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Comment by nonrandomstring | Hacker News Reader

Interestingly the article mentioned that some young people raised an objection that they had "nothing else to do" without their phones.

In response the mayor promised new investment into sports, recreation, libraries and book sharing... In other words, there's more going on here than just the "phone ban", but a broader attempt to reconnect and rehumanise the village life.

My concern is that even with the social and financial will to restore a more convivial lifestyle, those young people won't be able to engage. Having been raised by screens they are already so psychologically altered (damaged?) as to be lost.

The assumption that life can "go back" may be misguided, and that makes this an experiment worth watching.

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Here's an article discussing a recent law change here in NZ banning phones from schools. The upshot seems to be that more normal human relationships come back pretty quickly, although this is still very recent so it's hard to tell definitively.

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/508614/school-phone-ban-...

Amazing. Adaptation at work. Hard to believe how well that went. Bookmarked for further research, thanks. Maybe that explains a deep fear latent in the tech industry. That in reality someone could say "Enough. No more smartphones!", and a whole generation could just turn around and say "Okay. No worries. What's next?"

> In other words, there's more going on here than just the "phone ban", but a broader attempt to reconnect and rehumanise the village life.

No there isn't: "In response the mayor promised". Namely, the mayor and their gang achieved THEIR objective first and blah blah the rest.

I’m pretty sure (like 99%) that you can unlearn social media and phone bad habits if forced to with minimal fuss. Just go on a month long camping retreat (sans screens) and you’ll see how quickly we adapt.

Go to jail. I read over 800 books that way. Still installed TikTok the day I got out, though.

How long were you in for to read that many books?

I used to read 500 books in a single summer as a teenager. I don't know how much free time you have in prison, but I can totally see doing 800 books in just a year or two.

I would have classed myself as a bookworm when I was younger, but there's no way I could have read anywhere near that many books in that timespan. I would say that whilst I believe you, you're also an extreme outlier with that figure.

Five and a half books a day, every day, all summer seems high.

What counts as "a book" here (the seven volume À la recherche du temps perdu seems a bit of challenge to rip through in a day) ?

Hah, yeah, see my comment here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39331379

Heh - confined for the summer gives a bit of an incentive, sorry about that.

All the same it's a high number, .. I'm guessing more than a few were light pulps and the best you could find given the library at hand?

I read a lot of books, several thousand, from 12 to 17, and kept a log of them - later I worked in (and led) a team that digested a few thousand technical documents a day (with a heavy dose of computer assistence to find|pick out key parts), there's a lot of material you can fly through quickly and not miss much, there are rare books that can take a year or a lifetime to fully digest and finish with.

10 years. I read a lot of magazines as well, though, otherwise the number would be a bit higher!

Your perspective is as always refreshing and unique. Thank you :) I hope to do my reading outside of jail and I still haven't installed TikTok and never will but I think my kids would be happy to agree with your position (probably minus the jail bit too).

It was once said that the only time in a man's life that he will be able to read Proust's In Search of Lost Time is in jail. So I had someone send it to me and of course I was released the next day.

p.s. I exaggerated slightly, it took me 3 days before I installed TikTok. I'd watched silly viral videos that appeared on the news for years and so I was intrigued about it. I've loved it ever since. Just gotta get it set up right so your filter bubble is what you're into. I get half my tech news from HN and the other half from TikTok.

> if forced to

That's definitely problematic and not where anyone wants this to go, right?

No. I was referring to forcing yourself if you wanted to run the experiment.

> forcing yourself

Ah yes that's quite a different matter.

My thoughts are that sure, when you are living and working alone, as happens to many of us at times, it is possible to successfully apply "force". Like making objects of temptation unavailable, maybe using a time-locked safe or taking a week away at tech-detox bootcamp.

IIRC Johann Hari in "Stolen Focus" seemed to think this only ever created a temporary relief, a bit like dieting and then gaining rebound weight.

What I wrote about in Digital Vegan was based on my interaction with heroin addicts, and is all about the friction that comes from peer pressure and groups that reinforce (mutually enforce) behaviours. Friends are a bigger problem than self-will in the arena of addiction. External force, even in peer relations, tends to have the opposite effects.

>month long camping retreat

Not dissing your idea, which is accurate, but I can't not-find it funny to then remark that most Americans couldn't even take a 2 week vacation without cheating with sick days.

"...had "nothing else to do" without their phones."

Now what would they have done before the advent of the smartphone? Turn the clock back and have them do that.

My generation drank, smoked, took drugs, hung around in large intimidating groups... I'm not exactly sure being hooked on smart phones is worse.

We did the same, but only because a medium-sized city in a Midwest state offered nothing for young people to do. We could go bowling or go to the movies.

Last week I met friends at a board game cafe / bar (I live on the west coast now) and there were tons of college students enjoying coffees and beers and pizza. There was still alcohol, but it wasn’t the point of the evening. When I was their age, we got loaded to forget / escape our boredom.

What I’m saying is that there’s a positive outcome that can be reached through community investment.

> there were tons of college students enjoying coffees and beers and pizza.

So what are High School students supposed to do? They often don't have the money to go spend to hang out someplace, and even if they did, can they actually get there? Maybe with an hour of transit time each way or with a friend's parent who can drive them.

The complaint of "I don't have anything to do without my phone" is probably coming from a younger group than College Students in general.

When I was in high school we would go to the public park, which was free.

Sorry for you, but I think we could show that many (most) kids were not doing those things.

given the epidemic of sexlessness and general delay of adulthood among young people I don't understand the demonization. Smoking, drinking and getting into some trouble have been important rituals for a long time for a reason.

Now we've traded it in for solipsistic, depressed, pill hooked anti-social teens because of an obsession with health at the cost of everything else. The pandemic of course did its part to accelerate that trend. Hitchens anticipated it a generation ago.

Your body will recover from some stupidities in your teens and young adulthood, having your mind glued to your phone instead of having a real life for your formative years, not so sure.

Spent time in shopping malls?

Or at an arcade? Or a rec center? Or at church?

Or some other thing outside of their house that doesn't exist anymore in any real way?

The death of the third space outside of school/work and home has been awful for society tbh.

> In response the mayor *promised* new investment

I mean, we all know how this is gonna end.

Penalize tech companies for damaging children and put the money towards rehabilitation.

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