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

• k__ 4y ago
  We shouldn't call it phone. Who uses it as a phone these days anyway? For many people it's their life's central information nexus and it's absolutely normal to get uncomfortable when leaving THAT at home.
• hadlock 4y ago
  Cell phone is how my daycare communicates with us. We've only had our daughter in daycare for 3 months now and already we've had (very)two minor medical issues they needed/wanted our input on. It's also the device I use to organize who is picking her up from daycare at the end of the day.
• dangus 4y ago
  I think it's fine to be uncomfortable without your phone. It's understandable: they do so many useful things. However, it turns out what this post is really about is work communication, not about the functionality of phones that enhance our lives. When you're trying to get friends together, find a nice place to eat, and get directions to meet up, having a phone is far better than not having one. I wouldn't want to be without a phone during a car crash or medical emergency, either. In contrast, when it comes to your employer's demands on you, the phone isn't so nice to have around, is it? My suggestion is to set notification boundaries for work-based communication and always be looking for opportunities to leave employers that violate the boundaries in your life.
  • amelius 4y ago
    > I think it's fine to be uncomfortable without your phone. It's understandable: they do so many useful things. The problem is that you can't take what's in your phone and have it somewhere else: for example a web-browser in a public space like a library or an internet cafe. If that were possible, then it would be less of a problem to leave your phone at home.
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    • b112 4y ago
      To everyone in this thread, wanting work and home separation. If you're doing well in tech, then you have cash to enable options. One is, a dual sim phone, and your work sim goes off at 5pm. The same goes for fetching work email. Off at 5pm. Loads of apps to help with this. Without dual sim, there are voip forwarders, a second phone, loads of options.
  • summm 4y ago
    Just have a separate work phone and leave that at home. It's better for a lot of other reasons too regarding you controlling your phone instead of your employer.
• gnuj3 4y ago
  I dont mind leaving my phone as long as I’m with my kids. I cant imagine something happening to them and I didnt know for x-amount of time because I decided to leave my phone.
• _bfhp 4y ago
  This is what meditation is about, but replace "phones" with "everything"!
  • bifftastic 4y ago
    Underrated comment
• CommanderData 4y ago
  Being forced to pay for council parking in the UK using a mobile app is completely astonishing to me, and leaving home without your mobile, or no data or a broken phone can cause you a world of difficulties. I didn't agree to wanting to normalise the removal of parking meters and mandatory app usage just to park your car in a park or highsteet. I'm not sure where this motivation started.
  • hedora 4y ago
    In the US, you already need a phone to charge an EV (of course, the EV has a cell modem anyway, and license plate tracking cameras are becoming ubiquitous too...)
  • bobthepanda 4y ago
    at least individual spot meters were reduced to block meters so that there was less physical infrastructure to maintain. in my city part of the motivation is data collection; rates are adjusted block by block based on the last quarter's occupancy relative to targets, and among other things the app nudges people towards slightly less optimal parking spots that are either cheaper or more available.
    • b112 4y ago
      This data collection doesn't require a smartphone to pay, though.
      • hedora 4y ago
        How would you sell the result to marketers, or warrantlessly track people after the fact without the app?
      • bobthepanda 4y ago
        you can put a QR code on a metal sheet nailed to a post and call it a day. And at least where I live the app option is also accompanied by an SMS number to text payments to. An actual payment terminal requires electricity, a network connection and maintenance. And it has to be rugged to deal with the outdoors environment. If it takes cash, it also needs to be fairly rugged to prevent people from making off with the cash, and the cash receiving bits need a fair bit of maintenance as well.
• isoprophlex 4y ago
  My phone screen was cracked, I had to leave it with the repair place for an hour or two. It was glorious. I leisurely strolled past shops, sat down to eat something without being distracted, and generally enjoyed being outside. I had to ask someone for the time. I resolved to go without phones more often, as it made me feel connected to me environment more, with less stress and reduced absentmindedness. Of course I never did and promptly returned to my 4+ hrs/day of phone time. I am not ashamed to admit I feel somewhat uncomfortable pooping without my phone.
  • silisili 4y ago
    My advice: get a watch. A nice Seiko, Citizen, etc dumb watch. I found myself always pulling my phone out to check the time, then getting sucked in by notifications. Now, I only use my watch to check the time, and find myself pulling my phone out way, way less in public.
    • throwawayboise 4y ago
      I pretty much just know what time it is within about a quarter-hour. I stopped wearing a watch when I realized that.
      • silisili 4y ago
        You know, outdoors or near a window I'm pretty good at that. But I easily lose track of time when indoors, or at night. Especially if for some reason I wake up hours earlier than normal, I'll think it must be 12 or 1AM, only to see that it's barely 10.
    • Izkata 4y ago
      Nah, let's go further and start a ring sundial fad: https://www.amazon.com/Retroworks-Sundial-Ring-Silver-Finish/dp/B00JIUJX7Y https://www.amazon.com/Retroworks-Sundial-Ring-Silver-Finish...
  • 8n4vidtmkvmk 4y ago
    pooping with phone now. now and then i try pooping without it just in the interest of time. and saving my legs from falling asleep. not often though. bad habit.
• eyelidlessness 4y ago
  I feel uncomfortable leaving without my phone, for one simple reason: I’m typically leaving with my pup, and if anything happens to either of us I want to be able to call for help. Pay phones are basically non-existent, people understandably don’t like to let strangers use their phone. It’s just a basic precaution.
  • Invictus0 4y ago
    > people understandably don’t like to let strangers use their phone Sounds like you're projecting here. What's your data for this?
    • cercatrova 4y ago
      I've definitely had this problem. There were times I lost my phone and had to get back home. No one would let me use their phone. It was not until I begged a gas station attendant to let me call someone I knew who could pick me up, that I was able to get home.
    • eyelidlessness 4y ago
      Only anecdata, but I’ve experienced it directly, and I’ve also helped other people out when I saw them experiencing the same. I’m a little surprised by this response to be honest?
      • Invictus0 4y ago
        My personal experience is that I have never had someone decline to let me use their phone. I believe people are default kind and interested in helping others, and it's hard to imagine that in a random sample of say, 5 people, none would let you use their phone for a few minutes.
  • axg11 4y ago
    I have had this same thought in the past. I came to the conclusions that it’s a psychological trick we’re playing on ourselves. The mitigation against such a low risk event is not worth the price we’re paying. - sent from my iPhone
• Giorgi 4y ago
  It's all fun and games till you need to call ER real quick.
  • mwint 4y ago
    Carry a ye olden flip phone for this; they tend to work even without a SIM for 911.
• jamal-kumar 4y ago
  I went without a phone or social media for like half a year and people legitimately thought I died or something Haha
• sysadm1n 4y ago
  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 swap out the SIM from the dumbphone to your smartphone if your threat model requires you to.
  • aiisjustanif 4y ago
    > 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. It would be nice to not live that way sometimes you know? There are places where people aren’t conditioned to feel that way.
    • evilduck 4y ago
      You make it sound sinister like you’re expecting to be mugged, but I’ve called 911 on behalf of others by being the first to come across their roadside accident 2 different times in my life, and the first one wouldn’t have been able to call themselves due to injuries. Not having a phone would have meant leaving the scenes, driving to the next exit and finding a gas station or house, explaining there was an accident and pleading to use the phone, drawing out their time sitting injured on the roadside by several minutes before emergency services were even notified. I’ve also been the first to report tree limbs blocking roads and a water main that burst to non-emergency lines, again expediting services to fix them and reducing inconvenience overall. I’ve never felt like this was some conditioning of paranoia, only that I was enabled to help in ways that I wasn’t able to 20 years ago.
    • id 4y ago
      You know, medical emergencies are a thing. You could always come across someone that needs help.
      • 4y ago
• _benj 4y ago
  I liked that reflection. I’m lucky enough that my manager is very intentional in actively avoiding and mitigating any possible work related anything during the weekends. When I get a call (as opposed to a slack message) it’s only because something is REALLY on fire. This really allows me to disconnect completely from work with the assurance that in an extreme situation I could still be reached. It’s also important to clarify what is considered important because honestly I get a call over the weekend to implement so “quick feature”, that would be a clear signal that it might be time to part ways with such company culture. All I’m saying is, it starts with the individual marking the boundaries and then either talking the the manager or finding a place that respects those boundaries. (I’m aware of some violations of boundaries from bosses that if they’d happen to me I’d likely seek for a restraining order!)
• dsr_ 4y ago
  "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 everything else in the Culture. Without a terminal, you were never more than a question or a shout away from almost anything you wanted to know, or almost any help you could possibly need." --Iain M. Banks, in The Player of Games
  • RealityVoid 4y ago
    First thing I thought about as well. I really think The Culture is very special in its ability to "feel" the future.
  • mostlysimilar 4y ago
    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.
    • ChuckMcM 4y ago
      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.
    • shiftpgdn 4y ago
      Google is optimized around showing ads, not returning relevant search results.
    • manachar 4y ago
      Google has become blinded by metrics focused on giving people what an algorithm things most people want. It's the digital equivalent of going to a restaurant and looking for vegetarian food only to be inundated with gluten-free and other health-fad foods. I suspect their algorithm is in a bit of a doom loop as it's being trained on people clicking worse and worse results of pages that seem clearly written to game the SEO. This is not unique to google. Amazon keeps including things I didn't search for because they want to be "helpful". Indeed, my experience at big box hardware stores is matching this as well. If you go for one simple thing that you know you want, you're presented with an entire aisle of absolute crap that sort of does it but for much more money while the one item you need is out of stock.
• Crabber 4y ago
  People in this thread are conflating "phone" and "smartphone". You can just carry a cheap dumbphone and it works for texting people or emergency calls just fine.
  • id 4y ago
    But then I need two phones. Why?
• mjevans 4y ago
  Disconnecting from work should be fine. That's a boundary most should have outside of high stakes life and death jobs. Even then, coverage by more than one person should be warranted, and paid for. Personal phone? That's my lifeline to civilization if something bad happens. Also an AV capture device.
• vmception 4y ago
  my friend's phone died last year and he 1) couldn't get inside anywhere to charge it because he didn't have his covid vaccine card anywhere 2) couldn't scan a menu to order at the outdoor cafe we found in the mean time it was amusing, it stopped being fun very quickly, but we figured it out. these two scenarios are obviously not as relevant any more but its way beyond "addiction"
  • Areyouabot8 4y ago
    Are people not terrified at the 50% chance the entire society and environment we live in is being engineered to require us to carry tracking and surveillance devices on us 24/7 for sinister purposes down the road ?? I'd argue its even more than a 50% chance after what happened with Australia and Canada recently
    • vmception 4y ago
      I would say mildly disappointed, personally.
• benbristow 4y ago
  I was on holiday once with my friends in Amsterdam. After a few too many drinks and committing a sin and having a wee in the canal (sorry! When a man's gotta go he's gotta go - as an aside what's it with bars, clubs & fast food chains there etc. charging to use the toilet?!) a guy came up to me and started talking to me, can't really remember what he said to me, all I remember is checking my pocket and my new OnePlus 3t phone had disappeared. Karma I suppose. We had another leg of the holiday in Finland (Helsinki) and then back to Amsterdam again for another day before returning to the UK. It was painful where all my friends had their phones and could take pictures etc. and I couldn't. I couldn't even borrow a friend's phone to check emails/Facebook etc. as I'm security conscious and have 2FA enabled on all my accounts, and use a password manager with generated passwords also. My less technically inclined friends called me an idiot. Thankfully when I got back to the UK I was able to get a replacement SIM card the next day from the network provider's store and I had an older Android phone to use for the time being and was able to go through the Authy SMS recovery process to get my 2FA codes back.
  • xen2xen1 4y ago
    I've taken to trying to have a spare blank SIM and old phone with me. The last time I activated a phone I was dumb and left the old one at home on an hour trip. I went through all my accounts and just barely got my stuff to activate on my new phone without my old one. Also pointed out flaws in my 2fa setup, but hey.
• me_smith 4y ago
  I've gotten used to having my phone on silent and most notifications turned off. I leave text and phone notifications on so I can see them on the lock screen when I decide to look at the phone. For moments when I actually need to be aware of any communications or be in sync with family and friends, I can turn on the ringer or turn on specific notifications. I think this has helped me get away from the constant distraction but keeps the utility of the phone near. It annoys me when, during conversations, people constantly check their phone and smart watch every few minutes because of the buzz in their pocket or their wrist. I have also found going on weekend backpacking trips has weaned me off of the phone and technology in general. I would recommend it for those looking to take a break.
• nonrandomstring 4y ago
  I don't think it's healthy or normal to feel uncomfortable without a communications device. It's a sign of dependency. One should be able to put it out of mind and focus on deep tasks, leisure, interpersonal commitments and general real-life living without a neurotic impulse to check and inhabit a digital world. I don't have a smartphone (prefer a landline but keep an old Nokia around too), so my life is more organised around emails and desktop based communication. I recognised back in the 90s that it used to take me hours to "decompress" from tech immersion. I would ruminate on what messages I might be missing, and think through communications in my mind in a quite obsessive way. That was over 20 years ago. These days I'll go for a couple of days without thinking about the internet. I can happily live without a phone for a week or more no worries, and frequently do. It's a long journey and there are constant pressures and temptations to over-use again. I wrote a book about coping with that. It probably sounds as if I'm talking like a cognitive behavioural therapist. That's because I truly believe that smartphone use is fully congruent with addictive behaviours - not just for a few people, as was common thinking a few years ago, but for everybody, and as mounting scientific evidence supports there are numerous genuine harms both individual and societal [1]. In 2022 I no longer feel alone or unusual in this regard, because I see the world is waking up to it. The question then is how we raise awareness of this emerging threat to mental wellbeing, and how we deal with it. Mobile technology certainly has its uses, but we must balance that with social/technological structures that give people ample space to control their own technology, make space and abstain from it as desired. A truly advanced technological society would meet this need. At present the gushing convergence on smartphones as "necessary" panacea is pathological in the extreme, and I am sure, simply fuelled by the profits of the tech industry rather than any underlying "need". Technology is becoming what is being _done_ to us. [1] No I won't. Please have the good manners to Google for yourself (or go back through my many well refernced posts here).
  • com2kid 4y ago
    That's nice and all, but when I travel overseas having a universal translator with me is super cool. Being able to order a safe reliable taxi in most major cities, also super cool. If you don't want email on your phone, don't set it up. But having a map that redirects me around traffic accidents in real time saves me a lot of time. I'm not going to argue against smartphones being horrible little dopamine boxes, because they are, but you can get a smartphone and set it up as a purely utilitarian device rather easily.
• Vladimof 4y ago
  I've been doing this on purpose lately...
• ratsmack 4y ago
  It used to be that pay phones were everywhere, but because of the plethora of cell phones, they have all been removed. So yes, it's a little unnerving to forget my phone at home.
• Salgat 4y ago
  It's for emergencies too. I've had to call 911 before. I also want to immediately know if my wife or kids are in trouble. This is not unreasonable.
• Trasmatta 4y ago
  I wish I could leave mine at home more often, but I need it on me pretty much all the time for my diabetes management.
  • jfk13 4y ago
    How did diabetics manage before smartphones?
    • Trasmatta 4y ago
      Less effectively.
• rschachte 4y ago
  I bought a lightphone. It's expensive and buggy, but it helped kill my phone addiction. Dumb phone with music and maps.
  • 8n4vidtmkvmk 4y ago
    bugs are a feature to make you hate it even more
• ryanchoi 4y ago
  Yeah, I opted for a smaller phone this last upgrade (in what, four years) in hopes of using it less and being less noticeable in the pocket. Used to have this big screen phone with which I wouldn’t have much issue watching or reading stuff on. Now with a much smaller one, “not” having a huge screen to consume media on, making it less attractive to do so, and it’s been working pretty well I think. Couldn’t bring myself to go full dumbphone, er, feature? phone.
  • mysterydip 4y ago
    I find it funny that the 13 mini (2.53"x5.18") is bigger than the iphone 4 (2.31"x4.5") of yesteryear.
• ribs 4y ago
  Mobile phones, particularly smartphones, are incredibly useful devices, particularly while mobile, and it doesn’t seem weird to be uncomfortable when one doesn’t have it.
• Jhsto 4y ago
  I have found smartwatches a good for this purposes. With cellular connectivity you have emergency services, calls, certain notifications, maps, and NFC payments. You cant procrastinate on it as easily as with a phone. Many in this thread suggest a feature phone. Anecdotally, a friend of mine went this route, but people became suspicious of him. Especially when meeting new people. His dates thought he was cheating on his (non-existent) wife, or that he was hiding something in more general sense. He returned to having a smartphone after a year or so with a feature phone.
• dboreham 4y ago
  My solution to this problem (anxiety at potentially missing some very important incoming message) is to wear a watch that has wide area connectivity and syncs with the important message streams (voice, signal, work slack, sms, email, not social media). The watch has a good enough UX to receive and act upon messages, but sufficiently crappy that you want to ignore it unless it's indicating some hair-on-fire situation.
• panaffa 4y ago
  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.
  • lupire 4y ago
    What kind of god, though? What are you missing that only exists in meat space? When you get older you might grow bored of the virtual stimulation trapped inside a screen.
    • alar44 4y ago
      Literally all of human knowledge.
      • deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      • lolinder 4y ago
        In this community we tend to overestimate just how much knowledge is found on the internet because essentially everything to do with tech happens here. In the bigger picture, even if you restrict yourself to only intellectual knowledge, there are entire fields that are extremely poorly documented on the internet. Either information isn't there at all, or the information that is readily accessible is plain wrong. Further, if you consider human experience to be part and parcel with human knowledge, the internet starts to look like a rather hollow shell. Just because you can read huge portions of the body of human literature doesn't mean you're in a position to understand what those authors were saying, and the more you isolate yourself from the physical world the more detached you'll be from their experiences. This isn't to downplay how much knowledge there is to be found here. It's just that to say that it has "literally all" knowledge or conveys "literally god-like powers" is over the top. I'd normally leave such hyperbole alone, but in a thread that is glorifying smartphones as the savior of mankind I feel it's important to point out that what we have in a smartphone isn't all that it's being made out to be.
• dougmccune 4y ago
  I recently got my first Apple Watch with a cellular plan specifically so I can leave my phone at home and still be reachable via phone and text message. Mostly it’s great. The watch barely works well enough as a phone, I can play Spotify, Apple Maps kind of works for directions (not nearly as well as Google maps on the phone IMO), and that’s basically all that’s usable, which is nice. However, when dropping off my kid at school they require a Covid screening app (phone only) that you have to show every morning. I got half way to Whole Foods before turning back realizing I needed my phone to scan the Amazon Prime code to get better prices. I expect more and more everyday activities will require smartphones sadly.
• dnndev 4y ago
  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.
  • apson 4y ago
    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).
    • dnndev 4y ago
      Sounds like we got the gender right but I am the older gentleman in this case. I completely agree with you about social media doing more harm than good. Keep up the good habits young man. That said I also believe having a phone with you at all times is a good thing for emergency use or crushing on the candies
      • apson 4y ago
        Yes, that's true as well. Thank you, sir!
  • xen2xen1 4y ago
    My wife has, off and on for decades, called me and said she was waking somewhere she didn't feel safe or was being watched and wanted to be on the phone. All you said sounded familiar. However, the "phone for safety" trope is a sad thing.
• mikewarot 4y ago
  My phone is how my family reaches me in an emergency. How can I help them if they can't reach me? It would be irresponsible to leave home without it. Internet on the phone is nice to have, but it's phone calls and texts that need to work for me. (I prefer actual phone calls, because that's what I grew up with)
• everyone 4y ago
  I think it's interesting how everyone is addicted to their phones nowadays. I'm a computer guy but I am 100% not addicted to my phone, I really don't get the appeal. I do have an Android phone, but I mainly use it as mp3-player/GPS/phone, it clearly beats carrying / charging separate phone, mp3 player, gps device etc. But aside from that I have always thought that smartphones utterly suck, the awful OS and proprietary nature of the hardware, also the core design is fundamentally flawed, using a touchscreen for both input and display means the interface has no texture or haptic feedback, and also your fingers are covering the display. They are extremely awkward and slow to use. Theyre not even a good shape to fit in a human hand for crying out loud! So I just use my smartphone as much I would have used those devices it has replaced. I just really dont want to use it any more than necessary as it's so awful. Smartphones are like those "leatherman" tools, I call them do-everything-badly-devices. Its handy to carry a leatherman rather than always carry seperate pliers/screwdrivers/knife etc. but you really dont want to be using it if a real tool is available.
• noasaservice 4y ago
  The energy behind this line of complaint about cellphone/pocket internet connected computers has the same feel as people loudly proclaiming that they "do not watch TV" from the 2000's. I'm going to chalk it up to neo-ludditeism without the actual labor component that Ned Ludd was fighting against. (protip: he too was antiwork)
• croes 4y ago
  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
  • Forgeties79 4y ago
    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.
  • AdrianB1 4y ago
    I use my phone as a mobile phone 90% of the time when I am away from home. The other 10% is tracking my cycling with Strava, I can easily live without that.
  • antiterra 4y ago
    I think phones calls still serve as infrastructure of last resort. It’s main downside is also it’s benefit, the pressure for immediate interactive response and attention. It’s preferred to call a restaurant to see if they have the wallet or card you lost. Your flight got canceled? Best call to get the quickest list of other flight options. Typing while driving is right out, but calling is not, even if a voice call is arguably still distracting.
• Animats 4y ago
  It's now abnormal to not have a phone handy. I was once reading a paperback book in a restaurant while waiting for my meal, and some woman approached me and started talking about ebooks. If you're sitting someplace in public and not looking at a phone, it's suspicious behavior.
• arkaic 4y ago
  It shouldn't be normal....unless we live in a world where the feeling of our daily infrastructure of life is dependent upon smartphones. Which it is.
• ChuckMcM 4y ago
  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.
• saurik 4y ago
  This uncomfortable feeling though was just because it wasn't in your pants, providing a specific sensory input you are used to, not because "oh no! I need Twitter!". One has the same feeling about objects like wallets and keys. I have carried a shoulder bag since I was a kid, before I had ever even used the Internet. Recently, indirectly due to the pandemic, I have stopped using my shoulder bag very much... I am constantly freaked out by its lack. I haven't worn a watch in decades: I used to wear a watch only when I was a kid, and I stopped in college. And yet, to do this day--not often! maybe once a year, tops--I will suddenly have this visceral feeling "I lost my watch". I have worn the same jacket for the past four years. This jacket puts a bit of weight on the back of my neck. I recently went out for a whole day wearing a hoodie and I kept feeling confused as "I am not wearing my jacket". FWIW, I keep notifications off on my phone at all times. I think the entire idea that I can be randomly interrupted insane. I thereby often just disappear from being able to be contacted by anyone for a day because "I was having fun". And yet, if I don't know where my phone is, I start freaking out... not because "I need my fix", but because it is an expensive object that has a lot of personal data on it and (as mine are old/jailbroken) might not even be replaceable. I thereby disagree with the idea here: your phone is simply a tool, and it is probably one of the most powerful tools you have ever owned. The feeling of making it part of yourself is extremely human: we love to build and use tools. What isn't reasonable is one way you have chosen to use that tool, but that's entirely unrelated to the very normal feelings you have when you suddenly don't have it in your pocket: move it to your other pocket and you will also feel bad. Just think: your phone is also a clock, a map (compete with GPS and compass), a camera (photo and video), a calculator, a tricorder, and the hitchhicker's guide to the galaxy all at once... what a shame to feel you can't carry one.
• rootusrootus 4y ago
  My compromise is a smartwatch. I can use it to make emergency calls if I need to, but the availability of easy stimulation is considerably reduced compared to a smartphone.
• steelframe 4y ago
  I've never put anything work-related on my personal devices[1]. If anyone sends me a Slack message or an email on Friday night, I won't see it until Monday morning. If you need to reach me outside of work hours, you can give me a phone call and talk to me personally about what's so urgent that you feel the need to impinge on my personal time. [1] Well okay, except 2FA, because I couldn't make it through new hire orientation without doing that. But now all the auth uses security elements integrated into or attached to the laptop itself, so maybe it's time to uninstall the work 2FA stuff.
• webmaven 4y ago
  I held off getting a smartphone until 2011. But I certainly experienced this sort of discomfort without my dumb phone and various other bits of paraphernalia like a bus route map, bus schedules, a Thomas Guide map book (or AAA map once I moved to NM), lists of emergency and nonemergency contacts, medical info, todo and shopping lists, and probably a few things I'm forgetting. Most of this has been subsumed by the smartphone, in a smaller, more convenient package with better ergonomics. Battery life has improved to the point that I no longer bother with an external battery pack, unless there is overnight travel involved. I'm pretty draconian about controlling notifications, and try to use the smartphone as a tool rather than a content consumption device (an eink ebook reader has replaced my habitual paperback book, both at home and on the go). But as a tool, an occasion for the smartphone's absence is definitely cause for discomfort. OTOH, there are physical tools I don't bother to carry anymore (eg. a swiss army knife) that haven't been replaced with anything.
• ericlewis 4y ago
  I’ll read the article but I’ll admit that my first reaction to this was… do they know how folks use their phone? My phone is my entire wallet now, in every way. Wether flying the country (boarding passes, I have clear), or purchasing something (I nearly exclusively use Apple Pay) I’ve long left behind needing to carry a proper wallet. I do make sure to carry a couple of $20s just in case there is some oddball reason my situation wouldn’t work. I also have no reason to carry an ID, but that’s also about to live in your phone. Maybe the title just comment baited me though. Edit: read it and this speaks more to the unhealthy obsession with the perceived importance of instant communication. You should delete or turn these apps off whenever you can. Turning off notifications can also be empowering.
  • AdrianB1 4y ago
    What country does not require you to carry an id at all times where outside your house? Most countries do and most don't even accept alternate id's like driver's license.
    • ericlewis 4y ago
      The United States I guess. If I were to be buying alcohol it’s reasonable for them to ask. But that’s not something I often do anymore and generally there isn’t a reason anyone would ask for my id otherwise. Perhaps if I’m in a different state (I do still travel with a form of ID, but not on my person) it could be important. My limited experience with cops where I live have also indicated it isn’t important. I don’t drive either which is a much bigger drive as to why I don’t feel the need to constantly have official identification. Edit: I suppose it is important if anything “went wrong” and I needed my body to be identified, but again, that would be a case where people are wondering where I’m at quite quickly and the cops likely putting something out to identify such a person. Edit 2: I also did try to get a state ID but they make the process so laughably difficult that getting a passport was easier - further, they don’t accept a passport as a main source of identification. I instead needed to also have a physical copy of my social security card (despite the other mountain of evidence I brought about my existence and propriety living in the state) and I never quite understood that. They do gladly accept the taxes I pay though. No questions asked!
• thenerdhead 4y ago
  The phone is now an extension of the self. It’s hard to just leave it without becoming an anxious mess. The only way I was able to break that addiction was when I bought a new Google Pixel that had a battery defect that forced it to drain itself each day. I got so used to the phone doing this that at a certain point I just carried around a dead phone. After awhile enough, I just left the phone at home. Soon much of my life started to feel more full. I’d get lost in a big city like Montreal and have to ask for directions in a language I don’t know. I’d lose touch with coworkers who wanted to go out at night and I’d randomly stumble into them. So much serendipity happens because I didn’t have my phone. Although I only have anecdotes of my experience, I think Nick Carr talks about these challenges in depth with his book “The Shallows”.
• dale_glass 4y ago
  Personally I find modern technology to be very liberating. When I was a child, even going around my own city was a stressful thing. What if I get lost? What if I run out of money for the train? How do I know I got the bus in the right direction? (the darn things didn't announce stops at all). The first times I traveled involved printing a stack of papers including names, addresses, and maps. Getting to a hotel in a country you've never been before and without having a good command of the local language is stressful. With modern tech? It's all a breeze. I can find a route to anywhere, check if the place I'm going to is open, call for help if needed, find a bar/restaurant/hotel if something unplanned happens, talk to the people I'm going to meet, check on the status of my flight... Yeah, I don't feel very comfortable without my phone precisely because it provides so much useful stuff that I don't have otherwise. And no, it's not because I've grown addicted to it, but because the discomfort that I already had before smartphones were a thing returns.
  • throwntoday 4y ago
    Agreed. Years ago I decided to stop texting people as the primary form of contact and instead call them. Now everyone I know calls me cause they know I don't text. This cut down my phone usage by a lot. I also don't pull it out to pass time, instead I just try to think about my schedule and sort out thoughts. I remember reading someones comment on HN where they said it's ok to be bored, that down time is the best for organizing things in your head, and I've stuck to that ever since. And although I hardly use my phone I still feel some anxiety not having it when I leave the house.
    • Wistar 4y ago
      > And although I hardly use my phone I still feel some anxiety not having it when I leave the house. Edge case anxiety?
      • throwntoday 4y ago
        I feel the same anxiety if I don't have my wristwatch so maybe it's more like the dread of missing something
• shrimpx 4y ago
  The key concern with my phone is losing my 2FA access. I have backup codes, but leaving my phone and my backup codes at home is not great, in case something happens to my home. In general I try to maintain a sense of redundancy wrt my data and access.
• Bud 4y ago
  I agree; this is not normal at all! After all, that's why Apple Watch was invented! ;)
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• chx 4y ago
  > I realized how our phone has become a real integral part of our bodies Almost: my phone shows my blood sugar level. Thus it's always in Bluetooth range. Here's a very short review of the Dexcom G6 doing the actual measurement: the medical device is absolutely awesome, the mobile app / website / APIs are the most god awful thing I had the bad luck to work with in my three decades of using the web.
• gregoriol 4y ago
  I feel uncomfortable when leaving my watch at home too (mechanical, not digital one).
• MrJohz 4y ago
  I'm unconvinced by this. I keep all my "on the go" stuff (keys, money, water, some important documents, etc) in a bag, and I almost always keep that bag on me, wherever I go, even if I don't think I'm actually going to need all that stuff. For example, if I go to a friend's house, and we go for a walk, I don't really need that stuff, but my instinct is to take the bag anyway. At this point, it's such an ingrained habit that I feel uncomfortable going somewhere without the bag (something my wife mocks me for occasionally). Is that bad? I don't think so. It's a tactic that I've cultivated because otherwise I know I'm going forget something that I need. I might not need everything in that bag, but if I'm out of the house, I'm probably going to need at least something in there. And taking the stuff I don't need has also paid off when I end up changing my plans or something. For me, it's the same with my phone. My phone is my main point of contact to my wife and family, it handles navigation and public transport, it answers questions I have while out and about, and it's also an entertainment system on the way. Not having it makes my life worse and harder. As a result, it's another thing that I always try and keep on me. Obviously there are some situations where it makes sense for me for leave my bag or my phone at home. But in those situations, I'm going to feel slightly uncomfortable because it's interrupting my routine, and that routine is there for very good reason.
  • _uy6i 4y ago
    I think there is a difference between being thrown off by your routine (I have the same feeling if I’m not carrying my wallet or keys with me) and being “addicted” (for lack of a better word) to your phone and going into withdrawal - the number of situations I’m constantly in where people are incapable of being “present” because they are on their phones is depressing and astonishing
    • MrJohz 4y ago
      Sure, I guess it ultimately comes down to what specifically the author finds uncomfortable about not having their phone. But I think this narrative of addiction (and the implication that people should be comfortable leaving possibly the most powerful tool that have at their disposal at home) largely feels like fear-mongering. For example, you talk about people being incapable of being present - this seems very far from my experience. I know a couple of people who might check their phone obsessively, or will get distracted looking something up, but generally most people that I hang out with show no signs of difficulty engaging with something - work, a game, a conversation - for long periods of time. That's not to say that carrying around a portable endorphin generator doesn't have its own risks and complexities, but overall, this techno-nihilistic narrative of addiction and incapability rings quite false to me.
• Lapsa 4y ago
  wat? what ya talkin about?
• oliwarner 4y ago
  But it's not just my phone, it's a hotline to all my friends, my camera, my main payment method, my map, my schedule, my parking apps, an answer to any question I could possibly think of, and twenty kinds of entertainment within a couple of taps. It's not the 90s anymore. Rightly or wrongly, we've integrated with these devices. Leaving it behind is like leaving a lobe at home. Staying on top of your notifications in your downtime is a job, but it's possible.
• alphabettsy 4y ago
  My grandparents don’t wish things back to the good ole days. It’s possible to have balance.
• juanani 4y ago
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• ipaddr 4y ago
  In this day and age of openly tracking everyone's movement by government departments I'm surprised anyone brings there cellphone with them when they travel. Unless you accept creating a forever digital footprint of everyplace you go leave your cellphone at home. We know better but we pretend it doesn't matter because it's easier.
  • datadata 4y ago
    If you don't take your phone everyplace and leave it at home often, you'll probably also end up in some list of suspicion people at some point in the future. Absence of data together with an identity is also a footprint.
    • ipaddr 4y ago
      Suspicion with lack of data allows you to fill in the details later. Lack of easy to obtain information means you are not low hanging fruit, you require effort and resources. You run the risk of being in a location at a certain time which you can't dispute. If you decided to murder someone your cell will identify you. If you decide to leave your cell at home you will look guilty. If you always leave it at home you are good to go. It's safer to be the ghost in the wires. It's safer to be the bug in the app.
• TacticalCoder 4y ago
  > But as time passed, I realized how our phone has become a real integral part of our bodies. It was a strange feeling. I'm hardly a luddite and yet I don't give a crap about my phone. I hardly ever take my phone with me: no need. Yesterday I had to drive to some unknown (to me) place (rural area) for a birthday party: wrote the address down, looked what the place looked like on google maps, then left the home and input the address in my car's navi system. My phone is so old I don't even know which model it is. I think it's a Samsung S7, not sure. Don't care. I have like two apps on it: google authenticator and some "scan to pdf" thing (where I take a picture of documents and it makes a PDF out of it). To me a phone is an inferior, mediocre, computing device. It's only a "computer" in that it's more powerful than, say, a SGI workstation from the late 90s (or whatever) but it's mostly a piece of crap made to consume content. I'm always wondering this: how many chip engineers are actually designing chips from their smartphone? How many car designers are modelling cars and parts on their phone? How many sound engineers are, say, remastering some great song from their phone? How many people who worked on, say, "Fantastic Beasts" did model the 3D animals from their phone? It's not just the input that sucks, but the output too: tiny screen, shitty sound. In addition to being complete turds, phones are little surveillance devices tracking your every moves. Just screw that. Now, funnily enough, the only time I really need a phone the dumbphone, pre- Nokia Symbian and J2ME apps (these were still dumb but a bit less dumb), I had in the late nineties would do: actual phone calls and SMS. I hardly need anything more. I don't respect my phone: I treat it for the utter piece of junk and crap it is. I think it's a sane approach. YMMV.
• procarch2019 4y ago
  In my…not too old, but not young years I am finding that I will quite often forget my phone at home. I find this to be of almost no consequence. I still carry a “wallet”, which is really just a stack of few cards. I live in a city, so if I really needed some info or had to make an emergency call I would just ask a neighbor (most people in my neighborhood are super nice). Most importantly, when I stop for a drink at a bar or I am at the playground with the kids I am forced, and this is a good thing, to not be checking social media/news aggregators/email. I don’t think I could do without it during business hours because of the nature of my work, but it’s certainly fine for me to go without off hours. Side note, I recently had a bunch of cash on hand for some reason. It is super convenient to grab a beer and just throw down a bill instead of waiting for a check. Digital pay services are great when splitting a check and are nsuper helpful when you are out of cash, but remember that cash, almost always*, works.
• standardUser 4y ago
  I wouldn't leave the house without my wallet and my phone is vastly more useful and important than my wallet in most cases. I would rightly feel uncomfortable without either and be glad that I did! That way I'd notice and go back and get them (or decide consciously I don't need them at the moment). As for feeling "uncomfortable" without something on your body that is almost always on your body, the same is true of an almost endless list of items. Jewelry, clothes, lotion, facial hair, piercings, makeup, keys, watch, wallet. I recall the feeling I'd get when a car would vibrate just the right way and make me think my pager was going off, years past when I had last owned a pager.
• DantesKite 4y ago
  If I left the greatest tool civilization has ever developed at home, I would feel very uncomfortable. I'm closer to a demi-god than a man when I have one.
• betwixthewires 4y ago
  I disagree with the premise. I understand people wanting to break bad habits with their phone, but it's like saying "feeling anxiety about not having a refrigerator at home shouldn't be normal." When a tool gets invented that makes our lives easier, what we didn't know we needed before becomes indispensable. These things, problems though they may bring, are extremely empowering, and we take it for granted.
• quitit 4y ago
  This is why I like my smart watch. I can walk out of the house without my phone and still stay in touch if it’s really needed (it usually isn’t) - I also like that I can triage notifications without touching my phone, if I try doing that with my phone I usually end up messing around with a lot more than I had originally planned. Also using it for music and having the assistant available fills out the main uses of my watch. The only time I regret it is if there is something that i’d really like to photograph.
• phendrenad2 4y ago
  Yes, you should shun electricity too. If you need to communicate with someone, just ride your horse over to them, or send them a carrier pigeon. It's not hard.
• anotherevan 4y ago
  I sometimes wonder if better management of notifications would improve people's lives. I don't have any audible notification for email and a range of other things. I'm pretty ruthless about turning off notifications that come with some games and other apps that I just don't care about. > I realized how our phone has become a real integral part of our bodies. Counter-example. Having only just recently had the ability to do payments with my phone, I now often go out without my wallet in my pocket. The feeling of not having my wallet made me realise how my wallet was an integral part of my body - so to speak.
• Terry_Roll 4y ago
  Haven't had a mobile phone in years as I value my privacy because a number of online services exist which will geolocate any mobile phone number from anywhere in the world and its a completely legal form of stalking! Besides I noticed I get brain fog if I use a mobile so I need to keep my wits about me as there is alot of organised crime in the world especially those running countries!
• eternityforest 4y ago
  I live in Montana where jobs are almost impossible to find. Without phones, my life would be a lot worse. I would have no opportunities but Burger King, or I would have to always stay in front of a computer, because my response time expectations are about 10 minutes at the most, for around 12 hours a day. But beyond that, phones give me access to things you normally have to be born with, or spend years learning with specialists. I can go for a walk, wander down a side street if there's something I'd like to see, all in full confidence that I won't get seriously lost. Thanks to phones, I have access to reliable memories without having to carry pen and paper, and either manually back it up or risk losing everything if the paper is gone. I can make plans for a week from now, and access those plans without needing to be at home with a datebook. I also have Tile tracking on my keys and wallet, which has saved me several times. Which is why I hate the Kacynzsky types so much, and why I don't want privacy absolutism to take over tech, without being balanced by some effort to make sure we don't have to go back to getting lost without keys, directions, or memories. They are horrifically addictive, to the point of most of my hobbies having since turned into "Everyone look at a phone clubs", and it being very very hard to read books or focus on anything at all, for pretty much everyone, but it sure seems a lot more fun than being constantly lost and unable to keep up with society, endlessly screamed at for forgetting things. Something must be done about it, before we have no culture, no friendships, and even pets become disposable Instagram props, but to go back to having no phones at all would really cause trouble for a lot of people, who are currently elevated far beyond their true base level of functionality by this tech.
• teilo 4y ago
  Replace the word “phone” with “car” and see if this article still makes sense. Sorry, but what is considered “essential” is subject to change. History has seen these shifts in every generation, and clinging to the previous generation’s notions of what is considered essential is just romanticism.
  • alwayslikethis 4y ago
    Possibly unpopular take: it does. Cars should not be required for everyone, especially those living in a city. It's never going to be sustainable, and it wastes resources, and many people don't like driving, especially in heavy traffic. Moreover, it is fundamentally unsustainable financially. Cars should continue to exist the same way phones and computers should, but not everyone should _have to_ own or use them _all_ the time. https://www.strongtowns.org/ https://www.strongtowns.org/
• leros 4y ago
  I went to a week long workshop on a farm. Part of the workshop was a ban on all electronics. Initially it was really uncomfortable not having my phone but after 3 days I got used to it. It was incredible. I started doing things like waking up and drinking a coffee while just looking at the scenery. I actually did nothing and got calm peace. At the end of the end of the week, I found almost nothing important in the hundreds of missed notifications I had. It was a really interesting experience. I now try to leave my phone on a charger in another room when I'm home.
  • denkmoon 4y ago
    Maybe try just having notifications for things that _are_ important? If you've got "hundreds" of missed notifications after a week, you're clearly not vetting those notifications at the source. Or better yet, just disable notifications. Our phones are a great tool, and we don't have to be a slave to them, nor do we have to get rid of them entirely to free ourselves from being slaves to them.
• gunfighthacksaw 4y ago
  Left all my electronics at home when attending a pro-Ukraine event in my city in Feb. My gf was incredulous at first until I explained myself, but it’s obvious: if you live and work in a city and know it well, you don’t need a phone to go 30 minutes from the house and back, except for medical reasons (eg arthritis, fatigue)
• pronlover723 4y ago
  It is normal to feel uncomfortable without a phone and it should be! Leaving my home without my phone means I can't easily get in contact with my friends I'm trying to meet because there is no way to coordinate. Sure we used to coordinate before phones but that's no longer the case and when it was the case it meant waiting for 20-30 minutes if someone was late because there was no way for them to tell you if and when they were actually going to arrive. It also means I can't pay for things. My phone is now my wallet for all intents and purposes. My phone is my car key so I can't get back into my car. I'm sure for some it's their house key. My phone is my navigator. I know my way around the city but regardless of where I am I can search for restaurants, groceries store, and their hours. All things I do often. Without the phone what I'm supposed to do? Find a phone booth, look in the yellow pages, and then try to figure out of the address listed is close to where I am? It's completely reasonable to feel uncomfortable without leaving your house without keys, without money, without a way to call someone in an emergency, without a way to contact your friends and family, without a way to coordinate with others.
• jhanschoo 4y ago
  I feel uncomfortable when I leave home without my wallet or (in longer trips) messenger bag. These are powerful essentials that help me neutralize dangers that happen outdoors that I don't expect. I don't see why a smartphone is any different.
• hoseja 4y ago
  I'd be feeling uncomfortable because I don't have my camera, my map, my audio analyzer, my starmap, my tricorder... Use your phone as the awesome integrated sensor suite it is, not as social media shackles.
• Havoc 4y ago
  I don't think its that unreasonable of a feeling given that smartphones are essentially multi-tools for life these days
• strngeattractor 4y ago
  Posts on this specific topic should raise our curiosity in more active ways than just the technologists vs luddites talking points it usually devolves into. First, we should admit that we dont actually know what the effects of this technology is on our minds and how it shapes the way we perceive. There are niche fields of academia such as Media studies, specifically, Media ecology, that study these subjects. That being said, we should experiment, find out, by taking a break from your device(s) of choice for some set amount of time, and observe how your mind reacts. This will be varying degrees of absurd based on your location. If you work in tech and live in sfba for example, its likely not even conceivable let alone feasible. The takeaway, for both people who agree with the OPs insight or for those who think the point is overblown or out of context, being that it is our own responsibility to understand the effects of our environment.