Our phones are killing our ability to feel sexy (2024)

I think this can be true while also further enforcing the point. I was a child in the 80's and would ride my bike all over town just doing stuff. Sometimes alone, sometimes with friends. Yes, I know that sounds like older guy nostalgia.

But the idea that a full work day is the only reason that adults aren't "bored" seems absurd to me. The world is full of low-cost wonder. We have allowed ourselves to be captured by low agency tasks like watching TV and scrolling through phones.

But from what I've heard from great people / self help books in general is that

Getting bored isn't bad. I think you need to get bored sometimes to fetch back to your default.

Are we humans to not get bored or are we not bored / constantly stimulated / this drive towards higher and higher satisfaction that makes us human?

My brother used to joke that we should have some device that just injects the maximum amount of pleasure possible (like drugs) , I was like uhh that makes them unproductive and he was like : what is productivity to individual if he isn't happy?

Though I wonder if happiness and satisfaction are same. Satisfaction feels chemical , happiness feels spiritual.

Blaming phones isn't a distraction. I use a dumb phone and it didn't even had songs till yesterday (had no sd card , read my other comment)

And I had to constantly spend 3 - 4 hours 3 days per week in car travel. Guess what? I like to look at visuals and maybe reading book (though it gets vomit-y , I am going to now listen to AUDIOBOOKs , it's so fun!) , and maybe interacting with other human beings. I love dumb phones. I am seriously thinking of never buying a smartphone

I hear this repeated a lot on the Internet, but in real life I do things during the week and meet up with a lot of other adults with jobs and commutes for them.

This came up a lot when I was mentoring younger engineers. Every time we did a deep dive into their daily routine, they had a lot of unaccounted for time. They’d list their work day and commute, obviously, then add things like getting ready in the morning and eating dinner at night. Then one of two things happened: Either they’d start to exaggerate their daily routine chores (getting ready in the morning, making dinner at night) until they took 6 hours every day, or they’d be confused about how they couldn’t get the numbers to add up.

Upon further gentle pushing, they almost always realize that they’re spending hours and hours watching TV and on their phones every time. Some times they’d pull out a phone with screen time tracking, be stunned by the number of hours, and tell me it must be broken.

There are some job and commute combinations that won’t leave time for anything during the week, but most people don’t have those. They just have poor time management and their revealed priorities differ from their stated priorities. People will tell you that reading books and going to the gym is a priority for them, but then they’ll spend 3 hours watching Netflix every night and scroll social media for 90 minutes every morning.

One can now order everything over the internet and not even leave the house. SO many errands that cost tons of time involved leaving the house and getting this or that. This is now all reduced to minutes on the phone or computer and the items will magically appear in front of your door.

Same with information search. Having the internet, google maps, etc. has made everything so much easier than it used to be in the 80s or 90s.

All of that is 100% self-imposed.

Work and live closer together. Find a job that allows sane hours. Find a hobby so you don't have to spend what little extra time you have doom-scrolling (or watching TV).

I get up a 5:30, go to the gym or pool, and still have time to walk my dog and eat a sensible breakfast before walking to the office and arriving around 8am. I leave at 5:30ish, walk the dog again, and then cycle or run before dinner. That puts me somewhere around 7:30 or 8, so I still have an hour or two to chat with wife and read a book. No doom-scrolling or couch-potato-ing required.

If I'm physically tired, swap "run" for "fiddle with home lab" or "read more books" or "take dog for 3 mile hike".

Quitting Fecesbook and Twatter were two of the best decisions I've made in the past 5 years.

Yes - some people are very defensive regarding their phones.

This underscores the point of the article.

And the rest of us are left behind. We can even look "approachable enough" for some people by showing your way to approach the world, how we talk, how we move. But all of that is way harder to capture on a static photo.

I personally look terrible in front cameras, and I have a hard time creating any kind of profile in a dating app.

This is, shall we say, not the kind of audience that is going to give this article a fair reading.

A lot of people would come to him and say they wanted to lose weight, but when he started discussing their diet and shopping lists they would get defensive. They didn’t like the implication that something they did or a choice they made was a factor in their weight gain.

Instead, they wanted to blame everything but themselves. It wasn’t their fault they picked the packaged, ultra-processed thing at the store. It was the food industry’s fault for making it unhealthy. It wasn’t their fault they didn’t buy vegetables at the store, it was their parents’ fault for not teaching them how to cook as a kid. It was common to hear people claim that they were doing calorie restriction but it didn’t work because of microplastics, toxic chemicals in the soil, pesticides, or other environmental factors.

This mentality even swept through the “rationalist” community online recently. A blogger wrote a long series with over a dozen long posts trying to find any other explanation for weight gain. In the very first article he had a graph showing that caloric consumption was up and activity was down over the years where obesity was on the rise, but he concluded that couldn’t be it. It must be chemicals in the water! The blog series was very popular in rationalist communities and IIRC even Scott Alexander of Slate Star Codex gave the author a financial grant.

The story with phones is the same: People don’t want to hear that it’s their fault for using phones so much. They want to blame the algorithm or their job for “making” them spend hours on the phone.

Resistance to any concept of self accountability is stronger than ever on the internet. Social media delivers convenient excuses, which can be seen throughout this thread.

Yes, personally I agree that doom scrolling is not ideal but this is a symptom of a much larger issue — no time available for a majority of people to invest in real relationships. Real issue here is a significant number of people left behind in this economy and this largely due to shitty economic policy based on neoliberalism

These people need to decide they want something better for themselves to have a chance of changes sticking.

I'm not.

This forum is dominated by people who write software for, and are addicted to, fondle slabs.

> Smartphones provide a level of private immersion in silent, "socially-flavored" dopamine consumption that's antithetical to robust, vibrant socialization.

Regardless of whether the article is right (it might be) and smartphones in general, some of us find ourselves feeling trapped in this reality of "robust, vibrant socialization", and crave any form of "private immersion". Myself, I'm not glued to phones or the usual social media sites (HN on the other hand), but the very thought that the goal is to give up what little "private immersion" time I have, and embrace "robust, vibrant socialization" instead, just makes me want to finally bite the bullet and install TikTok.

(Yes, this says much more about me than about your comment. But there's some source of this feeling. I don't know what it is, but I suspect I'm not the only one feeling like this - so it perhaps could be a factor in the "smartphone equation".)

This just feels like making excuses and not having any self-control or self-discipline.

Author is opining for the way things used to be, is expounding upon the real, significant consequences of this transformation, and just wondering in general what the hell happened and why we let it get to be like this lol

It's also worth noting that the author is a woman, so if you're a dude and feel attacked by the article somehow (or god forbid instinctively dismiss the whole thing because it's not from a male perspective), just take a deep breath and try to recognize that other people have valid, salient thoughts and opinions too. She's just suggesting we all 'touch grass' in a much more substantial way than a bite-sized meme phrase.

Like a book?

There is a lot of information and accuracies left out of this article to create a viewpoint when mostly the writer is nostalgia baiting.

Now user interfaces are an exhausting search exercise- I have to watch the screen to see where the buttons will appear with every interaction. It sucks.

It makes me wonder what a physical-first API would look like. Perhaps that's just what CLIs evolved for: reliable, repeatable key-based interactions.

that's simply what you feel when you are 18, no matter what the actual year

Case in point - the link between app dating, #MeToo, and the redefinition of sexual harassment/misconduct to incorporate pretty much any sexualised behaviour in the workplace.

Essentially the existence of apps made it _possible_ to redraw boundaries. Something a lot of women were keen to do, having put up with all manner of crap for years - and having listened to their stories, decent men mostly went along with it. Before apps - which carved out a dedicated space for seeking romantic partners - I don't think that would have been the case.

1990 is 35 years ago now, and if you look 35 years prior to that, you're in buttoned-up, conservative 1955. So maybe we GenX were fortunate (or for some, not so much) to live in more morally liberated times, where this stuff could exist in the public sphere before the Weinsteins, Tates and PUAs came along and ruined it all.

As to stuff being swept under the carpet - the allegations against roughly 80% of 90s rock titans, plus film moguls and so on - most women will tell you that's just the tip of the iceberg, so maybe we were overdue for the pendulum to swing the other way.

Like I say, I agree with you about the spirit of things, but equally, well, maybe our definition of sexy belongs to its time, just as prior generations had a different view on all that.

The fact that they mention NEETs using Pornography and Video Games as supplements for relationship and achievement is a signal. Some people might do that but do you think most of these people would have done other decidedly sexy things had these things not existed? What is your argument? Even if it was true should we then force these men, who don't get attention from women, to do nothing but chase women and fail because it's "romantic", the world does not revolve around you. This woman sounds like those people who denigrate video games and pornography then watch 30 hours of trashy reality television a week and don't see the irony of their own behavior. We get it, your boyfriend won't pay attention to you because your relationship was poor in the first place and now you have an issue with others enjoying themselves.

Also, nothing is stopping you from being spontaneous, nothing is forcing you to look up the menu before you go to a restaurant. That is your active decision that you're crying about as if it's what everyone is forced to do. I have no issue being spontaneous and actively choose to not look stuff up all the time. People like this are the same type of people to try and police others behavior but never discover their own flaws or ignore double standards because it benefits them, and yet decry others are living terribly.

Perhaps without smartphones in everyone's pocket we would use social media much differently and that industry would have grown differently....

> [...] Why walk into a store in Soho and see what’s on offer when you can stay home and scroll the entire inventory from the comfort of your couch? Why go to the library to find books about a topic that interests you when you can look it up on Wikipedia in two minutes and move on with your day?

> Instantaneous access to everything obviously comes at a cost. The cost being that we all behave like demented Roman emperors, at once bored and deranged, summoning whatever we want at any time.

Even without social media, we still would have the instant gratification that the author proposes as a problem.

Without smartphones, social media would be much less pervasive and much less toxic, because people would not have an internet connected camera with them at all times. Fewer posts means less engagement, and even more importantly having to bring and then open up a laptop would pose a major barrier to doomscrolling behaviors. Some would do it anyway—there were lots of us who spent a lot of time online before Facebook—but not anything like as many as do now, which means it wouldn't be normalized. And without normalization, social media as it exists today couldn't really exist.

So, yeah, phones without socials would be tools. But phones created social media in the incredibly toxic form it exists in today.

I’ve always felt it’s more important to understand the essence of what is being said, rather than hyperfocus on specific wording (unless it’s particularly important). I’ve never read “you” and thought they were imposing anything on me specifically.

What do you mean by 'saves time'? When you read a novel, do you replace the character names with "a figment of my, the author's, imagination"?

It's not a fucking diary entry claiming to be reporting on an objective fact of the world, it's someone trying to communicate something about the world.

Really, all you can think when you read a title like this is "well, that's certainly not true for me, I don't have to read this"?

I know more than a few people who used to check Craigslist everyday to read the stories.

It was fun to read them.

"On a lighter note, aren’t we all so sick of looking stuff up? You know what, maybe I go to a restaurant and it’s bad. Maybe I don’t know what’s good on the menu before I get there. Maybe I throw caution to the wind and put something in the dishwasher without googling if it’s dishwasher safe. Maybe I get a flip phone and get comfortable saying, “I don't know.” While you’re looking down at Google Maps, the love of your life is walking past you on the street. To feel sexy, we need risk and spontaneity. Our phones kill both."

I have a no-socials policy for my kids until they're practically adults. It's not an easy policy, and the oldest who had to deal with this policy first, was not thrilled about it.

But it did bear fruit. My oldest is at university, and is not entangled in social media drama. Which is not entirely due to my policy--the oldest is also extremely independent--but I can't help but notice it played a part.

It's not easy. Regardless of whether it's a good or bad thing, they definitely miss out on some degree of what makes up the public commons for kids today.

Every now and then there's a story about a (usually) millennial who swears off social media and finds value in doing so. Sometimes they go back, sometimes they don't. But millennials marinated in this world for so long, it's really difficult for them to break out. (At least the Zoomers got "touch grass" pretty early on.) I feel for the millennials trying to navigate through all this. For GenX it would be like making it through the 80s without knowing the lyrics to Michael Jackson's 'Thriller'. You almost have to be an extreme outsider or a very independent person indeed to escape the milieu.

Not to say there isn't any overlap. But whereas people who are smart but somewhat lacking in social skills can thrive in nerd-dom, for people in the lowest quartile on both, paid employment is a race to the bottom.

(Side note - HN tends to hypothesise that smartness and social skills are inversely correlated. While there's certainly a trend for people to develop one at the expense of the other, there's not much correlation in innate levels).

Video games and porn play the same role here as weed has for at least the last couple of generations, and alcohol for centuries - they make an otherwise intolerable situation tolerable. If you've genuinely no escape from your circumstances, that's a good thing. If you might otherwise sort your life out and become a positive contributor, but they rob you of motivation to do so, not so much.

I wouldn't like to say which side the numbers come down on overall. When does taking the edge off go too far - harder to measure this when you don't have the direct indicators of health damage or violent/abusive behaviour that alcohol brings. Modern society tends to assume that the right amount of motivation to have is "as much as possible", but that's not always true.

While almost the same goes for Apple Watch wearers, at least I could justify them wearing it because it actually has some functionality people can find useful, compared to a arm-watch like a Rolex which basically just carries duplicate functionality today, and is mostly used as a status symbol.

Best is when someone wears nothing :)

Edit: utilitarian seems a bit ironic consider that you can just use your phone clock nowaday.

edit: also franchisees whose franchise sells the most shit so the franchiser buys them one as a prize (real)

To me, seeing a Rolex on someone's wrist puts them in the same category of dickhole as a lifted pickup truck with punisher decals on the rear window and truck nutzzzz hanging off the tow hitch.

Having pictures where you’re not pretending to have been caught in some candid moment

Same old, see Socrates circa 400 BC railing against reading and writing:

"and now you, who are the father of letters, have been led by your affection to ascribe to them a power the opposite of that which they really possess. For this invention will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it, because they will not practice their memory. Their trust in writing, produced by external characters which are no part of themselves, will discourage the use of their own memory within them. You have invented an elixir not of memory, but of reminding; and you offer your pupils the appearance of wisdom, not true wisdom, for they will read many things without instruction and will therefore seem to know many things, when they are for the most part ignorant and hard to get along with, since they are not wise, but only appear wise."