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Comment by CraigJPerry | Hacker News Reader

>> Before smartphones, people regularly experienced true downtime

Was there not a similar argument made as newspapers became commonplace? Before that the same argument had been made for books but newspapers were on another level - they were effectively limitless drugs, affordable and every single day a new one was available. Instead of talking, laughing and joking with the other workers waiting at the bus stop or in the canteen or whatever, instead you had a sea of silent men reading newspapers.

I’m not convinced phones are without potential harm, but I’m hesitant to get too worked up about them vs. What’s gone before.

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The newspaper at least... stops once you've read it -- so that's what an hour (or whatever) gone of your day. That's a major difference, at least.

And you didn't carry it with you everywhere.

It blows my mind that my kids will never know what it's like to wait for a bus with nothing else to do.

I barely remember what it was like waiting for the bus with nothing else to do. But I remember vividly what it was like that the school bully was next to me waiting for the bus with nothing else to do. Hope my kids don't have to know what thats like.

My point is not that smartphones and social media are great things. But I agree with OP that they are just filling a gap created by something else. It is still possible to be bored or have time solely with your own thoughts with social media available. Why? Because even kids can (and do) understand that social media is not all that great. Of course they have to experience that on their own before they understand it. It's nothing that you can teach them.

When I see people say things like this I just think perhaps you were never taught to stand up for yourself.

bullies don't stop being bullies when you graduate high school, they just change tactics.

There comes a point where adults need to step in, but that isn't immediately because someone decided to pick on someone else. Learning to stand up for yourself is as much of a life skill as anything else.

I moved a lot as a kid and after a while I recognized a pattern. I'd move, someone would decide I was an easy target, I'd get into a fist fight, then everyone would leave me alone.

oddly enough, I just came across this youtube short that pretty succinctly describes my opinion on the matter.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/lwgeqX5tKcs

Today you consider a phone to be infinitely distracting because you haven’t experienced yet the next engrossing medium, we put our phones in our pockets occasionally today but perhaps tomorrow we just won’t take our iQuest3 thingys off our faces between sunrise and bedtime.

Someone will be well placed to make your argument - well at least you put your phone away at some point!

The socially challenging bit is the difference not the magnitude I think.

That's true up to a point, but digital media really is different from analog media which cannot be updated dynamically. That's the difference, I think.

(And, yes, more and more people are putting away the phone because they realize how intrusive it is in terms of time spent doomscrolling, etc.)

No one was reading the newspaper for the entire day. Instead it was a moment of reflection through the words of someone else.

Right now phones never end, there is no final page and nothing is reflected upon a second time outside phone time.

You miss the point, before newspapers no one was this distracted from the present. It’s not the magnitude of distraction - a phone obviously offers more opportunity for longer distraction. It was the delta change vs. What distraction existed before.

Of course they were. Stars, clouds, conversations, gardening, chess, etc. These are all distracting from present towards past or future.

Both other animals and native tribes today spend significant amounts of their day doing nothing. Therefore it’s only logical this is the normal mode of operation of the human brain, with the opposite situation being unhealthy.

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