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Comment by alwa | Hacker News Reader

Seems wise to experience at least a little bit of “functioning as an adult in the world” independently of phone habits…

It seems like, in this situation, we watch primarily non-phone-enabled virtues save the day: a clear sense of right and wrong, assertiveness, courage, steadiness in a tense situation, an attentive social environment with bystanders who both noticed and backed each other up…

Even having practiced some of those skills in moving through the world, I worry that, if I were a phone-carrying person, I’d be tempted to “just record it and let the internet sort it out.” Which is orthogonal to fixing the wrong in the moment.

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The severity depends on where you are, even within a country, but in many places you can't authentically "function as an adult in the world" without a phone, unless you want to roleplay an adult from the previous century.

In some places, payment requires a phone. Tracking unreliable public transit requires a phone. Getting rideshare requires a phone.

The issue probably isn't the phone but letting them outside in the first place.

This is obviously an overstatement. Sure, a phone is convenient, but we managed to function just fine without smartphones. I assure you, it's possible to do all those things without a phone.

Without knowing where GP is posting from, you can't make that claim. We can want and wish it were true, but there exist places where it's no longer possible to do things without a phone because the service requires signing in online, or the form is only available via the website, there is no paper version anymore. Parts of the world are moving on from bits of paper, no matter how much you don't want that to be true. Parts of the world also aren't, we simply don't know where GP is so you can't make that claim.

OP is from Palo Alto, so, obviously, the closest thing to a hellscape you can possibly get. /s

We managed without smartphones before smartphones were a requirement for participating in society. That is, if you’re a millennial or older.

We can’t just pretend that it’s possible to live an adult life without one in 2026. In 2008, certainly, but that’s not the world these kids grew up in.

But we’re talking about kids, which is a whole different matter.

Meh, I've been a drunken idiot who's lost his phone on multiple occasions.

I've still managed to exist in society and do everything I need to do with all the more "analogue" systems we have.

Having to ring a friend from a phone box because I'd lost my phone the night before we were meant to meetup was fun

Strange thing to be publicly proud of.

> if I were a phone-carrying person, I’d be tempted to “just record it and let the internet sort it out.”

Desperate reaching. People who carry phones are bad people, I mean FFS, get real

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