I always feel conflicted when I see this problem phrased as "smartphones". I understand why but at the same time I wonder how much, if any, it detracts from solving the actual problems.
The article discusses the usual surveillance capitalism and social media stuff[0] that we're probably all pretty familiar with here. But where I feel uneasy is the blaming on the device or technology itself. Smartphones, and even social media, could be amazing technologies. We use them poorly, but that's a different issue in of itself. It is their utility that is a big part of why they won't go away. But that also makes them ripe for abuse. Anything with value will be such a target. So even though I know "smartphones" is a shorthand for "surveillance capitalism and 'engagement based' social media", I do worry that it abstracts the problems too much, making it just seem like by getting rid of our smart phones we could fix everything.
We've been using this tactic for years and tbh, I don't think it has had any meaningful success. Maybe it is time to try a different approach? I think the average person can handle a little nuance. And by breaking it down a little more we might be better at addressing the real issues. No one wants to give up the GPS in their pocket, but in 2025 do we really need that data to leave our device (except when explicitly sharing with someone like friends and family)? We don't need to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
[0] To anyone who works on feed ranking systems and engagement:
I'm genuinely curious, are you seeking to better measure engagement and look at ways to optimize different kinds of engagement? From the outside it seems like only the lazy measurements are being used, and let's be honest, arguing on the internet generates more comments and misinformation as well. Any bad comment that gets lots of responses falls down the ranking (top viewing), only to end up being replaced with similar comments which causes the process to repeat. Brandolini's law, right?
But what are the issues? Is sentiment analysis just not good enough? Is a lack of desire? Momentum?
I would seriously like to understand. Feel free to respond with an anonymous account. And please don't downvote responses, even if you disagree. Maybe we all can have an understanding that we can use votes to express our interest in the conversation (upvoting honest but disagreeable responses, downvoting quips and "mic drops") rather than our to express our agreement with a particular comment? We get to decide what votes mean, right?
[1] Follow-up
Can we at least tone down notifications? It is absolutely insane how complicated it is getting. I need to leave my bank notifications on to ensure I get notified of a fraudulent charge but that same notification system is being used to advertise to me savings bonds and referral bonuses. Same thing happens to emails. Let's be honest here, too many false alarms makes people ignore true alarms. Alarm fatigue is a real thing. If you don't believe me, watch what people do with a faulty smoke detector in an apartment. They just remove it!