I've setup my life so that I expect the people I care about to be able to reach me at any moment. It's something I desire. I don't want them to hold back telling me something important (or even something trivial). I've invested in the ability to be present (even in a limited way) at nearly all times. It's an enormous benefit to me and to the people I care about and I feel very strongly it's a valid way to live.
At the same time, I experience no discomfort with choosing to leave my phone at home. It's fine to have periods of focus on the circumstances that physically surround you. The same systems of contact I generally surround myself with make it easy for me to arrange periods of isolation.
The problems comes up when I am forced (by circumstance or by authority) to isolate myself in a way I don't consent to. That does feel uncomfortable and it should feel uncomfortable - not because humans should "naturally" live in some particular way - but because I am being stopped from living in a way that I want and causes no harm to any other being.
Edit: neutrally in the sense that I think this way of living was introduced to me by the era in which I live, but I don't think our era forces it on us. You can still live other ways, but I don't think we need to fall back on circumstance to justify it.
Age: 33. I use the phone compulsively, like the person in the article. I reach for it instinctively when standing still in line, or waiting for anything, or while eating, etc. I have done this increasingly in the past three years.
Two weeks ago I went to play trivia at a bar, hosted by a friend. I left my phone at home intentionally. For the first few minutes it was odd, just sitting there with a beer waiting for the game to start. And in between, I would watch other people, or doodle on my answer sheet, or just think about life.
Today, I went and got breakfast and coffee and read a book for about an hour at the cafe. There was a place for people to put sticky notes about how they're feeling - it made me think about that, and make a submission. I read literature and history around migration and people. I listened to the espresso machine. I watched the homeless man sitting on the corner and thought about it.
There is so _much_ for the mind to do, so many thoughts and experiences to process in the downtime without a device. For me, that often requires not just turning a phone on silent, but leaving it in the car or at home entirely. And it is truly freeing.
If you aren't joking about your opinion, as someone who has lived in both columns, please do an experiment like the OP article. Leave the phone at home for an hour or two a day, for several days within a month. Maybe just a weekday evening after work, or for a walk/drive/brunch one weekend.
The billions of thoughts and pictures and memes, if you are not joking, is useless when you wake up after a decade of accomplishing nothing of value to your own development or happiness or meatspace[1] interaction with the world.
[1]https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/meats...
Why is it that you think you need that?
> have access to billions of ... memes
But this is where I think maybe I'm getting trolled.
* Regardless, as stated above, the parent comment is believable despite its absurdity, which is the upsetting part either way.
There’s so much research already pointing towards our always-stimulated culture being a provably bad thing.
I think obsession with anything runs a very thin line towards being a bad thing.
This can also be especially important if you have other sensitivities that can lead to unwanted outcomes, which can be ameliorated more easily with a device nearby.
Also, IMO using "addiction" where "typically need to have this with me for different reasons" would work just fine is pretty inappropriate. The term projects quite a bit of subjective negative & clinical interpretation onto others which is a common ethical mistake, among other things.
Any time you would like to stop doing something but are unable to because of a compulsion.... Is that not an addiction?
If you don't know what to do with your hands without a cigarette in them, almost anyone would call that a cigarette addiction.
Most people don't know what to do with their hands or mind without a phone. I sure don't.
That's the thing. People call it addiction even when nobody ever said anything (see my comment) about that part. You are the one who added the bit about not being able to stop.
So, is it really fair to then project one's own fears or experiences with addiction, or beliefs about addiction, onto such a situation? That's better left to clinical territory, not casual relational discourse.
Over using a cellphone vs. not using a cellphone day to day. Yes. That is a problem.
But it is very common for people to explicitly say they have trouble stopping. Almost as common or maybe even more common than having trouble eating less sugar.
And it is very common for people to believe they are negatively affected, unable to focus on books or movies, that their relationships are impacted, that their health suffers, that they are stressed by the miserable content they consume, and to be confident that these problems are new or worsened since the phone era.
Maybe addicted isn't the best word for strangers, but "fairly likely to be having some level of addiction symptoms" seems to apply to most phone owners.
Phones being addictive or whatever is being massively overstated. Too many people projecting their own issues with social media and lack of impulse control onto others.
If you can't handle it, figure it out. But I'm sick and tired of people saying Facebook should be shut down or YouTube should be nationalized. I don't hear anyone saying M&Ms or cookies should be regulated.
To all of those who think cellphones r bad: You're an adult, start acting like one.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junk_food#Anti-junk_food_measu...
When you get older you might grow bored of the virtual stimulation trapped inside a screen.
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.
Kind of a "...but I always can if I want to!" cope.
That said, I was similar to the thread OP in my early 20s when it came to my computer time. I spent all day on the computer which was totally cool because of all the things I could do on it, even though I was addicted to Warcraft or Diablo or whatever. And it took 10 years to admit it and find a healthier relationship with it.
Race to the bottom of the garbage pile.
Don't worry, you'll get bored of it just like the rest of us who hit 30. Except we did it with desktops/laptops and not mobile phones.
Leaving my phone at home, and foregoing all my other digital tools really makes me feel like it’s just me and my immediate surroundings I’m paying attention to.