20 years ago everyone on suburban trains would be looking at a newspaper, magazine or book throughout their journey. Then they would watch a couple of hours of TV at home. Why is 'looking at a phone' such a problem, when most of the looking replicates those activities, with much of the rest being basic utilities which didn't exist previously - consulting a map, ordering food or shopping, looking up timetables or schedules?
There is no engineered addiction to reading the New York Times, so people just put it down when something else wants their attention.
Looking at a phone is a problem to the extent that it cuts you off from real interactions in society. It is a problem to the extent that the attention you pay to the phone does not go toward solving real problems.
It can be a problem because it allows kids to escape from uncomfortable situations like struggling to learn something, and the Instagram-perfect view of the world makes their own lives feel inferior.
If the problem is games, social media, or porn, why don't we identify those as social problems and try to fix them? Rather than blaming the device.
If we just stuck to the same NY Times articles we would have read in the paper that would be fine. But very few of us have the will power to pick up our device and not wonder into social media apps.
Tell that to all the absolute news addicts out there. News is very clearly addicting, just like loot box games.
There's a lot of commentary addicts and such. Cable "news" started this, the internet has magnified it even more. "Screens" wouldn't be the problem if we all used them for mental enrichment, but instead they've been taken over by "engagement"-hunters trying as hard as possible to get you to see just one more ad... and then another one... and another one...
They are repeated many times with slightly different wording to create appearance of many news, since they aren't limited by print.
> Looking at a phone is a problem to the extent that it cuts you off from real interactions in society.
Final comment about paper vs digital newspapers: I much prefer paper because the adverts are print-only (no motion/animation) and there are no auto-play videos. It is much less distracting.
Some folks did this, others chatted with the 'regulars' that they sat with that had the same schedule as them. There were television series based on this:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Train_48
Some folks didn't want to chat, and in the Toronto-area commuter rail there are designated zones for that:
So it was a weak background distraction at most. Course, different places had different accepted levels of conversation - London tubes aren't chatty - but there's a difference in brain activity, patterns, anxiety, etc sitting in silence with your thoughts vs having the phone constantly trying to get "engagement" with attention-grabbing provocations.
Similarly, watching TV at home was more "background" than "constant binge." The types of shows reflect this - intentionally repetitive, fairly low stakes, things are back to normal at the end of the episode, because most people weren't so hooked that they watched the same stuff every week at the same time.
"Background phone use" is much more conversation-killing.
Really struggling to imagine people talking on the subway during their morning commute in Japan!! Culture changes.
I had the same experience of meeting people in the same way in Shanghai in 2004 (bus and subway). And before that, in France，the bus line I took near my university was filled with students.
The secondhand socials are driving me nuts