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Philippines tops world internet usage index with an average 10 hours a day

theguardian.com

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Re: Philippines tops world internet usage index with an average 10 hours a day

#61

Post by wyclif »

ciguy wrote: post #54
zavi wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's very condescending towards Filipinos.

Clearly you haven't been here and seen it in action. Groups sitting around the dinner table, or drinking, never interacting with one another or looking up from their phones. There is no cultural stigma to sitting on your phone and ignoring your friends like there is in other countries and it's rather terrifying to see it in action.

I'm a Westerner in the Philippines now, and just the other day I went out to a restaurant and there were a group of young people having dinner at the next table. As they ate, they all were staring at their phones and not conversing, just eating. I thought, "oh well, after they finish eating they'll probably be social over drinks." Nope, I was wrong. After the plates were cleared away, they all remained zombies glued to Facebook. Not a word was passed between any of them. It's really sad to behold what Facebook is doing to the Philippines. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say what people are doing to themselves via Facebook.

Re: Philippines tops world internet usage index with an average 10 hours a day

#62

Post by wyclif »

mmgutz wrote: post #20

Data is cheaper than calls. I don't even bother with call or text plans when I'm in the Phils. It costs a reasonable $8/mo to get 8GB of data if you use the right refillable promos. With that said, internet is so darn slow and unreliable it must be messaging services. It's hard to get real work done from the Phils as a remote software developer. Thank goodness for Tmux and SSH.

I'm a remote dev from the US in the Philippines. I do a lot of work in tmux and ssh for sure.

DSL or fiber internet in the Philippines is the slowest and most expensive in SE Asia. It's because of the high degree of political corruption here. Cartels and monopolies thrive, while consumer choice dies.

Re: Philippines tops world internet usage index with an average 10 hours a day

#63

Post by ygkkojr6 »

dannyr wrote: post #22

This is mostly Facebook since it's zero-rated where most Filipino mobile users are prepaid. Young and old, rich and poor Filipinos are glued to their phones like zombies all day browsing Facebook.

I don't understand what the ISPs are earning here?

We have zero-rated Facebook/WhatsApp plans here in Spain but they are only available for certain, somewhat expensive plans. If Facebook or WhatsApp were zero-rated for cheap plans, nobody would pay for data, including myself.

Re: Philippines tops world internet usage index with an average 10 hours a day

#65

Post by nmca »

tfolbrecht wrote: post #23
mmgutz wrote: post #20

Data is cheaper than calls. I don't even bother with call or text plans when I'm in the Phils. It costs a reasonable $8/mo to get 8GB of data if you use the right refillable promos. With that said, internet is so darn slow and unreliable it must be messaging services. It's hard to get real work done from the Phils as a remote software developer. Thank goodness for Tmux and SSH.

I have intermittent connectivity issues, and [mosh]( https://mosh.org/ ) has been super helpful with typing lag, reconnecting.

+1 for mosh - useful even on non-sptty connections because of laptop sleeps.

Re: Philippines tops world internet usage index with an average 10 hours a day

#66

Post by dannyr »

zavi wrote: post #32
dannyr wrote: post #22

This is mostly Facebook since it's zero-rated where most Filipino mobile users are prepaid. Young and old, rich and poor Filipinos are glued to their phones like zombies all day browsing Facebook.

That's very condescending towards Filipinos.

I (the original commenter) am Filipino. Born and raised in the Philippines.

Re: Philippines tops world internet usage index with an average 10 hours a day

#67

Post by ciguy »

wyclif wrote: post #61
ciguy wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clearly you haven't been here and seen it in action. Groups sitting around the dinner table, or drinking, never interacting with one another or looking up from their phones. There is no cultural stigma to sitting on your phone and ignoring your friends like there is in other countries and it's rather terrifying to see it in action.

I'm a Westerner in the Philippines now, and just the other day I went out to a restaurant and there were a group of young people having dinner at the next table. As they ate, they all were staring at their phones and not conversing, just eating. I thought, "oh well, after they finish eating they'll probably be social over drinks." Nope, I was wrong. After the plates were cleared away, they all remained zombies glued…

Same here, I'm American but live in Manila at the moment. There are many things here that happen due to lack of cultural precedent such as rampant unchecked phone use during social outings. One can only hope that the culture will evolve eventually to make this type of antisocial behaviour less acceptable.

Re: Philippines tops world internet usage index with an average 10 hours a day

#68

Post by dannyr »

bdibs wrote: post #52
nedp wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Filipino here. I blame carriers here for making Facebook free-of-charge. Yes, good thing that Messenger let's us send messages for free. But the thing is, we can't see images nor visit links unless you get a data pack/promo or connect to a Wi-Fi. Especially news, people can't see thumbnails or click links so they directly jump to wrong assumptions based on what they see and hear from the comments. Some people just lo…

Can you really blame the carriers, at what point does personal responsibility take over?

Carriers are partly to blame for accepting the money from Facebook. They are getting paid.

Yes, personal responsibility is also needed.

Keep in mind though that Facebook has used a lot of behavioral manipulation to squeeze engagement out of its users as much as possible. They purposeful made their product addicting.

In a lot of third world countries, digital literacy is lower than in developed countries so awareness of the bad effects of social media is low. Heck, even the US, didn't realize how bad addiction to social media is until the past few years.

Re: Philippines tops world internet usage index with an average 10 hours a day

#69

Post by medecau »

geekpowa wrote: post #5

Unsurprising Philippines is at top of list. World leader in adoption of tech that enables social interaction. From 2007: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-philippines-textmessages/... Another. Undated. Avg sms per month per subscriber = 600. Or 20 a day. Which seems low, I'm sure I've seen figures alot higher than this. https://www.techwalla.com/articles/how-to-send-a-text-to-the...

The second link is dated 2015-03-31. It's in the page source.

Re: Philippines tops world internet usage index with an average 10 hours a day

#70

Post by AmericanChopper »

kartan wrote: post #60
bdibs wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you really blame the carriers, at what point does personal responsibility take over?

> at what point does personal responsibility take over? Maybe a good approach can be: - When there are millions of people with otherwise functional lives falling for unhealthy behaviour then you blame the carriers. - When there is a very small percentage of the population engaging in that behaviour, then is personal responsibility. For example, personal responsibility cannot be asked for when people lack education.

This is such an unbelievably condescending opinion. Filipinos are not so uneducated that they lack the ability to assess the quality of their own lives. Facebook didn’t invent self-destructive behaviour (to use a hyperbole), it will always be available for people to indulge in. Personal responsibility will always be the only answer to it, and to imply that Filipinos lack the education to implement it is remarkably offensive.
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