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Feeling uncomfortable when leaving phone at home shouldn't be normal

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Re: Feeling uncomfortable when leaving phone at home shouldn't be normal

#111

Post by aeturnum »

panaffa wrote: post #72

I'm part of the new generation and I think the opposite. I am obsessed with my phone and the Internet. And I don't think it's bad. It's extremely stimulating in a way real life is orders of magnitude worse at. Point of reference, born around 2000. There's no going back for me. I want my phone at all times to have access to billions of possible thoughts, pictures, memes. It's literally a god like power.

I generally agree, but I would put it a little more neutrally:

I've setup my life so that I expect the people I care about to be able to reach me at any moment. It's something I desire. I don't want them to hold back telling me something important (or even something trivial). I've invested in the ability to be present (even in a limited way) at nearly all times. It's an enormous benefit to me and to the people I care about and I feel very strongly it's a valid way to live.

At the same time, I experience no discomfort with choosing to leave my phone at home. It's fine to have periods of focus on the circumstances that physically surround you. The same systems of contact I generally surround myself with make it easy for me to arrange periods of isolation.

The problems comes up when I am forced (by circumstance or by authority) to isolate myself in a way I don't consent to. That does feel uncomfortable and it should feel uncomfortable - not because humans should "naturally" live in some particular way - but because I am being stopped from living in a way that I want and causes no harm to any other being.

Edit: neutrally in the sense that I think this way of living was introduced to me by the era in which I live, but I don't think our era forces it on us. You can still live other ways, but I don't think we need to fall back on circumstance to justify it.

Re: Feeling uncomfortable when leaving phone at home shouldn't be normal

#112

Post by dylan604 »

b112 wrote: post #31
sysadm1n wrote: post #11

Well not that I live in a bad neighborhood or anything like that, but you really don't know what could happen at any given moment, and need to phone emergency services. This is not paranoia (well maybe it is), but paranoia doesn't work retroactively, you have to be proactively paranoid. If you're concerned about privacy buy one of those cheap Nokia dumbphones that old people use. Keep your smartphone at home, and swa…

I'm not really blaming you here, this attidue is very normal these days, but a mere 25 years ago, most people had no cell phone, no mobile phone, and never, ever suffered mishap as a result. (Inconvenience is not what I call a mishap) I grew up in the country, and a few times had to walk 20 miles home, due to a dead car. Being a rural area, after 10pm, I might see 1 or 2 cars the entire walk home (4 hours and a bit).…

> the city. If you can yell loudly, literally thousands of people can hear you.

and roughly 1/3 of them will yell at you to shut up, half of the remaining will just silently wish it, with the remaining not noticing

Re: Feeling uncomfortable when leaving phone at home shouldn't be normal

#113

Post by feanaro »

panaffa wrote: post #72

I'm part of the new generation and I think the opposite. I am obsessed with my phone and the Internet. And I don't think it's bad. It's extremely stimulating in a way real life is orders of magnitude worse at. Point of reference, born around 2000. There's no going back for me. I want my phone at all times to have access to billions of possible thoughts, pictures, memes. It's literally a god like power.

Are you really being honest when you say you don't see this as bad? I couldn't help but peer into your comment history and notice you also talk about emptiness and loneliness. This, I think, is the price to pay for constant access to billions of possible thoughts, pictures and memes at all times.

Why is it that you think you need that?

Re: Feeling uncomfortable when leaving phone at home shouldn't be normal

#114

Post by xoa »

b112 wrote: post #31
sysadm1n wrote: post #11

Well not that I live in a bad neighborhood or anything like that, but you really don't know what could happen at any given moment, and need to phone emergency services. This is not paranoia (well maybe it is), but paranoia doesn't work retroactively, you have to be proactively paranoid. If you're concerned about privacy buy one of those cheap Nokia dumbphones that old people use. Keep your smartphone at home, and swa…

I'm not really blaming you here, this attidue is very normal these days, but a mere 25 years ago, most people had no cell phone, no mobile phone, and never, ever suffered mishap as a result. (Inconvenience is not what I call a mishap) I grew up in the country, and a few times had to walk 20 miles home, due to a dead car. Being a rural area, after 10pm, I might see 1 or 2 cars the entire walk home (4 hours and a bit).…

>but a mere 25 years ago, most people had no cell phone, no mobile phone, and never, ever suffered mishap as a result.

But that just isn't true. Being able to use a mobile radio to summon emergency services earlier has statistically significant association with improved outcomes [0]. It isn't just about what happens to you, it's about what you can do for others you come across in emergencies. 25 years ago, I'd need to drive a minimum of 15-30 minutes to the nearest house and hope I was able to use their landline (or break in I guess?), or maybe there would be an open service station within that distance (often not). People died (still do) or suffer serious injury getting lost in the woods very close to home. I nearly did once in the 90s, cross country skiing and being foolish. I went out in the afternoon on a gray, gray overcast day, zero shadows, fresh snow, and as a skier since a child I felt overly confident and didn't take a normal fanny pack even with light (back then of course lamps were a lot crappier pre-LED), water or whatever. It got dark fast, by this point about 15°F, and I got completely, utterly confused. I knew I should be close and indeed reconstructing afterwards (finding my own tracks later in the week) I was within 1/2 mile or so. But it was a half mile through old forest without that clear trails. Fortunately I had had some outdoor training and recognized this was genuine trouble, I didn't try to go back in the woods but crossed a frozen swamp and broke for a farm field, and then from there to an actual house whose light I could see and use as a guide about a mile and a half away. Even if no one was home there'd at least be a road I could follow, fortunately there was someone and I could beg to use their landline and call a friend. But there were directions of travel I could have gone there with no one, and no road, for 6+ miles of mountainy forest. And if one succumbs to panic, it's easy to end up spending hours going in circles, or even without because sense of direction is hard with zero markers, no stars or the like. Or are fine, but fall and break a leg or something. This happens. People die. I and friends worked as First Responders and later mountain rescue volunteers of various levels. It's all well and good to say "well you should never do that" but humans are imperfect, even experienced ones. Having access to quite accurate near term weather forecasts alone is just massive, a boon a lot of us don't stop to appreciate.

Obviously, as tools cell phones have other risks. It's possible to get overconfident with them and take risks that negate the benefits. People have died due to silly things like literally stepping backwards over a cliff trying to get the perfect selfie. And there are other negative effects as this article talks about. Nevertheless, it's wrong to claim everything was fine back in "the good old days" when life expectancy was significantly lower [1]. You don't have to have a fancy smart phone to have a basic comms, GPS and map, but that doesn't negate how valuable those can be.

----

0: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22142669/

1: https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/life...

Re: Feeling uncomfortable when leaving phone at home shouldn't be normal

#115

Post by ChuckMcM »

mostlysimilar wrote: post #30
dsr_ wrote: post #14

"Stories set in the Culture in which Things Went Wrong tended to start with humans losing or forgetting or deliberately leaving behind their terminal. It was a conventional opening, the equivalent of straying off the path in the wild woods in one age, or a car breaking down at night on a lonely road in another. A terminal, in the shape of a ring, button, bracelet or pen or whatever, was your link with everybody and e…

So I had a feeling "without a terminal" was a typo and I wanted to look up the exact quote. I googled the sentence and expected the right quote to be at the top, but all Google gave me was results for helping people with terminal cancer cope with their coming death. It was only after I appended "Ian M Banks" that I got the result I was looking for. I'm honestly surprised Google failed that search so hard.

Not surprised. The way I see it, Google is trying so hard to monetize search that they have left behind any pretense of information retrieval.

Re: Feeling uncomfortable when leaving phone at home shouldn't be normal

#117

Post by Forgeties79 »

croes wrote: post #110

Why are they still called phones? I think the phone function is one of the lesser used ones. More appropriate would be Smartcamera, if you don't want to call it a computer

My theory has been because they are still largely used as a communication device, which was the primary function of a phone. Text messaging/messaging apps in general are a core feature literally 100% of users need.

Also because these devices started as phones of course.

Re: Feeling uncomfortable when leaving phone at home shouldn't be normal

#119

Post by apson »

dnndev wrote: post #90

After reading the title to my wife she quickly said most likely a man wrote this article, possibly an older gentleman. As a female having a phone at all times makes her feel more comfortable for emergency use.

I wrote the article. I am 19. Trust me I really love to do things like these which have chances to promote a good behavior. For the same reasons, I am off of Instagram for a year now (believe it or not, I think this would be really difficult for the current generation).

Re: Feeling uncomfortable when leaving phone at home shouldn't be normal

#120

Post by ChuckMcM »

Interesting, of course I grew up in a time where you couldn't have a phone with you (economically) while on a trip with the family. My concern was if something happened how would I reach help. Not what was going on with the world. Different perspective to be sure.
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