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Being friendless has a higher negative impact on lifespan than smoking. It's not a big stretch to link phone use to the huge increase in depression, anxiety, an

Being friendless has a higher negative impact on lifespan than smoking. It's not a big stretch to link phone use to the huge increase in depression, anxiety, and poor social skills. And just like smoking, phone use in public isn't limited to the person using it. You can't exactly have a conversation with someone who is on their phone. I find myself pulling my phone out whenever my companions also do so. If this seems a bit heavy-handed, it's because damaging and addictive habits require collective action to stop. No one walks down the street in San Francisco and tries to convince heroin addicts to stop for other peoples' good. No one tries to tell drunks and alcoholics to stop overdoing it. They are definitely early, and possibly the first place to do this, but they will surely not be the last. Our youth have been ruined by cheap, omnipresent, and never ending social media content. This is a step in the right direction to make public spaces social again.

michaelmrose 3y ago
Strangers out on the street are largely out doing something or going somewhere and are unlikely to want to strike up a conversation. People who are friendless ought to get a job, volunteer, get a hobby, join a group, go to a social space instead of expecting strangers to entertain them.
- throwanem 3y ago
  Yeah, God forfend people should act human to one another, right?
  - michaelmrose 3y ago
    You aren't entitled to other people's time. You should try to earn it by doing something together with people that both enjoy. I volunteer at a cat shelter for instance. Feed some cats, play with the kittens then shoot the shit with the other volunteers.
    - throwanem 3y ago
      I never understand where it comes from, this idea that an unplanned social interaction in public necessarily constitutes one person choosing to waste the time of others, or that no one ever has any choice but to let an unwelcome interaction persist indefinitely. It gives the impression of a somewhat socially impoverished style of life, but I assume that's no more accurate a perspective than anyone else's.
      - michaelmrose 3y ago
        I think this opinion differs both geographically and generationally. Uban/young/northern people are less apt to want to socialize with strangers. Neither preference is inherently wrong I tend to think the strangers you are discussing know better than you what is or isn't a waste of their own time. For practical purposes most folks just aren't apt to have anything useful to contribute in 3 minutes. I'm 43 and I don't think I have EVER got anything useful out of such an interaction. It's just pure social petting like monkey's picking bugs off one another and I don't get anything out of it nor feel obligated to do it when walking around. I don't feel socially impoverished because I have actual social interactions in contexts which I feel are useful or beneficial. My theory is the people that have more need of such social petting are aggrieved at changing social standards. It's just not my problem.
        throwanem 3y ago
        "Like monkeys picking bugs off one another" is a hell of a thing for a hominin to say. I take your point about geography and generational change, and I don't think you're wrong, but I'm also not at all convinced this is a healthy habit for a species remarkably social even among primates.
        Dylan16807 3y ago
        Social grooming is great for group cohesion. But that's others you know, not total strangers. Monkeys don't have to constantly deal with strangers.
standardUser 3y ago
"Our youth have been ruined..." I don't get where this hyperbole comes from. Wasn't every generation "ruined" by this, that or the other thing? We need to maintain some perspective. The youth are the more relevant ones here, not us.
fnordpiglet 3y ago
I would note that friendship has never been defined by the casual and vapid interactions at the grocery store. My longest lasting friendships have been ones I formed on irc 30 years ago and still go on, despite only rarely speaking face to face. People who don’t understand something that didn’t exist when they grew up assume it must not be possible. People assume that games crush creativity, that social interaction online is not actually social interaction. These same biases based on “the way we did it” show up in the RTO debate and other areas of society that are being changed with a new mode of interactions. Human beings are remarkably adaptable, and I don’t think for one second that online interactions are necessarily worse. I do think we are going through a transient period where as a society we adjust, and transient periods are rough. But as we learn to exist with these new modes of living we, as a social whole, will simply adapt how we interact and live, create new social rules about how to best exist with these new tools. As we did with language, written words, books, newspapers, telegraphs, radio, telephones, television, etc. Every one of these was greeted with fear and disdain, and social disruption as we settled through a period of transformation. This one is no different. Hand wringing and bans and teeth gnashing will happen, won’t help, and won’t alter the course of a single thing. Better, IMO, to lean into learning how to live with these advances in a healthy way and teach your children that. Banning them from learning the complexities of a new social medium until they’re old enough to get into serious trouble will only hurt your kids.
- ZoomerCretin 3y ago
  > As we did with language, written words, books, newspapers, telegraphs, radio, telephones, television, etc. Every one of these was greeted with fear and disdain, and social disruption as we settled through a period of transformation. This one is no different. My position doesn't come from resistance to change. It comes from seeing statistics like this: https://nypost.com/2023/06/19/number-of-teens-who-dont-enjoy-life-has-doubled-with-social-media/ https://nypost.com/2023/06/19/number-of-teens-who-dont-enjoy... and from seeing how social interactions in person have degraded as smartphones became pervasive. >Banning them from learning the complexities of a new social medium until they’re old enough to get into serious trouble will only hurt your kids. And yet this is exactly what we do with alcohol. You cannot buy or consume any until the age of 21. Do you think we should simply trust children to self-moderate alcohol consumption?

michaelmrose 3y ago

Strangers out on the street are largely out doing something or going somewhere and are unlikely to want to strike up a conversation. People who are friendless ought to get a job, volunteer, get a hobby, join a group, go to a social space instead of expecting strangers to entertain them.

throwanem 3y ago
Yeah, God forfend people should act human to one another, right?
- michaelmrose 3y ago
  You aren't entitled to other people's time. You should try to earn it by doing something together with people that both enjoy. I volunteer at a cat shelter for instance. Feed some cats, play with the kittens then shoot the shit with the other volunteers.
  - throwanem 3y ago
    I never understand where it comes from, this idea that an unplanned social interaction in public necessarily constitutes one person choosing to waste the time of others, or that no one ever has any choice but to let an unwelcome interaction persist indefinitely. It gives the impression of a somewhat socially impoverished style of life, but I assume that's no more accurate a perspective than anyone else's.
    - michaelmrose 3y ago
      I think this opinion differs both geographically and generationally. Uban/young/northern people are less apt to want to socialize with strangers. Neither preference is inherently wrong I tend to think the strangers you are discussing know better than you what is or isn't a waste of their own time. For practical purposes most folks just aren't apt to have anything useful to contribute in 3 minutes. I'm 43 and I don't think I have EVER got anything useful out of such an interaction. It's just pure social petting like monkey's picking bugs off one another and I don't get anything out of it nor feel obligated to do it when walking around. I don't feel socially impoverished because I have actual social interactions in contexts which I feel are useful or beneficial. My theory is the people that have more need of such social petting are aggrieved at changing social standards. It's just not my problem.
      - throwanem 3y ago
        "Like monkeys picking bugs off one another" is a hell of a thing for a hominin to say. I take your point about geography and generational change, and I don't think you're wrong, but I'm also not at all convinced this is a healthy habit for a species remarkably social even among primates.
        Dylan16807 3y ago
        Social grooming is great for group cohesion. But that's others you know, not total strangers. Monkeys don't have to constantly deal with strangers.

standardUser 3y ago

"Our youth have been ruined..." I don't get where this hyperbole comes from. Wasn't every generation "ruined" by this, that or the other thing? We need to maintain some perspective. The youth are the more relevant ones here, not us.

fnordpiglet 3y ago

I would note that friendship has never been defined by the casual and vapid interactions at the grocery store. My longest lasting friendships have been ones I formed on irc 30 years ago and still go on, despite only rarely speaking face to face. People who don’t understand something that didn’t exist when they grew up assume it must not be possible. People assume that games crush creativity, that social interaction online is not actually social interaction. These same biases based on “the way we did it” show up in the RTO debate and other areas of society that are being changed with a new mode of interactions. Human beings are remarkably adaptable, and I don’t think for one second that online interactions are necessarily worse. I do think we are going through a transient period where as a society we adjust, and transient periods are rough. But as we learn to exist with these new modes of living we, as a social whole, will simply adapt how we interact and live, create new social rules about how to best exist with these new tools. As we did with language, written words, books, newspapers, telegraphs, radio, telephones, television, etc. Every one of these was greeted with fear and disdain, and social disruption as we settled through a period of transformation. This one is no different. Hand wringing and bans and teeth gnashing will happen, won’t help, and won’t alter the course of a single thing. Better, IMO, to lean into learning how to live with these advances in a healthy way and teach your children that. Banning them from learning the complexities of a new social medium until they’re old enough to get into serious trouble will only hurt your kids.

ZoomerCretin 3y ago
> As we did with language, written words, books, newspapers, telegraphs, radio, telephones, television, etc. Every one of these was greeted with fear and disdain, and social disruption as we settled through a period of transformation. This one is no different. My position doesn't come from resistance to change. It comes from seeing statistics like this: https://nypost.com/2023/06/19/number-of-teens-who-dont-enjoy-life-has-doubled-with-social-media/ https://nypost.com/2023/06/19/number-of-teens-who-dont-enjoy... and from seeing how social interactions in person have degraded as smartphones became pervasive. >Banning them from learning the complexities of a new social medium until they’re old enough to get into serious trouble will only hurt your kids. And yet this is exactly what we do with alcohol. You cannot buy or consume any until the age of 21. Do you think we should simply trust children to self-moderate alcohol consumption?