[cneurotic]

For me, what's missing from the 'smartphone' // 'religion' analogy is — passion.

The emotional tenor of my relationship with my phone looks — and, I'm sure — very different from the way people relate to their faiths.

Facebook, YouTube, etc don't feel like 'movements' to me, like the article's author said. At least, I don't have the passion that a 'movement' seems to imply.

For me, smartphoning is an emotional gray zone. Most of the time I feel close to nothing. I use it to blot out my worries and deal with the mundanity of my life.

Which makes it more like actual opium, IMO.

[taneq]

Isn't that the whole issue with Skinner-box things, though? They're not something that you care passionately about, they're something that's 'nothing' but you find yourself clicking or scrolling through them anyway.

[coldtea]

Well, religion for most people wasn't a passion either -- that was just for the zealots.

[mmmBacon]

Agreed. Would you go to war over your phone? I think the analogy to faith kind of breaks down when you ask that question. I seriously doubt that anyone would be rioting in the streets over loss of access to Facebook. However I do think phones are like an “opiate” in that they have produced a lot of undesirable behavior in people.

[koboll]

Phones are the opium of the masses; religion is the methamphetamine.

[samhain]

Have you seen the statistics for young people showing that they are in significant decline for relationships, marriage, sex, drinking? My theory is that they are just sitting at home on their phones.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/has-the...

[dondawest]

Boom. Fully agree with this analogy. Religion stimulates, smartphones sedate.

[buboard]

Yeah i think this article is textbook case of shooting the messenger

[coldtea]

If the "medium is the message" (that is, the medium dominates and enforces its norms over everything transmitted, e.g. by forcing people to echo bubbles, polarization, and centralized control by its very design regardless of what content is transmitted) then the messenger is the culprit -- and we should shoot the messenger.

[buboard]

the phrase 'dont shoot the messenger' exists for a reason. (the messenger has always shaped the message, even when it was a runner man)

[coldtea]

>the phrase 'dont shoot the messenger' exists for a reason

And I've just argued why the reason is faulty, and we shouldn't hold it as true for modern media. I'd expect a counter-argument on that, not a reminder that it exists for a reason (as if I hadn't already considered it).

>the messenger has always shaped the message, even when it was a runner man

It's a matter of degree: the degree with which TV at the time of McLuhan, and now social media shape the message, is nothing like the degree previous "messengers" did it...

[buboard]

> not a reminder that it exists for a reason

I really don't want to reitarate what people a lot smarter than me have written.

It's not different this time - the media have changed, but so have the Kings. No matter how many messengers they beheaded , the problems that Kings had did not go away. No matter how many people we deplatform, the problems of modern Democracy won't go away either. To me it seems people are going through a classic crisis of misattributing the blame: Modern political systems like democracy are ill-adapted for an increasingly individualistic, globalized world, and the problem won't go away after they regulate the media. (BTW i can't think of any case where shooting the messenger/media worked in the the long term in the past)

[jacknews]

Absolutely, the phones themselves are only messengers

The real question is something like what are the implications of small-group level intimacy, but on a global scale. Just for starters - there are very many questions raised by this recent capability.