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The Death of Social Reciprocity in the Era of Digital Distraction

blogs.scientificamerican.com

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Re: The Death of Social Reciprocity in the Era of Digital Distraction

#71

Post by AnimalMuppet »

ryandrake wrote: post #51
wallflower wrote: post #9

Distractions are our lives now. You can choose to minimize them. Start by turning off “new email” notifications. You may not miss much by not knowing the moment an email arrives. If something is truly important and urgent, they will usually use multiple means to contact you, like calling you. You can also graduate to removing almost all notifications from your phone. I say almost all because the beauty of Slack is th…

Do Not Disturb mode, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Your life will change. No notifications, no vibrations, no dings, no texts, no calls. It's wonderful. You, and only you should be in charge of when you use your phone. Not some random caller or E-mail sender, not some app developer's "growth hacker", not AI running on some service's backend. Take back control of your attention!

> You, and only you should be in charge of when you use your phone.

Life happens. Your wife falls and breaks her wrist. Your mom has a heart attack. They want you now, not when you deign to look at your communications. And until you do look, you won't know if it's that she broke her wrist or that she had a heart attack.

If you are disconnected enough from other people that nobody has a valid demand on your attention, then you're part of the problem of social disconnection.

Re: The Death of Social Reciprocity in the Era of Digital Distraction

#72

Post by jimmaswell »

wallflower wrote: post #9

Distractions are our lives now. You can choose to minimize them. Start by turning off “new email” notifications. You may not miss much by not knowing the moment an email arrives. If something is truly important and urgent, they will usually use multiple means to contact you, like calling you. You can also graduate to removing almost all notifications from your phone. I say almost all because the beauty of Slack is th…

It's all just never been a problem for me. I see an email in the notifications on my phone and either archive it there or swipe it away so I'll see it when I'm at a pc. I get lots of notifications from various things all day but they're just there and not an issue if I'm doing something else.

Re: The Death of Social Reciprocity in the Era of Digital Distraction

#73

Post by 4ntonius8lock »

I like that they bring up distractions. The addictive nature of online media is an issue, but that isn't the only thing going on.

People are hyper sensitive now, and at least here in the US, there is a sense that 'someone one is to blame, and that person needs to be punished'... and that sense is way stronger than the sense of 'is this person even guilty'.

Where I'm from, I give hitch hikers rides all the time.

Since I've lived in the US, I don't. If the hitch hiker was to have drugs on them, and we got stopped, I could easily be liable for this, and go to jail and lose my right to be in the United States. Those are some high stakes. Especially since I don't have a $250,000 lying around to pay for a criminal defense attorney.

And lower stakes happen everywhere. The other day I was hiking (with my expensive hiking gear) in some back-country trail and I watched as first the dad took a shot, then what appeared to be the mom. So I offered to take the picture of the whole family. The mom yanked her camera to the side when I offered (as if afraid I'd steal it) and tersely rejected my offer (a single, cold and distrustful "NO")

One day I sat down at a restaurant and there was a really nice new cell phone on the seat. In my home country, I would have taken it, and waited to receive a call from the owner to give it back. Not so in the US. I wouldn't want to be accused of stealing it. Instead, I called the staff to take it away. Maybe they stole it? I don't know, but I don't want the liability.

When you do away with presumption of innocence, there is a strong chilling effect.

Re: The Death of Social Reciprocity in the Era of Digital Distraction

#74

Post by usrusr »

fffernan wrote: post #50
qwsxyh wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is such an exclusively American problem.

Disagree. Plenty of perverts in many countries. Do some googling about the guys in trench coats on trains in Japan.

I believe this was less about perverts than about pervert awareness or whatever it should be called

Re: The Death of Social Reciprocity in the Era of Digital Distraction

#75

Post by andreilys »

thanatropism wrote: post #31
sak5sk wrote: post #18

It's worse than that. It is all baked into our daily tools. Even HN as a community and a forum aids in distraction. Pretty much any community that lets you form an echo chamber around yourself (all social networks, and communities including HN)commands your attention by making you interact with people who think like you. If this were done in real life it would be much different, but the online medium of it falls shor…

The big R = Ritalin? That's surprisingly plausible/feasible.

I think R = Regulation

Re: The Death of Social Reciprocity in the Era of Digital Distraction

#76

Post by ryandrake »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #71
ryandrake wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do Not Disturb mode, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Your life will change. No notifications, no vibrations, no dings, no texts, no calls. It's wonderful. You, and only you should be in charge of when you use your phone. Not some random caller or E-mail sender, not some app developer's "growth hacker", not AI running on some service's backend. Take back control of your attention!

> You, and only you should be in charge of when you use your phone. Life happens. Your wife falls and breaks her wrist. Your mom has a heart attack. They want you now , not when you deign to look at your communications. And until you do look, you won't know if it's that she broke her wrist or that she had a heart attack. If you are disconnected enough from other people that nobody has a valid demand on your attention…

Yet somehow we were able to handle emergencies before mobile phones existed. I’m not willing to sacrifice quality of life 99.9% of the time just to be able to handle the odd 0.1% outlier situation.

People usually can wait. For the rare case where they can’t, there are even ways to poke through Do Not Disturb mode.

Re: The Death of Social Reciprocity in the Era of Digital Distraction

#77

Post by ksdale »

Bodell wrote: post #55
hoorayimhelping wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something I've been making an effort to do more is to try to have a softer look on my face when I'm in public. I tend to be pretty intense looking, especially when I'm thinking hard, which I usually am when I'm walking or standing in line. I've noticed that consciously thinking about something that makes me very happy, or something I find funny, will make that happy emotion show on my face. When I project happy into…

This is definitely something I had to work on a lot (and am still working on) as I've gotten older. Some time After 25 it became apparent to me that I was leaving the house with full armor on. This was getting in the way of my being apart of the world and making me into more of a passive observer than active participant. Now, I think it is much better to leave with the defenses down. Which means a "softer face" for s…

I agree 100%. After purchasing a home and joining the local neighborhood social media scene, it's unreal how suspicious people are of the people and cars in the neighborhood (even ones that belong to residents!). We live in as safe of a neighborhood as you possibly could, and people are still paranoid.

People lament a loss of community and then without irony, get on FB and worry that every unfamiliar vehicle passing through the neighborhood is a potential burglar.

We can try to meet everyone who comes through and have a community, or we can think every stranger is dangerous, but we can't do both. Having a community requires some vulnerability, as you say.

Re: The Death of Social Reciprocity in the Era of Digital Distraction

#78

Post by univalent »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #71
ryandrake wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do Not Disturb mode, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Your life will change. No notifications, no vibrations, no dings, no texts, no calls. It's wonderful. You, and only you should be in charge of when you use your phone. Not some random caller or E-mail sender, not some app developer's "growth hacker", not AI running on some service's backend. Take back control of your attention!

> You, and only you should be in charge of when you use your phone. Life happens. Your wife falls and breaks her wrist. Your mom has a heart attack. They want you now , not when you deign to look at your communications. And until you do look, you won't know if it's that she broke her wrist or that she had a heart attack. If you are disconnected enough from other people that nobody has a valid demand on your attention…

iOS has a feature where you can setup certain contacts to override your 'do not disturb' settings. Check that out.

Re: The Death of Social Reciprocity in the Era of Digital Distraction

#79

Post by clairity »

HarryHirsch wrote: post #65
qwsxyh wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is such an exclusively American problem.

The other American problem is completely unsocialized kids . Children are kept with their family or in tightly controlled social environments. They never experience unstructured environments or adults not from their family. From time to time, a colleague brings their child to work (because childcare fell through, or something), and they get to interact with strangers! It's weird, they are afraid, they don't know what…

i agree that it's unfortunate that kids are so often isolated from adults. however, "disciplining" has a connotation of force, so you may want to reframe that to redirecting behavior and attention positively. parents usually don't mind the latter.

and to the OP's point, i'm not a particularly social person, but i love smiling and waving at babies. it's as rewarding to you as it is to the baby. =)

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