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I’ve been thinking lately about one impact of technology that may have been overlooked. Nowadays if someone has a free moment, they have their phone to occupy

I’ve been thinking lately about one impact of technology that may have been overlooked. Nowadays if someone has a free moment, they have their phone to occupy their mind. I lived in a time before phones. What did we used to do with free moments? Sometimes we had reading material available. Sometimes we would day dream. Sometimes we would just think and introspect about ourselves. Sometimes we would carefully observe the world around us looking for anything interesting. And sometimes we would attempt to socialize with whatever person happened to be nearby, even a complete stranger. I don’t have any evidence or studies or anything. But I am beginning to wonder if there is a hidden consequence not from people are doing with the technology, but from what people are no longer doing because they are looking at their phone instead.

iknowSFR 1y ago
I often think about this as well. If you have a problem to solve, it’s easiest to use the internet and find threads or videos to solve that problem. But in the “before times” you would need to seek out someone with experience and have a full conversation. While having the information at our fingertips is much more convenient and helps bridge gaps in communities that would lack experienced experts, it does cut the opportunity to socialize but at least 1 conversation per problem.
williamdclt 1y ago
Not sure about "overlooked"? It's one of the most common refrain of the past ~20y that smartphones have existed: "people don't talk or pay attention to anything anymore now they're all on their smartphone all the time", it's one of the most criticisms of smartphones
pseudocomposer 1y ago
I think the “cure” to this is fostering curiosity within ourselves, and learning to balance our curiosity in real world objects, locations, people, activities, etc. in a way that’s balanced with digital information. And understanding that all digital information is really just an approximation of these real-world things. Put another way… you have to let yourself be curious about, say, the garden in the park, rather than looking at your phone. And when it comes to people - talking to a stranger rather than looking at your phone - you have to not only let yourself be curious, but also be vulnerable enough to make that curiosity known (a secondary skill, that I think can be built on a foundation of curiosity).
tbrownaw 1y ago
> And sometimes we would attempt to socialize with whatever person happened to be nearby, even a complete stranger. I don’t have any evidence or studies or anything. But I am beginning to wonder if there is a hidden consequence not from people are doing with the technology, but from what people are no longer doing because they are looking at their phone instead. Turns out that making it too easy to avoid the hell that is other people has some less than great side effects.
bamboozled 1y ago
Sounds like a myth to me, I remember life before "devices" and laptops, I had newspapers, books, magazines, board games and card games, walkmans, audiobooks, idk...maybe you're talking like a thousand years ago? Not to say the phones aren't having an impact of some sort, but yeah, I always knew how to distract myself.
fidotron 1y ago
> And sometimes we would attempt to socialize with whatever person happened to be nearby, even a complete stranger. I think this is the core reason for so much video arcade machine related nostalgia. Those that experienced this the first time around will know about stacking coins on the machines, playing against those you didn't know and so on. Now that is back to table football etc. but an entire category came and went in the space of 30 years.
HelloUsername 1y ago
With your smartphone you can do all the things you just listed, and more..
ryukoposting 1y ago
I accidentally left home without my phone the other day. I got a coffee, read a book, and people-watched. It was nice.
smokel 1y ago
Do you remember television?
- unFou 1y ago
  back in the day, TVs were a bit less portable...
  - Apreche 1y ago
    And also communal. The family would watch together on the only screen they had.
    - Viliam1234 1y ago
      I am not sure that really helped. When I was a child, the TV was running at our home a lot. When I left home, I didn't buy a TV on purpose. Visiting my family again was a weird experience: after a few words, someone suggested to go watch a TV. Nothing specific, just the default way of spending time. I was like "ugh, if you don't mind, I would prefer talking to you", but they were like "no problem, we can watch and talk". Except, it didn't work that way. Watching and talking means, you ask a question, the other person opens their mouth... but keeps watching the screen... and then maybe after a minute says something, very slowly, not even a coherent sentence. If you are not used to that, it's like watching people you know turn into zombies. But of course, if you do it every day, you are just as zombified as others, so it feels okay to you. (Just like drunk people don't mind being in company of other drunk people, or stoned people don't mind being in company of other stoned people.) You spend a few hours in each other's company, saying less than ten sentences during all the time, and somehow it gives you the feeling of spending quality time together, when in fact everyone was only paying attention to the screen. You could get an equivalent of that by having the whole family sit on a large sofa, everyone watching their own smartphone, sitting together in silence for hours. At the end, everyone would feel like they had a meaningful experience together. It only feels weird when the rest of the people are glued to their screens and you are not.
LostMyLogin 1y ago
> And sometimes we would attempt to socialize with whatever person happened to be nearby, even a complete stranger. Two days ago I was in Best Buy looking for a DAC for my headphones. They have a section of gaming keyboards and headphones where a kid in his mid to late 20's started to strike up a conversation with me. It went from whether I play video games, to if I live in town, to his story on dropping out of college. The entire time all I could process was the question of why this kid was talking to me and I kept giving him short bland responses. Not that long ago I would have sat there for an hour talking with this guy and loved every second of it. Then I would have come home and annoyed my wife by telling her all about it. I know it's cliche to say but something changed in me over the initial COVID lock-downs where I went from socializing being a necessity in my life to just wanting to be home and not dealing with people. A point that bums me out the more I think about it.
lordnacho 1y ago
Serendipity has been lost. If you aren't at least open to talk to randoms, you are stuck in your own network. People you know from school or work, and people they know, that's it. You won't be approachable when you are paying attention to a phone. And it's valuable. There's a lot of people you'll find interesting, but they happen to not be within 2 hops of you. If you want to put a number on it, look at what people pay (opportunity cost) for educational or work opportunities. The social network you'll get is often touted as one of the main benefits of private school, for instance. Despite being a bit of an introvert, I often reach out to randoms. Just to see what's there. It's been a great strategy thus far.
- supriyo-biswas 1y ago
  Theoretically, the serendipity part of it could be replicated online (see Omegle etc.) but I feel that the current regulatory regimes in most countries have a preference for building social media that simply serves up anodyne engagement porn, etc.
  - the_snooze 1y ago
    The internet is a low-trust environment. Any scammer can reach you from anywhere in the world and try to take advantage of that desire for serendipity. You mention Omegle specifically, which was a hunting ground for sexual predators: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omegle#Child_sexual_abuse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omegle#Child_sexual_abuse It's the things that don't scale and instead have high barriers to entry that are most likely to produce actual healthy human connection.
  - scarface_74 1y ago
    Every online place to randomly meet people ends up having dick picts. Or in Omegle’s case… https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omegle https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omegle Ends up with alt right trolls.
- scarface_74 1y ago
  I live in a vacation area upstairs from a bar frequented by tourists. I’m friends with the bartender. I’ll go down there when it’s not too busy sit at the bar talk to the bartender and whoever else comes around and is interested in talking. Mostly other guys or couples. I usually avoid talking to women because I’m obviously married wearing my ring and no matter what, it might come across as creepy and women usually have their guard up and are probably there with spouses somewhere around.
dfxm12 1y ago
This is not necessarily tech driven. People are extroverted or introverted. Pre smartphone, when I was alone on the bus or subway, I always had my nose in a paper or a book. Now it's my phone or a Kobo. I didn't like and wasn't good at making small talk back then, and I don't think that has changed much. I feel like there are a lot of Seinfeld subplots built around avoiding social interaction that I really identified with. On the other hand, I feel a lot of media is pushing us to ignore, suspect or otherwise be scared of strangers. I don't know that this is uniquely tech driven though.
- em-bee 1y ago
  yes, but only the real introverts carry a book. everyone carries a phone enabling more people to exhibit introverted behavior. i used to be one of those with a book. now i listen to audio books which incidentally allows me to appear more extroverted because i can make eye contact and i guess people assume i am just listening to music and am therefore approachable.
selendym 1y ago
> Sometimes we would day dream. There was an article about that a month or two ago: The Death of Daydreaming - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43894305 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43894305
cmilton 1y ago
Imagine how much more time is on the toilet. I’m sure we have some book readers, but I remember reading the label of random items within arms reach.

iknowSFR 1y ago

I often think about this as well. If you have a problem to solve, it’s easiest to use the internet and find threads or videos to solve that problem. But in the “before times” you would need to seek out someone with experience and have a full conversation. While having the information at our fingertips is much more convenient and helps bridge gaps in communities that would lack experienced experts, it does cut the opportunity to socialize but at least 1 conversation per problem.

williamdclt 1y ago

Not sure about "overlooked"? It's one of the most common refrain of the past ~20y that smartphones have existed: "people don't talk or pay attention to anything anymore now they're all on their smartphone all the time", it's one of the most criticisms of smartphones

pseudocomposer 1y ago

I think the “cure” to this is fostering curiosity within ourselves, and learning to balance our curiosity in real world objects, locations, people, activities, etc. in a way that’s balanced with digital information. And understanding that all digital information is really just an approximation of these real-world things. Put another way… you have to let yourself be curious about, say, the garden in the park, rather than looking at your phone. And when it comes to people - talking to a stranger rather than looking at your phone - you have to not only let yourself be curious, but also be vulnerable enough to make that curiosity known (a secondary skill, that I think can be built on a foundation of curiosity).

tbrownaw 1y ago

> And sometimes we would attempt to socialize with whatever person happened to be nearby, even a complete stranger. I don’t have any evidence or studies or anything. But I am beginning to wonder if there is a hidden consequence not from people are doing with the technology, but from what people are no longer doing because they are looking at their phone instead. Turns out that making it too easy to avoid the hell that is other people has some less than great side effects.

bamboozled 1y ago

Sounds like a myth to me, I remember life before "devices" and laptops, I had newspapers, books, magazines, board games and card games, walkmans, audiobooks, idk...maybe you're talking like a thousand years ago? Not to say the phones aren't having an impact of some sort, but yeah, I always knew how to distract myself.

fidotron 1y ago

> And sometimes we would attempt to socialize with whatever person happened to be nearby, even a complete stranger. I think this is the core reason for so much video arcade machine related nostalgia. Those that experienced this the first time around will know about stacking coins on the machines, playing against those you didn't know and so on. Now that is back to table football etc. but an entire category came and went in the space of 30 years.

HelloUsername 1y ago

With your smartphone you can do all the things you just listed, and more..

ryukoposting 1y ago

I accidentally left home without my phone the other day. I got a coffee, read a book, and people-watched. It was nice.

smokel 1y ago

Do you remember television?

unFou 1y ago
back in the day, TVs were a bit less portable...
- Apreche 1y ago
  And also communal. The family would watch together on the only screen they had.
  - Viliam1234 1y ago
    I am not sure that really helped. When I was a child, the TV was running at our home a lot. When I left home, I didn't buy a TV on purpose. Visiting my family again was a weird experience: after a few words, someone suggested to go watch a TV. Nothing specific, just the default way of spending time. I was like "ugh, if you don't mind, I would prefer talking to you", but they were like "no problem, we can watch and talk". Except, it didn't work that way. Watching and talking means, you ask a question, the other person opens their mouth... but keeps watching the screen... and then maybe after a minute says something, very slowly, not even a coherent sentence. If you are not used to that, it's like watching people you know turn into zombies. But of course, if you do it every day, you are just as zombified as others, so it feels okay to you. (Just like drunk people don't mind being in company of other drunk people, or stoned people don't mind being in company of other stoned people.) You spend a few hours in each other's company, saying less than ten sentences during all the time, and somehow it gives you the feeling of spending quality time together, when in fact everyone was only paying attention to the screen. You could get an equivalent of that by having the whole family sit on a large sofa, everyone watching their own smartphone, sitting together in silence for hours. At the end, everyone would feel like they had a meaningful experience together. It only feels weird when the rest of the people are glued to their screens and you are not.

LostMyLogin 1y ago

> And sometimes we would attempt to socialize with whatever person happened to be nearby, even a complete stranger. Two days ago I was in Best Buy looking for a DAC for my headphones. They have a section of gaming keyboards and headphones where a kid in his mid to late 20's started to strike up a conversation with me. It went from whether I play video games, to if I live in town, to his story on dropping out of college. The entire time all I could process was the question of why this kid was talking to me and I kept giving him short bland responses. Not that long ago I would have sat there for an hour talking with this guy and loved every second of it. Then I would have come home and annoyed my wife by telling her all about it. I know it's cliche to say but something changed in me over the initial COVID lock-downs where I went from socializing being a necessity in my life to just wanting to be home and not dealing with people. A point that bums me out the more I think about it.

lordnacho 1y ago

Serendipity has been lost. If you aren't at least open to talk to randoms, you are stuck in your own network. People you know from school or work, and people they know, that's it. You won't be approachable when you are paying attention to a phone. And it's valuable. There's a lot of people you'll find interesting, but they happen to not be within 2 hops of you. If you want to put a number on it, look at what people pay (opportunity cost) for educational or work opportunities. The social network you'll get is often touted as one of the main benefits of private school, for instance. Despite being a bit of an introvert, I often reach out to randoms. Just to see what's there. It's been a great strategy thus far.

supriyo-biswas 1y ago
Theoretically, the serendipity part of it could be replicated online (see Omegle etc.) but I feel that the current regulatory regimes in most countries have a preference for building social media that simply serves up anodyne engagement porn, etc.
- the_snooze 1y ago
  The internet is a low-trust environment. Any scammer can reach you from anywhere in the world and try to take advantage of that desire for serendipity. You mention Omegle specifically, which was a hunting ground for sexual predators: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omegle#Child_sexual_abuse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omegle#Child_sexual_abuse It's the things that don't scale and instead have high barriers to entry that are most likely to produce actual healthy human connection.
- scarface_74 1y ago
  Every online place to randomly meet people ends up having dick picts. Or in Omegle’s case… https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omegle https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omegle Ends up with alt right trolls.
scarface_74 1y ago
I live in a vacation area upstairs from a bar frequented by tourists. I’m friends with the bartender. I’ll go down there when it’s not too busy sit at the bar talk to the bartender and whoever else comes around and is interested in talking. Mostly other guys or couples. I usually avoid talking to women because I’m obviously married wearing my ring and no matter what, it might come across as creepy and women usually have their guard up and are probably there with spouses somewhere around.

dfxm12 1y ago

This is not necessarily tech driven. People are extroverted or introverted. Pre smartphone, when I was alone on the bus or subway, I always had my nose in a paper or a book. Now it's my phone or a Kobo. I didn't like and wasn't good at making small talk back then, and I don't think that has changed much. I feel like there are a lot of Seinfeld subplots built around avoiding social interaction that I really identified with. On the other hand, I feel a lot of media is pushing us to ignore, suspect or otherwise be scared of strangers. I don't know that this is uniquely tech driven though.

em-bee 1y ago
yes, but only the real introverts carry a book. everyone carries a phone enabling more people to exhibit introverted behavior. i used to be one of those with a book. now i listen to audio books which incidentally allows me to appear more extroverted because i can make eye contact and i guess people assume i am just listening to music and am therefore approachable.

selendym 1y ago

> Sometimes we would day dream. There was an article about that a month or two ago: The Death of Daydreaming - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43894305 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43894305

cmilton 1y ago

Imagine how much more time is on the toilet. I’m sure we have some book readers, but I remember reading the label of random items within arms reach.