Smartphones: C or D?

you could also turn the phone to grayscale, which makes it less alluring. i tried to do that but the thing that i was addicted to was text anyway.

I don't play games on my smartphone (so many of the popular ones are hard to use for me on a screen, give me a controller by God), maybe browse Facebook & Twitter too much when I'm bored but I wouldn't trade access to all the maps and knowledge and music and podcasts for that time back.

the access to knowledge is the biggest drawback. it wasn't so much that i was concerned about "wasting time." i felt like it made me into a cyborg. instead of being someone who used the internet too much, the internet and i became one.

getting lost is part of life. encountering a word you don't know and not being able to look it up is part of life too. god intended for people to listen to music while lying in bed in their rooms.

I feel you on that fusing with the internet sensation.

http://nymag.com/selectall/2016/09/andrew-sullivan-technology-almost-killed-me.html

andrew sullivan has obviously been lurking on this thread and ripped off some ilxors' insights and/or experienced some of the same things himself

yo treesh have you read this one? https://www.amazon.com/Information-Diet-Case-Conscious-Comsumption/dp/1491933399

might be up your alley. I'm notably skeptical of prescriptive lifestyle books but liked it.

The only time I've regretted what technology has brought me is last 10 minutes I spent hate reading that Andrew Sullivan article.

thanks for the tip mh, that seems interesting.

having a dumb phone has been incredible. the only problem is that i just don't respond to messages now -- even fb messages, which i could do on my laptop -- and i think i might have angered people.

Sullivan is just experiencing his come-to-Jesus moment -- noticing that his unhealthy relationship with his smartphone and the web was reducing him to quivering jelly. He's right in describing his own experience as ultimately debilitating, but he betrays himself by saying his experience is "our" experience, his addiction is "our" addiction, and "we" now interact with "one another" in these grotesque ways.

Everyone whose experience matches Sully's will nod and feel deep kinship, while those who don't share his perspective will think, "what's with this "we" thing, buster?"

he tends to write in this sweeping, generalizing way that can be infuriating. i appreciate that he is exploring this topic though. it often feels like an elephant in the room, like no one remembers that just a few years ago people weren't on their smartphones all day

I very much remember that smartphones didn't used to exist. That's one advantage of being over 60 years old. You can remember how it once was and can compare it with how it is now.

The only time I've regretted what technology has brought me is last 10 minutes I spent hate reading that Andrew Sullivan article.

― Jeff, Tuesday, September 20, 2016 3:08 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

You don't have to waste time posting either because we can fill in the blanks of your one opinion at this point.

Got a better smartphone life's good

Smartphones don't kill people, people do

Aimless's take on it reminds me of a self-improvement books or speech you start reading or listening to without realizing that's their angle, only to get completely lost in the phase where they try to build a rapport with the audience.

Like, I'll buy your first couple points with some skepticism, but this thesis makes no sense, buddy.

Everyone whose experience matches Sully's will nod and feel deep kinship, while those who don't share his perspective will think, "what's with this "we" thing, buster?"

― a little too mature to be cute (Aimless), Monday, September 19, 2016 10:38 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

OTM -- I forget if I posted this in another thread, but I started to pay a lot more attention in public to how much people used their smartphones, and what I noticed is that it's actually a very small percentage of people who are on them constantly. On my morning subway ride it's like 1/10 to 1/20 people using a smartphone at a given time, and most people don't seem to touch one the entire ride (I guess they just like enjoy their thoughts or something).

I *am* one of those people constantly using my phone, but I noticed that there are only a couple of other people in my office who also do, and, perhaps not coincidentally, they seem like the most miserable people.

i used up like 95% of my data early this month so i just turned off cellular data and that's been a big improvement. i was a latecomer to smartphones - i had a flip phone until last year - and while i generally love having one there are a few times i don't like using it and find it hard to stop:

1) in the car, stopped in traffic
2) when i'm with my kids

#1 has been easy to stop w/ cellular data off, my commute is way more enjoyable tbh, i have a beautiful drive along the lake and through some cool neighborhoods in cleveland and when there is traffic i am happier looking around then looking at my phone
#2 is tough, i don't see my kids a ton during the week b/c of work and it just feels like i am missing out on small but v important moments when i'm looking at my phone at home

On my morning subway ride it's like 1/10 to 1/20 people using a smartphone at a given time, and most people don't seem to touch one the entire ride (I guess they just like enjoy their thoughts or something).

really???? I'm going to have to pay a more granular kind of attention but I feel like the percentage is way way higher on my commute (L from Lorimer to E from 8th to 23rd ave). And among people walking on the sidewalks in brooklyn and chelsea I feel like it's at least 30% of walkers who are glued to their phones.

imo the people using their phones in the office all the time are miserable because they're trying to type responses on ilx when there's a perfectly usable computer at their desk but they're afraid of getting busted

(I guess they just like enjoy their thoughts or something)

surely these are the people on the train to be suspicious of

Maybe it's something about the demographics coming from my part of Queens, idk. But also walking to the office from the train I don't see *that* many people on phones, it's just that the ones who are stand out.

maybe you're right. again, I'm going to try to observe this more soberly on my next trip

Not sure where else to ask this.

I have a Galaxy S5. A few days ago my phone stopped connecting to the cellular network for data. I can phone and text, but no internet unless I'm on wifi.

I've toggled Airplane mode and Mobile Data on and off. I've restarted and power cycled. I've uninstalled my antivirus/firwall. I've tried different browsers. Nothing works.

I'd appreciate any help or guidance.

throw it away and get a flip phone

otm

Your carrier is the best place to start.

Went back to the iphone :(

I was ignoring too many text messages and no longer able to participate in longstanding zingful group texts. I learned a lot from this experiment -- mainly that simply removing a piece of gadgetry cant give me the mental clarity i am looking for

which iphone

Just the one i had before. 5? Before they became humungous.

welcome back to 2016?

welcome back brother

now you gotta upgrade to the se and you're golden

tris i love to say i hate to say i told you so so i told you so

godspeed, young man

sellout

I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one. It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route, and make a beaten track for ourselves.

it's tough out there for a millennial

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/has-the-smartphone-destroyed-a-generation/534198/

There’s not a single exception. All screen activities are linked to less happiness, and all nonscreen activities are linked to more happiness. Eighth-graders who spend 10 or more hours a week on social media are 56 percent more likely to say they’re unhappy than those who devote less time to social media. Admittedly, 10 hours a week is a lot. But those who spend six to nine hours a week on social media are still 47 percent more likely to say they are unhappy than those who use social media even less. The opposite is true of in-person interactions. Those who spend an above-average amount of time with their friends in person are 20 percent less likely to say they’re unhappy than those who hang out for a below-average amount of time.

...

Social-networking sites like Facebook promise to connect us to friends. But the portrait of iGen teens emerging from the data is one of a lonely, dislocated generation. Teens who visit social-networking sites every day but see their friends in person less frequently are the most likely to agree with the statements “A lot of times I feel lonely,” “I often feel left out of things,” and “I often wish I had more good friends.” Teens’ feelings of loneliness spiked in 2013 and have remained high since.

This doesn’t always mean that, on an individual level, kids who spend more time online are lonelier than kids who spend less time online. Teens who spend more time on social media also spend more time with their friends in person, on average—highly social teens are more social in both venues, and less social teens are less so. But at the generational level, when teens spend more time on smartphones and less time on in-person social interactions, loneliness is more common.

So is depression. Once again, the effect of screen activities is unmistakable: The more time teens spend looking at screens, the more likely they are to report symptoms of depression. Eighth-graders who are heavy users of social media increase their risk of depression by 27 percent, while those who play sports, go to religious services, or even do homework more than the average teen cut their risk significantly.

Teens who spend three hours a day or more on electronic devices are 35 percent more likely to have a risk factor for suicide, such as making a suicide plan. (That’s much more than the risk related to, say, watching TV.) One piece of data that indirectly but stunningly captures kids’ growing isolation, for good and for bad: Since 2007, the homicide rate among teens has declined, but the suicide rate has increased. As teens have started spending less time together, they have become less likely to kill one another, and more likely to kill themselves. In 2011, for the first time in 24 years, the teen suicide rate was higher than the teen homicide rate.

Other parts of the article show that teens, since 2012, became less likely to do things in person, cutting their risk factor for drugs and alcohol and things like that but significantly increasing their feelings of isolation and depression and their suicide risk. This squares with my impression of the climate of the social internet, which veers from braggy faux positivity to withering irony to the straight up poison proffered by trolls. The internet feels like home so much of the time that it is jarring to take a step back and think about what it really is, or has become, and how alienating that is.

scary stuff, isn't correlation mistaken for causality tho?

The article is more rigorous than the headline suggests. They say that the mechanism by which smartphones are related to these things is unclear. They are definitely related to less sleep and worse sleep quality which alone could explain at least some of the mental health outcomes.

The charts in this article of different mental health indicators show profound discontinuities starting in 2012, when the gadgets became omnipresent. Anecdotally, I totally feel like these things have transformed social life in ways that are more profound than usually recognized. Whether this means they are altogether harmful idk, i suspect there are serious harms and this data seems to support that.

I don't buy it. American children have plenty of reasons to be increasingly isolated and depressed since 2012. Without comparisons to epidemiological data from other countries (e.g. japan is fucked up!) I don't know if I buy any screen-time-is-terrible doomsaying. "Screen time" and electronic interaction has been consuming a greater proportion of American waking moments for five generations. We accidentally elected a crappy Andrew Jackson knock-off, but we also elected Obama twice. We put a man on the moon and built the Internet (so that a Brit could invent the Web - can't win 'em all). Wake me when these kids are bigger assholes than Boomers.

people tend to get really defensive about stuff like this, if I were a therapist I'd tent my fingers and then scribble meaningfully in my notepad

but to that our current society's use of social media is equivalent to the family watching Ed Sullivan because it's both technically "screen time" is a false equivalency

smells like bullshit to me, we're a lot better / more open about diagnosing mental illness now. & tbh "the internet" is a step up from dropping spit hangers on people at the mall or the other low level criminal-ish stuff we used to do to "hang out" before smartphones

The problem isn't that they are assholes, the problem is they've been roped into an insidious kind of digital addiction before their brains were fully developed, an immersive environment that promises them connection and social approbation but that is also, fundamentally, a front for data mining and targeted advertising.

Xp Thomas

I feel like the internet is less dangerous, but worse -- as in weirder and more alienating -- than smoking cigarettes outside the skatepark. We have these stupid half experiences now.

I could be wrong. I don't want to seem like an alarmist, and I've made a lot of friends through the internet, discovered a lot of music, etc. But there has to be drawbacks to living this way, especially for young people.

you're right, ums, it is a false equivalency, the families that grew up watching Ed Sullivan together also breathed in unhealthy amounts of lead from diesel motor exhaust, and the kids glued to snapchat on their phones are getting to endure the hottest summers the planet has seen in millenia

Treeship it is practically your job to be an alarmist

I haven't had a smartphone since i lost it 3 years ago. Missed it for the first couple of weeks but never replaced it. I'm on the internet a lot as I'm a developer and i take my laptop with me most places, so I'm not 'off the grid' in any way.

There does feel something different about now to when I lost my phone. A feeling of people doing battle with their enemies on their phones, the Trump effect seems to have magnified it so its difficult to disentangle from that too. People seem as addicted to Trump as they are to phones and/or internet. But when I get on the bus in the middle of the day its full of pensioners on their phones casually advocating for mass internment of people.

Last time I visited my parents my mums smartphone buzzed with some kind of notification seemingly every 3 minutes.