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A practical guide to quitting your smartphone

nytimes.com

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Re: A practical guide to quitting your smartphone

#291

Post by throw4847285 »

tristor wrote: post #252
Syonyk wrote: post #83

I am so glad to see this backlash. It's been a long time coming. We've tried smartphones out for the past... oh, decade and change. They've been around longer, but were niche enough that they didn't dominate society, and even around the start of the iPhone era, "Crackberry" and such were common enough terms (with "Put all your devices in the center, whoever picks theirs up first buys the next round" being a fun game…

I'm curmudgeonly enough that I'd tend to agree with you, however as someone who travels often I don't think I could ever give up my smartphone. I actually had a smartphone and some other similar devices well ahead of them being popular, and the reasons pretty much have not changed. Here are the things I don't have a reasonable alternative, because it's not just the capability, it's the capability backed by the Intern…

As an aside, I know for a fact that 4 (ridesharing) is possible without a smart phone... if you speak Yiddish. In Williamsburg, Brooklyn I saw an ad for an integration between flip phones and Lyft geared towards the Chasidic population many of whom believe that it is forbidden to own a smartphone but OK to have a flip phone. I haven't dug into the internal reasoning from a Jewish legal perspective, but from the outside, it's a fascinating place to draw the line.

I also find it fascinating from an engineering perspective. I wonder what other apps they've managed to integrate into the flip phone?

Re: A practical guide to quitting your smartphone

#292

Post by causal »

darrmit wrote: post #267

I did this back in 2012 after using Android and iPhone for the previous 4-5 years and despite really finding it a good experience, even then it was becoming difficult to live without maps and a camera. I've been thinking about it again, though, and the one thing I've tried to find is a decent keyboard phone for texting. I don't mind going without a browser, etc. on my phone, but I do find communication via text to be…

Same story for a lot of people: Smartphones are indispensable because of like 5 utilities, that come attached to like 50 more things that clamor for your time and attention.

Super useful:

- Maps / Travel

- Messaging/Calling

- Camera / Gallery

- Search / information lookup

- Banking

- Authentication

But then there's:

- Ads everywhere

- Notifications clamoring for attention, even from the useful apps.

- 10 flavors of social media (which has to include HN, even if it's less intrusive than most).

It's like the utility and connections it gives you are bait. I seldom feel at rest, never fully trusting an app on my phone to want to give me the best experience possible.

Re: A practical guide to quitting your smartphone

#293

Post by ProllyInfamous »

debok wrote: post #219

I found the following 3 measures quite helpful to make my smartphone less intrusive in my daily life: 1: I don't bring my smartphone into my bedroom. My bedroom is a personal and intimate space, no need for the outside world to barge in via smartphone. 2: I disable or silence every notification I get. The only time my phone draws my attention is if I am getting a phone call, my wife texts me, or if I get a Pagerduty.…

Re: #2

My phone is like yours, it only rings for a certain few. I do not know what "Pagerduty" is, but I purchased numeric telephone paging service [to a "beeper"] and give this number to the few important people in my life that need to be able to get my attention.

Surprisingly, paging services still exist across metro-US, even in 2024 [I use pagerdirect, no affiliation].

#4: I rarely leave my house with a cell phone, and it is heavenly. Asking anybody to "leave their phone behind" invokes constant anxiety in most travel companions...

Re: A practical guide to quitting your smartphone

#294

Post by throw4847285 »

Smartphones have certainly made my life significantly worse. I'm so glued to my smartphone that it has even replaced other kinds of time-wasting considered to be frivolous. I don't play video games, I don't watch TV. I'm just scrolling all the time. It's hard to explain to my therapist that, no, I would like to spend more time playing video games. From there I think it will be much easier to build in more time for reading books or being a good partner and parent. The smart phone feels like the biggest obstacle.

Of course I know that it takes two to tango, and if I didn't have treatment-resistant ADHD the phone wouldn't have it's hooks in me the way it does. Back to the treatment drawing board, I guess.

Re: A practical guide to quitting your smartphone

#295

Post by jncfhnb »

rideontime wrote: post #253
jncfhnb wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I can count several differences between those two things.

Perhaps you’d like to share them then?

Side note… I find it kind of ridiculous that my comment got flagged. There are many similarities here. Higher level entity controlling your existence, world entirely dictated by that entity, “true self” just temporarily existing in the provided world but it’s not the “primary” plane of existence. I really struggle to see how this is problematic to discuss.

Re: A practical guide to quitting your smartphone

#296

Post by not_the_fda »

Aurornis wrote: post #165
Syonyk wrote: post #83

I am so glad to see this backlash. It's been a long time coming. We've tried smartphones out for the past... oh, decade and change. They've been around longer, but were niche enough that they didn't dominate society, and even around the start of the iPhone era, "Crackberry" and such were common enough terms (with "Put all your devices in the center, whoever picks theirs up first buys the next round" being a fun game…

> The results are solidly in: They're an utter disaster for most people, and for society at large. In no particular order, they ruin social interactions in public situations (think "talking to people in the grocery line" - though I've seen fewer people on their phones lately and can get some conversations going), I’m in the age group that is just old enough to remember adult life before everyone had smartphones. Hone…

I’m old enough to remember before everyone had a cellphone, let alone a smart phone. People interacted more in real life, you would chat with random strangers throughout your day. It brought people closer together, there was more of a community, and things were less polarized. Sure you would meet some crazy people, but it gave you something to talk about back home. You would also meet interesting people and even get some interesting experiences.

Now everyone is in their own social / information bubble, oblivious to their own surroundings. We are more polarized, lonely, and with less real life friends.

Re: A practical guide to quitting your smartphone

#297

Post by Syonyk »

didntcheck wrote: post #287
snarkyturtle wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really it's just social media that's terrible. If all the social media apps go away, you still get left with all the above and can contact people you know. Algorithmic recommendations and flame wars with strangers are the worst things about smartphones — and they're not limited to them either.

Yep. It's kind of annoying to see people be so fatalistic about their self control that they think the only solution is to throw the baby out with the bathwater. I carry my smartphone everywhere for the useful functions detailed above, but the closest I get to social media is some idle HN commenting if I'm unexpectedly waiting around somewhere. It's really not hard to just not spend all day on Twitter of whatever. Th…

Once you've gotten rid of a lot of the more aggressive functions of a smartphone, I don't find the tradeoffs of carrying a large, fragile glass screen worth it.

My current flip device (Sonim XP3+) is mil-spec tough (in the sense of "Is tested to a range of military standards and passes"), lasts a casual week on battery (or two, if I shut it down at night, which I frequently do), and I can use it just fine with gloves on - which isn't a problem because the usable temperature range is radically wider than smartphones too. It also has a far louder ringer and speaker than almost any smartphone out there.

But more importantly, to your second point:

> I do resent things that require smartphone though.

The way to fight this requires "not carrying a smartphone." If you obviously have a smartphone and refuse to install the apps to do [whatever], you're just being cantankerous and can be safely ignored. When you pull out a flip phone and act baffled, it really surprises people. I don't think a lot of people under the age of about 30 even realize there's anything that's not "Android" or "iOS" out there (or if they do, they're still shocked that anyone would use it). So because I object to "smartphones required," and I'm old enough/stubborn enough to help counter that world, carrying a flip phone is a way for me to help fight back against the "smartphone as default way of interacting with all reality" thing that's been creeping in for quite a few years now, accelerated with the touch-free stuff during Covid.

Re: A practical guide to quitting your smartphone

#299

Post by kbf »

I think it’s weird how we talk about phones like they are the problem and not social media. I love my phone, it’s one of the most useful things I own. I also had problems with wasting time and attention on social media and I solved it by uninstalling whatever apps I felt had a negative effect on my life.

Re: A practical guide to quitting your smartphone

#300

Post by nehal3m »

throw4847285 wrote: post #294

Smartphones have certainly made my life significantly worse. I'm so glued to my smartphone that it has even replaced other kinds of time-wasting considered to be frivolous. I don't play video games, I don't watch TV. I'm just scrolling all the time. It's hard to explain to my therapist that, no, I would like to spend more time playing video games. From there I think it will be much easier to build in more time for re…

In a lot of cases I'd argue getting rid of the thing costs you more than you'd gain but in your case a year long retreat might help a lot. It sounds like your phone (and the services running on it) is literally siphoning away your life, maybe getting rid if your home internet connection (gasp!) should be part of the consideration.
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