!
As a result of the typical denizen's questionable geography knowledge, I've now made sure I have a good offline map before embarking on any journey. If I know approximately which railway or bus lines I'll need to use, I'll download timetables for them as well. Of course, I could print out a dozen maps in advance - there's nothing inherently electronic about a map - but spurning maps entirely and asking for directions just won't cut the mustard!