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An open letter to India’s youth: Get off that smartphone. It can destroy you

timesofindia.indiatimes.com

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Re: An open letter to India’s youth: Get off that smartphone. It can destroy you

#81

Post by 1123581321 »

altitudinous wrote: post #70
hnarn wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This whole idea that being without a phone is somehow liberating — and just not using it is definitely not as pure and wholly amazing as being completely without it — is to me a silly and predictable response to the very real drawbacks of high tech modern life. Phones have value. That’s why people use them. Pretending they don’t and that we’re all brainwashed doesn’t change that reality. Here’s an example: I want to…

You don't need a phone for any of the activities you described. Stores are pretty much open business hours, or 24 hours, they follow the same pattern. Or just show up and it is closed. Go somewhere else. Public transport runs to a schedule. Just show up and transport will show up within n minutes anyway, whether you know the time or nor. Or just use the timetable at the station. Yes, no music, just your thoughts. but…

Phones are useful when that predictability breaks down, especially when others are involved in the changing plans.

Re: An open letter to India’s youth: Get off that smartphone. It can destroy you

#82

Post by swiley »

IMO it's not "smartphones" but the OSes built by apple and google that encourage unhealthy and addictive usage.

None of my pre "smartphone" PDAs did this, and I don't feel myself sucked into the mindless addictive patterns on my PinePhone (although that may be because Firefox can be sluggish on it.)

Re: An open letter to India’s youth: Get off that smartphone. It can destroy you

#83

Post by coldtea »

UncleMeat wrote: post #71
coldtea wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Phones have value. That’s why people use them Now try the same line but with heroin, or fast food, or whatever people use to their detriment... Besides, anything that has value also has an opportunity cost, which can be much more important than the value inherent in the thing... > Here’s an example: I want to take public transport to a grocery store. I walk out the door. I don’t have my phone. First of all, if I do…

You’ve never got to a store only to realize they are closed on Mondays or something?

Yes, but I've never considered it important enough to say

"I'd better be saddled with a device that can be addictive, that I spend hours on end each day on, that everybody I known can harass me at any time, any where on, that keeps tabs on all kinds of things including my every movement

-- lest I repeat this visited-a-closed-store blunder...

I'm not saying that a smartphone is not immesely useful -- I use mine for notes, video, photos (including pro work), phonecalls (duh), messaging, and so on.

I'm saying that "gives us things like grocery store times or gps routes" (or many combinations of such things) is hardly an argument for smartphones as "indispensable", nor a reason not to consider their, often serious, downsides (behavioral, cognitive, social, privacy, etc)

Re: An open letter to India’s youth: Get off that smartphone. It can destroy you

#84

Post by oakpond »

st1x7 wrote: post #57
oakpond wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Create what exactly? I'm under the impression that you can hardly create anything on a phone except for cat movies and shopping lists.

You're already looking too deeply into this. Just create, call yourself a creator and call your output content. Don't think about it too much.

Got it, I'm a creator of comment-section content.

Re: An open letter to India’s youth: Get off that smartphone. It can destroy you

#85

Post by altitudinous »

1123581321 wrote: post #81
altitudinous wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need a phone for any of the activities you described. Stores are pretty much open business hours, or 24 hours, they follow the same pattern. Or just show up and it is closed. Go somewhere else. Public transport runs to a schedule. Just show up and transport will show up within n minutes anyway, whether you know the time or nor. Or just use the timetable at the station. Yes, no music, just your thoughts. but…

Phones are useful when that predictability breaks down, especially when others are involved in the changing plans.

That is why it is so liberating.

Re: An open letter to India’s youth: Get off that smartphone. It can destroy you

#86

Post by nxc18 »

altitudinous wrote: post #85
1123581321 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Phones are useful when that predictability breaks down, especially when others are involved in the changing plans.

That is why it is so liberating.

What is it liberating you from? Your own empowerment?

Re: An open letter to India’s youth: Get off that smartphone. It can destroy you

#87

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

jhbadger wrote: post #27

I'm old enough to remember when it was TV that was supposedly wasting the time and destroying the youth. Before that, it was comic books. And movies. And even in the 19th century people were complaining about novels. Yes, in theory it is better if people do something constructive rather than just enjoy entertainment. But people can't be 100% in productive mode 100% of the time.

In the time of Socrates and Plato, the thing destroying the world was writing.

Re: An open letter to India’s youth: Get off that smartphone. It can destroy you

#88

Post by ramanujank »

hnarn wrote: post #64
altitudinous wrote: post #58

An interesting experiment is to leave your phone at home when you go out. Try it. I don't mean take your phone anyway but don't use it. That is not the same thing. The value in this experiment is not to have your phone to fall back on. Initially you feel anxiety, but it soon becomes quite liberating. Having to look at road signs to navigate, relying on personal interaction or reading notices to find things out etc et…

This whole idea that being without a phone is somehow liberating — and just not using it is definitely not as pure and wholly amazing as being completely without it — is to me a silly and predictable response to the very real drawbacks of high tech modern life. Phones have value. That’s why people use them. Pretending they don’t and that we’re all brainwashed doesn’t change that reality. Here’s an example: I want to…

This is a particularly non-issue as far as India goes. This applies to a lot of other places though.

So, in the spirit of the original article, I buy it.

Re: An open letter to India’s youth: Get off that smartphone. It can destroy you

#89

Post by nxc18 »

altitudinous wrote: post #77
talentedcoin wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is like saying leaving home without your wallet is liberating. It’s true in a sense, but it’s also damned inconvenient depending on what you want to do. Then again, if you truly feel anxious without your phone all the time, maybe it’s worth a shot ...

Well, clearly not having money is not comparable to not having a phone. But you are just proving the OP original article. Why not just try something different rather than pointlessly arguing about the intricacies of it all on the internet

Is it different? You have posted the same ‘intricacies on the Internet’ article several times on this page already, so perhaps you should consider your own advice?

Not having money is comparable to not having a phone - my phone is my money and it is far better at being money than the plastic in my wallet.

You should give ‘The Pessimists Archive’ a listen. You might realize why hearing the same argument about why you should liberate yourself from {insert tech here} is tiring. The argument against smartphones is no different from the argument about umbrellas, refrigeration, books, mirrors, Walkmans, radio or frankly anything else that doesn’t come naturally with a cave.

Re: An open letter to India’s youth: Get off that smartphone. It can destroy you

#90

Post by tgv »

skrebbel wrote: post #14

I think this is a good message, but by making the phone the problem I fear the author misses a fundamental connection to the youth he addresses. The issue is what you do on a phone, not the phone itself. In fact, phones make it a lot easier to create and not just consume, than televisions did back in the author's youth. And I bet there were similar anti-TV op-eds in newspapers in those days that the author would have…

> The issue is what you do on a phone, not the phone itself.

Now try that with tobacco. Indeed, in a very technical sense of the word, cigarettes nor mobile phones are not the issue. But telling people "just stop smoking" didn't do the trick.

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