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Comment by andrepd | Hacker News Reader

I think you're projecting and making broad assumptions with no evidence, based on your feel and the ever present "back in my day" syndrome. People have been awkward and people have been sociable before the internet, and people are awkward and sociable after the internet. Today you have people with their heads buried in their phones, 100 years ago it was newspapers. There is no qualitative shift, at least I will not proclaim so without evidence.

And yes, this article is patently ridiculous. Way to overthink something that should be about relaxing and having fun.

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>Today you have people with their heads buried in their phones, 100 years ago it was newspapers.

However, there is also no evidence that people 20 years ago were walking around all day with their heads buried in newspapers, reading them in grocery store lines, during walks in the park, and in class when they weren't really supposed to. Maybe on benches and on the bus.

Yes, I'm not saying I deny it either. I just say not to jump to conclusions based on gut feeling and "back in my day" arguments.

> And yes, this article is patently ridiculous. Way to overthink something that should be about relaxing and having fun.

Well, I found that article incredible useful.

Like, one of the main reasons I'm depressed right now is because I just can't relax. I'm away from family and friends and apparently don't know the basics of human interaction.

I'm just grateful that there are people overthinking simple things out there so I can catch up and fix some of my anxieties.

Glad it helped you then!

I'm a senior millennial (mid-80s kid) but I can tell you, anecdotally, that younger generation is more addicted to their phones and devices than my gen ever was. There was a car accident in front of my younger cousins' house where a car hit a fence and literally flipped over. While me and my uncle/aunt and a few others called for help and chatted about the event...my younger cousins were busy texting the event to their friends. It was as if they were there, but not really there.

I'm not sure I agree with the distinction that talking about an event with people who are there is "chatting", but talking about it with people who aren't there is merely "texting".

> my younger cousins were busy texting the event to their friends. It was as if they were there, but not really there.

Sounds like they were meaningfully interacting with their friends.

Back before the internet, they'd have probably rushed inside and fought over who got to use the phone to call their friends first, and describe the incident outside over the phone to them.

Probably they'd be interacting with their fam who was there and in the moment and later they'd call up their friends about it.

> Sounds like they were meaningfully interacting with their friends.

That's a meaningful interaction to you - texting?

Why would you think it's not? What point are you trying to make? as it seems obviously a 'meaningful interaction' to communicate with someone. (disclosure: I don't have a mobile phone, have never sent a text)

Kids these days - texting, emailing, talking on the phone, writing letters, exchanging meaning through spoken words. Whatever happened to a good, clean round of picking bugs out of each other's fur?

>People have been awkward and people have been sociable before the internet, and people are awkward and sociable after the internet.

Yep. "How to Win Friends and Influence People" was published in 1937.

Through, that one is more advanced and about how to be skilled manipulator and sleezy.

You haven't read it at all, have you?

That book is the sales bible!

i've only skimmed parts of the book, but i recall the author explicitly saying multiple times that it is not a book of "tricks", but rather tactics that can only work if there is genuine interest behind them.

idk how much time you have spent being deliberately manipulative, but unfortunately i have in my earlier years. unless you are naturally this way, it takes a lot of work in the moment and people are not usually fooled.

I have read the book and that was my conclusion from it. That it is harder to pull that actually off is true, but it it being hard does not change much on my assessment of book.

I did not tried manipulate people much and hate a lot when people try to manipulate me. People in the past did that to me. Hence my distaste with the book.

I agreed with you until the last paragraph. Parties "should" be relaxing and fun, but what if they aren't? Focusing on how you should feel a certain way when you don't isn't helpful, whereas making adjustments to how you act or think about things can be.

One of my favorite "back in my day, grumble grumble" quotes, attributed to Socrates: https://www.bartleby.com/73/195.html If you sprinkle "cell phone" in, you can't tell that it wasn't written this week.

https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/01/misbehaving-childre...

Most important part of the linked article so no one else has to pay the penalty of reading for my earlier misquote: "[Quote Investigator] has determined that the author of the quote is not someone famous or ancient.

It was crafted by a student, Kenneth John Freeman, for his Cambridge dissertation published in 1907. Freeman did not claim that the passage under analysis was a direct quotation of anyone; instead, he was presenting his own summary of the complaints directed against young people in ancient times. The words he used were later slightly altered to yield the modern version."

Thanks for sharing this the-dude, you've helped make me a little less misinformed, even though I'm sad to learn it's not a direct quote :)

For reference here's a party guide from the 1950s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qA93BhDBskw

these things have been going on a while

He never made the claim "nobody before 1-Jan-2002 was ever socially deficient or withdrawn from society", which you appear to be responding to.

What social consequences (specifically pertaining to human behavior) do you concede computing has had, if any?

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