This is always such a weird flex. There are so many things I use my smartphone for, 99.9% of which is NOT being a short leash for anyone to communicate with me. I can't remember the last time I had a conversation on my phone.
Spotify/Audible/etc in my car. Google maps/Apple maps. When I go camping I have overlanding/camping/blm apps that are constantly updated with openings, etc. Weather apps so I know to put the top of my jeep/car on to not get rained in. Uber/Lyft of which I use multiple times a week. Bank apps. Investment apps. Checking the news/hockey/whatever when I'm out and about. Looking up facts my friends and I argue over while knocking back beers. Checking to see if anyone has stolen/broken into my car. Launching my botvac. Controlling my AC from anywhere. Plex..
Everyone survived without them, sure, but everyone survived without computers for a long time and now they've given us massive convenience.
It's far more a computer in my pocket than a telephone.
I resisted having a phone at all until 2013. People were amazed even then.
I ended up getting one for development. It proved useful enough that I used it myself, but I've managed to limit usage to WhatsApp (and SMS), web reading (like HN now) and not much else.
Lots of Web stuff (especially financial stuff) requires 2FA so SMS is now more-or-less required.
People have learnt though that my phone is always on silent, and I mostly don't check it during the day. I don't have email on it, and I don't do social media. I treat it as "my device" not as an "interruption device".
Of course the joy of them is that for every person it's different. You can use it whatever way you prefer.
As someone younger who grew up in a time where you would get a cell phone during teenage years, I can't say I empathize with your view of "my device" vs "interruption device".
Although there are likely an overwhelming majority of my peers who do have an interruption device phone, I refuse my phone not be My device, and I explicitly buy phones that I know I can customize (unlock bootloaders, flash roms, or simply just know it has the interop capabilities I need to make it my own). Where this is in opposition with your statement is that I do have social media, mail and even work email on my phone, I just chose to customize it to not be interrupting to work and personal life (though obviously that line is different for everyone).
Of course I'm not saying your way is wrong at all, just sharing my experience.
Not GP but this thread is great. I was among the first in my city school to get a cell phone and text in ~2001, and then the last to get an iPhone in ~2015, and then stop carrying it most of the time in ~2016/in airplane mode and then cease to have a cell phone at all in ~2022. Texting kinda ceased after 2013 when I moved states temporarily and went thru some stuff, never resumed.
I'm notoriously unreachable, perhaps even offensively unreachable, and I'm starting to look for time and money savings to justify getting a new one/repairing the SE if possible. Eg. I'd save $10+/mo in Starbucks refills if I had that app, enough of those cases to cover the bill.
My next phone will be like parent poster's. I had iOS setup with no notifications except Venmo and a priority email alias. Currently I'm using an Unbuntu laptop where I can get to Google Voice that was activated with a Mint Mobile trial on Starbucks wifi. Am homeless, actually been able to secure and hold a couple labor/hospitality jobs like this.
Mines usually on silent too because certain individuals abuse it and I don't like hearing it ping and boop and beep every 30 seconds. None of this is urgent stuff.
I have notifications disabled on everything except for when my credit cards are used, calls and texts. Even then, I have a whitelist for call notifications and a blacklist for text notifications, and silent hours at night that only my mother can bypass. I am no longer bothered by every nagging app or fake urgency.
I do the same. I hate "notifications" and very few things are so potentially important that I need to be interrupted by them. Effectively zero notifications have any real urgency. Also apps and websites treat notifications like an invitation to spam you. I default deny every request for notifications.
My phone stays on silent, and I use it more like a pager and email program. I check it it 4 or 5 times a day, but it serves me and I don't serve it. I imagine if I had kids I'd be a bit different with it and not block anything from them, but otherwise, being able to get my attention a few times a day when I check it should be enough for anyone.
I'd very much like if everyone was forced to use buzzer only. The annoyance of people having to let everyone know they have a phonecall which cannot wait is borderline insulting.
In my organization all people have work phones, but they are rarely used to call people. When I get a call from coworkers it is usually emergency stuff where it makes sense for them to call me — rarely outside of my work hours. All the rest are emails or chat messages, which I can read when I decide to do so.
I am okay with that.
Although a smartphone related work horror story I heard once, was somebodies boss who communicated the plans for the week for 12 employees in one 40 minute rambling speech message, which may or may not involve crucial need-to-know information at minute 35 and 30 seconds of information that affected you.
Alternatively, we get better at ignoring notifications.
The same way people somewhat adapted to urban noise by better insulation and noise proofing, having a phone in dnd most of the time is I think a must nowadays.
You still can pay attention when you want, potentially at some regular intervals you set for yourself, and ignore it the rest of the time.
Honestly if you were able to live without a phone until now, living without Gmail (or what you call a mainstream email) is pretty easy.
There are still plenty of email providers left and right that will allows you to subscribe without a phone number. You’ll probably have to pay though. What may be harder in this precise use case is getting a domain name (which is not mandatory but really helpful if you want to be able to switch providers easily) but I’m pretty sure you can still register domains with a landline number.
I've been maintaining my own mail server for almost 20 years. The thing though, I found that sometimes I end up needing to use one of the bigger email providers like gmail, apple mail, etc because otherwise my mail is classified as spam.
Probably depends on how digitized things are where they live and how much of that they interact with.
Where I live, going without a phone would be incredibly tedious, as it handles bus and train tickets, tracking for hourly busses, no ATMs within walking distance and it's basically standard for local events to do "sign in" by having you scan a QR code and so on.
Not having a phone would mean budgeting much more time for going anywhere and having to carry change for the bus.
But if you have a car, you get to bypass most of that, no need to worry about tickets or tracking, ATMs don't need to be very local either. Then if you don't really care about attending local events, you get to avoid everything.
If on top of that, if your job is accomodating, you could conceivably go without a phone entirely. My job would crawl to a near stop if my coworkers had to wait for me to be in front of a laptop/desktop to respond to them.
The NUMBER 1 most annoying thing about not having a phone in the modern day is ticketing services / events. The second is Uber/Lyft/etc (though less of an issue in cities with public transit).
Thanksfully in many cities in the world regular taxis do still operate. In my city they aren't necessarily more expensive than Uber. It depends of the kind of route and time of the day/night. Sometimes you pay more, sometimes you pay less.
Here in Germany, the "Deutschlandticket", a country-wide public transportation ticket, is currently valid only via smartphone or "Chipkarte" (smart card). Unfortunately that smart card isn't available everywhere and won't be before early next year. It seems rather like a policy snafu then intended though [1].
I’ve been seeing more and more events that only have digital tickets. They say it almost like it’s a point of pride… all the paper they’re saving, or something.
