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Comment by andy99 | Hacker News Reader

Banning doesn't make sense. I'd be ok with a campaign to try and make it socially unacceptable, like smoking.

Sounds like it's more of a campaign than an actual ban.

> It is not enforceable by police – officers could not stop or fine people scrolling in the street because there is no national law against smartphones – but the mayor describes it as an incitement to stop scrolling and guidance for limiting phone use.

It sounds silly on its face but these things can have impacts. Say that a store bans the use of phones. Is this ordinance a defense against a discrimination suite brought by someone kicked out while using a translation or vision app? The store would say that it was simply acting in support of a local ordinance.

Obviously there’s discretion at play. No shopkeeper is going to kick out a mum who’s taking a call from her son who’s in trouble.

It's the french, I expect it to happen

Eh even then, if I'm sitting on a park bench smoking and you sit next to me, there's a certain measurable harm that you get because I'm smoking. But if I'm just scrolling HN on my phone? You can sit there and not be bothered at all.

> there's a certain measurable harm that you get because I'm smoking

Do you really believe that? Do you actually believe you get a "measurable harm" due to a few minutes of so-called "second hand smoke"? Does ANYONE actually believe that?

I'm not sure how people just buy into small memes and make no use of common sense, whatsoever.

> Does ANYONE actually believe that?

Yes: https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/secondhand-smoke/health.html

I'd take second hand smoke over an unsociable society of human-zombies scrolling around in public.

After twenty years smoking and close to a decade quit I still can't smell it but want to light up one of my own. (I'd say 'bum one', but even so evanescent an unplanned interaction seems to take people the wrong way, these days...)

I'd still call it the same way you would, if anyone gave me the chance. Wouldn't even have to think it over.

Where do you live that you feel like you are surrounded by scrolling zombies?

In Western Europe, but does it matter? Most modern cities would qualify...

I live in Manhattan and I would not describe the scene here as 'zombies on phones'. If there is noticeable anti-social trend here it would be headphones, not scrolling.

If, instead of scrolling HN, you talked to me, both our lives would improve.

Human contact, even with strangers, has a profound impact on health, mental state and quality of life. This has been researched and proven over and over. We are simply wired to function in social groups. Our current state of individualism is rather exceptional, and a cause for many issues with (mental) health.

So, yes, you scrolling HN has an effect on my health, because the reverse is unfortunately true too: loneliness (and isolation etc) have a negative effect on humans

> If, instead of scrolling HN, you talked to me, both our lives would improve.

I'm wholly in sympathy with the idea that public life would be better if we spent less of it on our phone, but counting every good deed left undone as a harm done is a very dangerous road to go down.

Fair point.

I wasn't seeing it as a "good deed left undone" but as a normalized state that has been unbalanced by phones and individualism. That the norm is a place where humans talk, collaborate, and have deep connections in small social groups. The way humans have lived for millions of years.

I guess looking at it from a more practical perspective of individualism being the norm from which we should break through good deeds, is a far more effective and realistic way. Thanks.

I wouldn't chat with strangers sitting on a bench with or without a phone. I say this as someone who often walks in parks without taking out my phones. If there's a claim that my not talking is affecting other people's health, I'll counter claim that such a burden of socializing is a kind of peer pressure, and it is negatively affecting my mental health.

> We are simply wired to function in social groups.

A stranger on the bench is not my social groups. I have my friends and circles to whom I talk, and that's good enough for me. Talking with utter strangers on random occasion is stressful to me; I'm quite certain that I'm not wired to do it.

"If, instead of scrolling HN, you talked to me, both our lives would improve."

You haven't talked to me :D

Yeah, it takes two people to talk and if I'm on my phone and someone starts talking to me, I'm more than willing to put it down and talk.

> If, instead of scrolling HN, you talked to me, both our lives would improve.

Citation needed. The cohort that wants to talk to random strangers in my experience 1) significantly overvalue their opinions 2) seem unbothered by any behavior or body language saying "please leave me alone" and 3) are not nearly as interesting as they think.

Just because I'm outdoors doesn't mean I signed up to be bothered by randos.

> If, instead of scrolling HN, you talked to me, both our lives would improve.

It might be just my big city upbringing but the random people chatting me up in public almost always want something from me I would rather not give them. Most of them want my literal money. Either by scamming me or by just begging. Those who don’t usually want to tell me about their faith and try to get me converted.

Not saying it is all interactions. Have a few positive ones too, but the wast majority is not.

The reason I am very skeptical about talking with strangers is evidence based and has nothing to do with phones. In fact it predates smartphones by decades.

The idea that baning phone usage is going to make people less lonely is in itself preposterous. If you see me on my phone in public most likely i’m talking with one of my friends. If you are feeling so lonely that you want to force me to interact with you instead of them, then maybe you are the one who has a problem? Like join a club, invite people over for some board games or volunteer.

I grew up in a small suburban area where a lot of my learned behaviors came from being a mall rat. Since that was the major place I socialized (in the arcades), you quickly learned how to try and signal you're not willing to talk or engage with people. Mainly because malls had a ton of smaller stalls staffed with sales people who would immediately try to pull you aside if you even gave them a side glance and try to sell you a phone plan or other things.

I believe this is most likely a big city mindset (for good reason).

After living in London a few years and returning back home, I realised how defensive and wary I'd become of stranger interaction.

In London people might be trying to pickpocket you or sell you something, but in smaller towns I've found most of the time people are genuinely being friendly or asking for directions etc

It might come as shocking, but it used to be the case that one could meet new people in the street, because the probability of positive human contact dwarfed the scammers or beggars you describe.

Couples that met on a bus commute was a trope with a basis in reality; nowadays everyone's isolated, headphones on, eyes glued on a phone. The first reaction to human contact in public spaces is one of distrust and defence.

> The idea that baning phone usage is going to make people less lonely is in itself preposterous.

It's not magic; it's a signal, a public statement.

> It might come as shocking, but it used to be the case that one could meet new people in the street, because the probability of positive human contact dwarfed the scammers or beggars you describe.

That sounds good. I was in my early twenties when smartphones went from a curiosity you heard about on the TV to a reality in many hands. Scammers and beggars masively outweighted positive random contacts even before. Phones and headphones did not cause this where I have grown up.

One of the most famous experiments that prove exactly this were done in the NY subways. (In the eighties) on mobile, so don't have a link to the paper at hand.

I've almost always lived in big cities myself and had many pleasant conversations. But I'm pretty good at profiling.

As an introvert the last thing I want is random people deciding that me trying to enjoy some peace on a park bench is license to try to "improve" my life by talking to me. Almost every stranger who has thought they were "improving" my life by talking to me, has either had no impact, or actively made it worse.

Plus, it's such a culturally dependent thing, Americans are known for always engaging in little bits of random conversation and pleasantries with total strangers, but other cultures can see it as either cheap and shallow or weird and creepy, and of course if someone sees it as either of those, it isn't going to help their loneliness.

> If, instead of scrolling HN, you talked to me, both our lives would improve.

Talking to random strangers in public is generally very awkward and unpleasant for me and I don't see how subjecting myself to that would improve my life in the general case.

Me too. But science tells it's the reverse. Obv. statistics, so it doesn't apply to your personal situation.

Yet, I, introvert++ have had the best moments when travelling, talked to random strangers or exchanged beers, music and stories when stuck in transport. This still comes out as net positive for me in all the decades of having awkward conversations, unwanted attention or just social interaction. I won't give up those hundred of situations that made me uncomfortable for the few that truly changed my life.

The last thing my introverted-ass wants to experience is someone assuming that they're making my life better by randomly chatting with me on the street.

I spend all day at work talking with people, being in meetings and having said human contact. Outside of work I prefer to control that contact, hence why I walk around in public with big obvious headphones on.

> You can sit there and not be bothered at all.

Radiations man, radiations!

> I'd be ok with a campaign to try and make it socially unacceptable, like smoking.

Why though? I’m fine with shunning smokers - these directly affect the others in a negative way.

Scrolling seems harmless to others; no reason for me to make it socially unacceptable.

But smoking is banned in certain places punishable by fines. So, why not publicly scrolling while walking down the street? You can't drive while distracted (ignoring the fact every dumbass does it), so why not make distracted walking punishable?

Lets ban walking while talking too then, that is also distracted walking, and as any fast walker can attest to, people walking slowly while absorbed in conversation and hogging the entire width of the sidewalk are only second to people weaving through pedestrians on bicycles in causing trouble.

Amen. There's about a half dozen sidewalk activities I would want to stop before I got to looking at a phone. Talking loudly, walking multiple people abreast, stopping without "pulling over", using any kind of vehicle (unless required for mobility), walking out of a door into the sidewalk without paying attention.

What's next? Can't walk while drunk? Someone has to carry you on their shoulders?

Banning thinking and daydreaming while walking?

License for walking, lanes for walking and turn signals on your shoulders?

For your safety.

i second the motion.

i'd now like to move to the next item on the agenda and propose banning of smart phones followed by all social media.

Lets ban the internet itself. And then ban reading/writing too.

People on their phones rarely get in my way. I live in a big city and walk everywhere and it really isn't a problem. I wonder if people in smaller cities/towns are less adept at walking and using their phone, because people seem to get very upset about it. I only get upset when people stop in the middle of the sidewalk, which sometimes involves a phone and sometimes not.

There is a law against smoking in certain places, a village can't put in place an equivalent law against this

There's no particular reason not to do it, it's just that it's not in the power of a mayor, at least in France.

When a pedestrian bumps into another, it isn't expensive property damage and potential death.

There are countries this is banned.

Haha you think smoking is socially unacceptable in France? By some measures it is more popular than ever.

I suppose "by some measure" means "by none whatsoever"? Tobacco sales are at lowest point for 50 years, and even occasional usage is close to 50y low.

I remember when you couldn't go anywhere without smelling cold tobacco, even in trains and buses, not even talking about might clubs and restaurants... Now even outside many smokers are considerate and will avoid smoking in your direction, especially when you have kids, which was definitely not the case 20 years ago!

But among youth the prevalence of smoking is increasing again, even if they buy less tobacco.

ETA: I guess you are objecting to my "worse than ever" characterization, and you are probably right, but it's shocking to drop into France where youth smoking is visibly more common than it was 15-25 years ago, mother-daughter smoking is a thing, young adult smoking might be only 40-50% but that's hard to differentiate from 100% and it's 10x higher than some other western nations so it seems crazy.

Smoking is also banned in many places.

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