People get along fine without accounts in FAANG. You don't even need an account to use many Google services.
At that point, you literally cannot live as an adult in the society without FAANG dependence, even if it's a third party Android phone, at least not legally.
I've been using GrapheneOS with F-droid and Aurora Store without logging into a Google account for years.
I've yet to run into a single thing I either couldn't use or couldn't work around.
I had to buy a replacement phone in a hurry last year when my old phone's screen stopped working, just so I could login to make an urgent bank transfer. I would have preferred to take my time over what to buy, but so many financial things I use are blocked without a smartphone now.
As for "working around" it, it's ridiculous to impose that expectation on the general population. Sure, you and I will always be able to find a way to hack around restrictions, but it's inaccessible to the overwhelming majority of the population.
Most people use phones they bought at their local electronics store, with default Android OS and default settings.
The exception establishes that you can.
The exception very specifically and precisely does disprove the rule.
This is ofc locale-dependent, but if before the pandemic you could barely live without a smartphone, today is just impossible (at least in the 2 countries I visit often).
Switched banks.
> gvmt Covid mandatory app to travel anywhere?
There wasn't one, thank $DEITY (Germany).
> QR code for restaurants?
Never encountered one without a menu yet, but I'd just go to another one.
> Places that require an app in general?
Never encountered those, either. There was one on my offline backpacking trip which required digital payment. It was sad, but I had to forfeit.
Some places do require an app and while there are alternatives, there may not be another choice in the future. But not today, most of my elderly neighbours also don't own a smartphone and yet they survive in this city (Antwerp).
Life without a smartphone is possible, and imho calmer and more relaxed.
The easiest way to avoid this is by going physically to your bank branch.
> gvmt Covid mandatory app to travel anywhere?
Don't live in a country that does this, so I don't know.
> QR code for restaurants?
I ask for a menu.
> Places that require an app in general?
Haven't seen that happen yet. There are some parking lots that require an app to park in them, but I just park elsewhere. The laundry room in my apartment complex requires an app to pay, so I just go to the laundromat down the street instead.
I do have a smartphone, although I'll switch to the dumbest phone I can find when this one dies. I do not use any apps for doing any commerce or the like, though. It's far too risky for my taste.
A lot of people talk about 'needing' a smartphone for services/stuff I have never used, and probably would never use. I suppose I just kept living my life as I did before the 2010s, while everyone else changed. I was already in my 30s at that time, so not subject to the same social pressures a younger person would have felt, so perhaps it was easier.
That and my avoidance of Facebook didn't really matter until I had a kid and he started nursery school. I somehow got myself elected head of the Parents' Council, but it's been tough dealing with the mental block the slightly-younger generation has for email, and Signal is apparently a little too out there for non-techy 20/30-somethings of either gender.
I'm not as privacy-conscious as you, as I have a fairly recent iPhone; I'd probably be better described as social-media-skeptical, but your right to live a normal life without a smartphone is tied to my right to live a normal life without intrusive social media.
I use a bottom tier flip phone in the US, and a 13 year old Nokia with a pay-as-you go SIM in Europe.
I've noticed that there has been a generational shift towards smartphone-only communications, but I haven't really had to deal with it. I'd like to hear more about that. Oddly I use some of the same communication tools that young kids use, namely Discord, as it doesn't require a phone number. Linking online accounts and communications to a phone number has always put me off.
Also, even a lot of Facebook skeptics have no idea they’re owned and run by the same company…
I think the shift to smartphone-based communication is part of a vicious cycle of people giving up personal use of “real” computers, making a letter-replacement email something more comfortable to conduct as a bunch of short texts, which also have the “benefit” of quicker feedback before having to reveal the next thought.
Even I spent awhile when I first got a smartphone (ca. 2010) feeling like what I typed into or read on the device in an app was more confidential than what I did on a full computer, even though I intellectually understood what an API was and that apps that communicated outside the phone were essentially very niche web browsers. These little devices that fit in our pockets, have cute cases that we picked out, and are cradled in our hands just feel less scary than a desktop or even laptop that can get viruses and throw up cryptic errors and chime accusingly at us when they don’t like something we did.
So now we all have these little tethers that started out being a lot cheaper than a new laptop (but now easily cost $500+)
Early motherhood is particularly good at providing compelling use cases for a smartphone. Baby spending 45 minutes every 2-3 hours leisurely feeding, frantically reaching out to more experienced friends (or your various moms’ groups) for help with a small but urgent problem - much easier to pick up the little device with your free hand than to break out the laptop.
So once the kid is in nursery school at 12-18 months, even if you used to be a laptop user at home, your communications habits have been thoroughly changed.
And since mothers are the main social organizers, their preferred means of communication will dominate. Absolutely no one was interested when I offered to set up a website for the nursery school Parents’ Council, and from the perspective of people mostly ok with Facebook and WhatsApp, I understand the many reasons why.