80%+ of teens own iPhones
https://www.pymnts.com/consumer-insights/2023/apple-iphone-r...
And this is the percent of teens on various social media platforms
https://www.sentiment.io/how-many-teens-use-social-media/#t-...
I talk with elderly people who do not have smartphones, and they tell me how difficult it is to navigate the modern world without them - doctor offices who want to send a text or MFA or the like. That we have a Google/Apple monopoly (or any nationwide Verizon/AT&T monopoly, with maybe one or two smaller players) is not much of a gotcha. I have more faith in the wisdom of the youth than your neoclassical theories of political economy.
Of course virtually everything is an oligopoly nowadays. UMG, Sony, Warner own at least 65% of global music. Media, accounting, advertising, breakfast cereals, go down the list - most commodities are sold by an oligopoly of four or less companies. A theory of political economy where somehow consumers are "choosing" this system is what is bankruptcy, not the understanding of the working youth who resent this.
But that just requires any cellphone that can text, and cell phones have been common for 25 years. Are there some specific examples of where you have to have a smartphone?
So? I mean bully for them I guess, but why should anyone else care?
Try getting a job without a smartphone.
Try getting government services without a computer.
Try getting anything without a phone at all.
You can't even walk into a physical brick-and-mortar business without them worrying about being defrauded.
We built a high trust society and then threw away the trust part.
That computer only needs a browser. Surely as an HN commenter you know the solution for having a computer that you don’t want to run software by BigTech on it.
I know older people who will still walk into the various government offices and utility offices when needed
> Surely as an HN commenter you know the solution for having a computer that you don’t want to run software by BigTech on it.
Yup. I speak from experience. See my other reply [0] to you.
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42879665
> I know older people who will still walk into the various government offices and utility offices when needed
Yup. I speak from experience.
Government services and private utilities in Texas require email addresses. They require phone numbers.
If you don't have a computer, you're definitely not going to get the emails in a timely fashion. If you don't have a phone, you're not going to receive phone calls or texts. Good luck to homeless!
When you do have a computer, the government services offload your information to a private third party. You are required to do this to enroll in government services, and that private entity has its own license agreement whose jurisdiction is not even in Texas. If you have a disagreement, good luck getting to Idaho to file a dispute when you can't afford groceries. And all of your private information is made available to the lowest bidder.
They require home phone numbers.
And you are talking about owning a phone - not a smart phone.
Here is a feature phone for you
1. At least where I leave, local libraries provide a ton of support for people who need help using a computer: free access to computers, the Internet, popular applications, and instruction on how to use them.
2. You still haven't given any evidence on why you need a smartphone.
2. Yes, society changes, and as part of those changes you need access to new tools. When I was a kid in the 80s in the US, you needed to have a car and you needed to have a phone.
At this point, PCs have been commonplace for nearly 40 years. I'm not saying that change is easy, but this idea that people are helpless and there aren't avenues to get access to the tools they need is BS in my opinion.
Perhaps, but I don't agree with you. It's an expression of frustration about my own personal experiences.
> At least where I leave, local libraries provide a ton of support for people who need help using a computer
That's a good point. I haven't (yet) looked at my local libraries to see how functional they are. I'll do that within the next month though.
> You still haven't given any evidence on why you need a smartphone.
I shouldn't need evidence for why you need a smartphone when I am arguing that you shouldn't need a smartphone. But ok: try signing up for any service with SMS-based 2FA required; banks come to mind, many other online services. Guess you "need" a smartphone unless you don't want to do online banking. It's further crazy that SMS-based 2FA actually decreases security.
> Yes, society changes, and as part of those changes you need access to new tools. When I was a kid in the 80s in the US, you needed to have a car and you needed to have a phone.
Changes in society should not require you to follow those changes yourself.
The requirement for a car is strictly a negative aspect of society, and very much a USA-based problem induced by not fostering public transit while also fostering sprawling urban/suburban environments. And that requirement is also a self-reinforcing lock-in: if you don't have a car then you can't afford to get a good job and without a good job you can't afford to move somewhere that a car is not required. Today it's very much still that way, with the exception of remote work which is very much in danger of being destroyed by oligarchs.
And for phone; well I distinctly recall many homes had phones shared by the whole family. You didn't need a phone per-se, you could easily borrow your own, or your neighbor's/friend's phone number and they'd take messages for you. Still can today, except that there's a lot more assumption about one-phone-to-one-real-person today.
> I'm not saying that change is easy, but this idea that people are helpless and there aren't avenues to get access to the tools they need is BS in my opinion.
I'm not saying people are helpless and there aren't avenues to get access to the tools they need. I'm saying the tools they need have been perverted beyond belief so that someone who has different morals no longer feels safe using the tools they need.
You can't say the same about cars in the 80s. Yes you might have actually needed a car, but the car was yours and didn't spy on you. Yes you might have actually needed a personal phone number and you could count on it being monitored by the government or with a warrant, but your conversations weren't data mined by and sold to third parties who you've never even heard of let alone done business with.
I literally wrote in the first comment you replied to "But that just requires any cellphone that can text, and cell phones have been common for 25 years. Are there some specific examples of where you have to have a smartphone?" - and then you just give another example that just requires texting...
I did read what you said. You're clearly not reading what I am saying. Here, let me repeat it for you:
Try.
Signing.
Up.
To.
Anything.
Without.
A.
Phone.
I fully understand you need to a phone that accepts text messages. You don't seem to understand that phones that can accept text messages existed long before smartphones, you can still buy them, and they aren't the same thing.
Not yet, perhaps.
But try getting a job without a linkedin account.
Try getting fair prices without an email address. For that matter, try getting email without a large-block mail provider and without getting your email server blocked or spammed.
Try filing for unemployment without a SMS-capable phone or email address or signing away your rights to a non-government entity.
And there are plenty of non smart phones that can receive text messages.
You wanna put some money where your mouth is?
In other Hacker News...
Linux troubles:
- [0.a] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42839502 "Facebook ban on discussing Linux"
- (bonus comment} [0.a.b] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42848523 "Linux users are extremists according to the NSA (http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/nsa-linux-journal-extrem...)"
- [0.b] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4063236 "Microsoft Bans Linux/Android Dual-Booting on Windows 8 ARM Devices"
- [0.c] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19224887 "Apple Is Blocking Linux User-Agent on appleid.apple.com"
- [0.d] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36197401 "Tell HN: Cloudflare is locking out Linux users"
Firefox troubles:
- [1.a] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34952279 "Ask HN: Is your Firefox blocked by Cloudflare in recent weeks? (e.g., Gitlab)"
- [1.b] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31459258 "Firefox appears to be flagged as suspicious by Cloudflare"
- [1.c] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42719865 "Google.com search now refusing to search for FF esr 128 without JavaScript"
- [1.d] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29938521 "Reddit Blocks Firefox"
- [1.e] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33269391 "Firefox Private Mode blocked by T-Mobile"
I could go on, but I won't. Suffice to say that yes you are right you "can" get such a computer. But there are very strong indications that won't always be true, and even having such a computer does not guarantee that you can access the services that you require.
> And there are plenty of non smart phones that can receive text messages.
What you mean is that there are plenty of non-smart phones that enable receiving of massive amounts of spam indistinguishable from spearphishing, and you even pay for that privilege.
No. I do not accept the concept of being required to pay for that "service".
It misses 2 main points:
1. The system we have seems to have done a pretty good job, since people are choosing its products, rather than products created by another system.
2. A lot of people will rarely make a larger sacrifice than maybe quitting Twitter for a while despite spending a huge amount of time trying to preach to other people about how important their cause is. Which makes it seem like the noises they make are often just posturing.
That's a weird phrase for "people do not have a choice about the products they use"
> A lot of people will rarely make a larger sacrifice than maybe quitting Twitter for a while despite spending a huge amount of time trying to preach to other people
Speak for yourself. I know plenty of people who want to disconnect but literally cannot because the services they're required to use also require connectivity.
> Which makes it seem like the noises they make are often just posturing.
Yes, that's the real evil isn't it? When you lack choices or recourse then talk is cheap.
Take climate change, something I suspect we agree on. People won't take individual action, and so it's no shock that they also won't vote for a politician who will promise to force them to take action, unless they are convinced that the costs to them will be small. Also, a hot take - climate change denial is partly virtue signalling by people who'd just rather have other people solve the problem but don't want to admit that. Yeah, big oil propaganda and a hostility between creationists and scientists is also a factor.
Which is revealing in itself! But when I think back to my first days using Facebook the thought never occurred to me that I couldn’t trust them. Naïveté in my part for sure but I think it’s notable that todays young folks have wised up.
I think your perspective may have been different if you grew up seeing it weaponized and your data constantly being stolen
I have a smartphone that I hate, because I can't get rid of the "Big Tech" part of it. It's where I end up because the bank cartel where I live has an identification service that only supports MICROS~1 and Intel ISA on laptop and desktop systems.
Now, I'm not a teen, but I'm pretty sure things aren't different for them, they are likely forced into "Big Tech" under the threat of misery.
And if so, how morally bankrupt are we as a country that we throw kids to the wolves that is AI-induced addiction rather than, I don’t know, regulating the industry? I got into tech because I like programming and making cool things, but that doesn’t mean I have to agree with cold blooded abuse of kids to make a dollar.
If you, scarface_74, are locked in a cell and fed rotten food, and you choose to eat it instead of starve, it means you like it, right? You've revealed your preference for rotten food, so I shouldn't listen to you when you say you don't like it.
I think you should explain yourself more clearly. It really feels like you're trying to paper over specious argument with vagueness.
I use text messages to talk to people.
Because if you aren't, you are probably missing something relevant about being a US teen, if you're thinking they should just do what you do.
Revealed preference theory is tenuous at best*, and you are making incorrect assumptions and broadly misapplying it onto something that is unsupported and unjustified.
* https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revealed_preference#Criticis...
Let's not play that game anymore. Be clear. What do you think that's supposed to tell me? Flip your question around: If I said I don’t like Truth Social. But I’m always on it, what conclusion would you infer from that?
Is that the point you were trying to make?
Go on. How do you interpret that? What does that tell you?
> It tells me that you really like Truth Social and I shouldn’t believe what you say - you “revealed” your true “preference”
That's what I thought you where thinking. Thank you for at least not beating around the bush anymore.
You're wrong though, and you're thinking about this too simplistically. Yours is one possible interpretation, but not the only one, and not necessarily the right one or even a likely one. The discrepancy between "revealed preference" and "stated preference," only gives you the barest scrap of information. You're jumping to conclusions when you go from that scrap to "you really like X" and "I shouldn’t believe what you say." With the information in the scenario you outlined, about as much as you can reasonably infer is "you can tolerate Truth Social."
It's just like my scenario with the prison cell and the rotten food: if you eat it, it doesn't mean you "really like" it and "I shouldn’t believe what you say." It means you can tolerate it and you have a desire to avoid a negative outcome (starvation) that trumps whatever disgust you feel eating it.
tl;dr: complex and ambivalent feelings are a real and common phenomenon that you should consider.
Are you really saying it’s stretch that when people say one thing and do another, what they do is more indicative of their preferences than what they say?
Revealed preference theory depends on the spending of money as the signal. That is the theory. It simply does not apply to free things. You’re trying to invent some other theory, for which you’re going to need to justify some other way. Revealed preference theory does not apply the way you’d like it to, and does not support your implied claims in this thread.
I say I want to do one thing. But I do another. Which evidence do give more credence to?
If you did understand what revealed preference theory is trying to do, and how, then you’d understand why your “simple English” rhetorical question isn’t asking a useful or economically valid question.
Take your question. The reason someone might do something different from what they said could be due to anything, such as constraints like cost, time, or availability. It could be due to changing circumstances, or someone else’s preferences. Any given answer to your question cannot be used to infer anything about preference, and assuming it does means you’re not thinking scientifically.
Revealed preference theory is trying to demonstrate what can be proven about preference, which is why it requires a situation where someone spends money on a mutually exclusive choice between two things that are close enough to be an apples to apples comparison. If you don’t do that, then you’re fooling yourself about what the data means.
The longitudinal facebook/Instagram study that came out a few years ago found that those who abstained felt ostracized.
You sound like a boomer who says kids don't need a phone and should just go knock on another kids door to make friends.
And if kids hated social media so much as a group, they could just use group text messages - especially with RCS and 80% of US teens owning iPhones anyway.
Pet peeve, we can't stop thinking just because an idea in the past has a specious connection to now.
But according to HN, teenagers could always use an open source alternative to Android on their phone if they were so passionate about it.
I thought that scene was satire, but from this conversation thread, apparently not.
'If they were so passionate about climate change they would wear second hand clothes'
Proceeds to still see how donated clothes are still a problem because of how they're processed - so see, you are still evil and hypocritical!
For group messaging. I use text messages and I just deleted my Reddit account.
Makes sense opposite "stated preference," but on its own it is just an obtuse way of saying behaviour or habits.
In any case you can be both a consumer and a critique. In fact, the most online people are often the most critical. Ironic, but...
Example is absurd but in its absurdity it makes it very clear that the society that we live in all but mandated that we do bend over and comply with all manner of things if we want to live "normal" lives. People would recoil in horror if you shoot someone over something petty, the expectation is that you call the cops and let them make the call.
But many would say if you broke into their house, shoot first and call the cops afterwards. I don’t personally own a gun. But if I lived in a rural area or a high crime area I would. But I still wouldn’t carry.
No, it's not. But neither is having a diver's license, using modern technology, etc, etc. Yet we all do those things because, just like calling the cops rather than dishing out our own violence, it's just one of the expectations that you have to meet if you want to live normally.
Below a certain point of compliance with modernity you can't really live a normal life.
>But many would say if you broke into their house, shoot first and call the cops afterwards.
That's why I chose petty trespassing as my example.
To be fair though, I do feel a need to at least have a presence on LinkedIn even though I’m only active on it when looking for a job.
If you really want to do without a car, you can.
I can do without Twitter and similar. I'm only on FB for the friends who don't go elsewhere. LinkedIn for employment opportunities (and these days the games). GitHub is more social media than I like (I wish it was just a tool), and I can't avoid the site itself in my job even though I don't partake in the social media aspects. Oft-asked question wherever Social Media comes up: does Hacker News itself count?
What's your point?
If it's "you teens actually love and trust big tech," I don't think you can make that leap from "revealed preference" data. People buy things for a lot of reasons, and buy from people they don't trust if they have no other realistic option.
So technically they have a choice, but c'mon, I feel like I'm talking to Ayn Rand here.
It is a completely coherent position to dislike and distrust a platform, and still use it daily because that's where your friends are.
Network effects are powerful. It's entirely possible for a platform to be popular even if _nobody_ is happy with it, due to a "tragedy of the commons"-like effect.
The only issue is the article makes it sound that your friends also dislike and distrust those same places. If that were true, it begs the question why are "all the teens" using it then? OR, alternatively, the survey and reporting conclusion is (somewhat) wrong or missing nuance.
Or are you referring to Facebook in this thread while strawmanning another user regarding it in another thread?
Do you realize your link points out that only 33% of teens use social media, down from 71% in 2015?
YouTube contains lots of human knowledge, because that's where many creators have decided to post their videos. I can't choose an alternative.
It's an attractor. The more people who are on a social media platform, the more value you can get from joining it yourself. Thus, you're more likely to join and then you joining makes the next person to come along also more likely to join.
This is almost everyone on FB...
Which then made me wonder: is there truly no good social messenger that's separate from social media now? Signal was the closest I could come up with, but it's missing lots of niceties especially in group messages.
The one thing that I don't see a good replacement for at the moment is event management because it inherently requires visibility to many people. As a musician I have been advertizing by events on FB (together with good ol' newsletters). Conversely, I have found out about many cool local events I would have missed otherwise. I'm using past tense because I have deactivated my FB since. (Meta sucking up to Trump broke the last straw for me.)
While an online marketplace doesn't require social media (see Craigslist), like events, you're missing out on a large population of potential sellers/buyers if you're not on Facebook.
You are severely downplaying the network effect.
Perhaps. What options do you see, and how do those options meet their requirements? How well do you understand their requirements?
IMHO "revealed preference" has to be interpreted very carefully, in the light of the fact the market actually rarely fully satisfies people's preferences, and nearly everything is a compromise, sometimes a large compromise. I very rarely see that done when "revealed preference" is brought up. In nearly all cases, it's not a gotcha to undermine what people say about their preferences, but that's how a lot of people try to use it.
In the US*