[panaffa]

I'm part of the new generation and I think the opposite. I am obsessed with my phone and the Internet. And I don't think it's bad. It's extremely stimulating in a way real life is orders of magnitude worse at. Point of reference, born around 2000. There's no going back for me. I want my phone at all times to have access to billions of possible thoughts, pictures, memes. It's literally a god like power.

[aeturnum]

I generally agree, but I would put it a little more neutrally:

I've setup my life so that I expect the people I care about to be able to reach me at any moment. It's something I desire. I don't want them to hold back telling me something important (or even something trivial). I've invested in the ability to be present (even in a limited way) at nearly all times. It's an enormous benefit to me and to the people I care about and I feel very strongly it's a valid way to live.

At the same time, I experience no discomfort with choosing to leave my phone at home. It's fine to have periods of focus on the circumstances that physically surround you. The same systems of contact I generally surround myself with make it easy for me to arrange periods of isolation.

The problems comes up when I am forced (by circumstance or by authority) to isolate myself in a way I don't consent to. That does feel uncomfortable and it should feel uncomfortable - not because humans should "naturally" live in some particular way - but because I am being stopped from living in a way that I want and causes no harm to any other being.

Edit: neutrally in the sense that I think this way of living was introduced to me by the era in which I live, but I don't think our era forces it on us. You can still live other ways, but I don't think we need to fall back on circumstance to justify it.

[panaffa]

That's a great way of living! I like how you make yourself very available to the ones you love. Honestly you've inspired me to reprioritize who I spend my social energy on over the phone.

[unethical_ban]

It is indeed unhealthy, and if you haven't experienced not being away from technology for some defined period of time, you won't realize it.

Age: 33. I use the phone compulsively, like the person in the article. I reach for it instinctively when standing still in line, or waiting for anything, or while eating, etc. I have done this increasingly in the past three years.

Two weeks ago I went to play trivia at a bar, hosted by a friend. I left my phone at home intentionally. For the first few minutes it was odd, just sitting there with a beer waiting for the game to start. And in between, I would watch other people, or doodle on my answer sheet, or just think about life.

Today, I went and got breakfast and coffee and read a book for about an hour at the cafe. There was a place for people to put sticky notes about how they're feeling - it made me think about that, and make a submission. I read literature and history around migration and people. I listened to the espresso machine. I watched the homeless man sitting on the corner and thought about it.

There is so _much_ for the mind to do, so many thoughts and experiences to process in the downtime without a device. For me, that often requires not just turning a phone on silent, but leaving it in the car or at home entirely. And it is truly freeing.

If you aren't joking about your opinion, as someone who has lived in both columns, please do an experiment like the OP article. Leave the phone at home for an hour or two a day, for several days within a month. Maybe just a weekday evening after work, or for a walk/drive/brunch one weekend.

The billions of thoughts and pictures and memes, if you are not joking, is useless when you wake up after a decade of accomplishing nothing of value to your own development or happiness or meatspace[1] interaction with the world.

[1]https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/meats...

[panaffa]

Thanks for this. Your last paragraph was a good wake-up call. I was definitely exaggerating, and I fear exactly the scenario you laid out for my future. Aside from a minor Twitter obsession, I'm learning to use my phone far more like a tool than a companion. I've realized that even if content on the Internet is far better than whatever I make in real life, I'll only ever be satisfied by what I achieve.

[lavoiems]

It is an interesting perspective. My personal opinion is that this constant stimulation is costing me focus when I need to do work and ultimately hurts my capacity to do things. While the internet and computing is a strong power, it does not yet replaces our cognitive capabilities to solve problem and interact with others. I hope it never will!

[hooande]

I don't blame my phone or the internet for this. Before smart phones the joke was that people would procrastinate by cleaning their room or organizing their desk. It's not about the technology. When it's time to focus, focus.

[travisporter]

Yeah but now it’s like organize millions of desks worth of distraction

[feanaro]

Are you really being honest when you say you don't see this as bad? I couldn't help but peer into your comment history and notice you also talk about emptiness and loneliness. This, I think, is the price to pay for constant access to billions of possible thoughts, pictures and memes at all times.

Why is it that you think you need that?

[panaffa]

You are right, I was being sarcastic there. It comes from a place of hurt because for me the Internet was the only substitute I had for many of the formative, stimulating relationships and experiences in real life that I've badly wanted to find in my youth.

[exolymph]

You won't give your own mind space to be creative or think deeply if you're constantly getting microhits of novelty every 30 seconds.

[stjohnswarts]

This is why you put it in silent mode and check every couple hours. That has been my compromise on the issue.

[thenerdhead]

I said the same thing as someone who just turned 30 and was one of the first generations born with the internet. Although I don’t mean to discourage your obsession with it, one of the most beautiful things in the world you can do is learn to think for yourself. Unplugging yourself from others opinions, thoughts, and picking up a book or two can help you start that journey.

[panaffa]

Absolutely. I now spend most of my time creating content and trying to add to the conversation where I can.

[ativzzz]

You do counter yourself there by telling them to think for themselves and then pick up a book. Reading a book is the opposite of thinking for yourself

[thenerdhead]

I think better inputs (books)mean better outputs (thoughts). Most people understood what I meant.

[ativzzz]

It might be easier to consume worse inputs on the internet, but I don't necessarily agree that books are superior to the internet in terms of input that can translate to better outputs. There are plenty of internet resources that are fantastic for learning. There are also plenty of garbage books that produce garbage inputs or are just mindless entertainment

[13of40]

I recall a time, many years ago, when you could be at a pub with a couple of friends and some really obscure question like whether it's a duck who has a corkscrew willie or a woodchuck, and nobody would know the answer and there was no way to find out, barring going down to the threadbare and underfunded local library to look it up in the encyclopedia, which itself was terse on facts and probably omitted ones like that for morality's sake. Now I could just whip out the black mirror and Google it.

[unethical_ban]

And which conversation was more fun? Heh. I still laugh with friends from college about the arguments we would get into about crazy facts.

[13of40]

Yep, that's exactly the question. All of this stuff is awesome when I'm trying to get a job done, but it peels a lot of the magic away from the world.

[lmarcos]

That's called addiction. Not as bad as other kind of addictions, sure, but still.

[rootusrootus]

You sound serious.

> have access to billions of ... memes

But this is where I think maybe I'm getting trolled.

[travisporter]

I think the younger generations may actually be able to pull off sarcasm on the internet.

[panaffa]

you got me

[unethical_ban]

* I don't think trolling or Poe's Satire is really proper on HN.

* Regardless, as stated above, the parent comment is believable despite its absurdity, which is the upsetting part either way.

[panaffa]

Sorry to upset you, I was being overdramatic. My goal was to convey how powerless I feel when scrolling through infinite amounts of creative, funny, or intelligent content that I can't recreate at all in reality. However, I am slowly learning how to use the Internet as healthy inspiration rather than as a way to escape my own insecurities and shortcomings.

[ThalesX]

I think the definition "an element of a culture or system of behaviour passed from one individual to another by imitation or other non-genetic means" can be taken, instead of "an image, video, piece of text, etc., typically humorous in nature, that is copied and spread rapidly by internet users, often with slight variations".

[blitz_skull]

There will always be diversity of opinion, which is a beautiful thing. However, I reject the idea of it being a god-like power, unless it’s “unlimited cosmic power, itty-bitty living space” power.

There’s so much research already pointing towards our always-stimulated culture being a provably bad thing.

I think obsession with anything runs a very thin line towards being a bad thing.

[vecter]

There is a cost to this, and that is your ability to do deep thinking and deep work. You can’t do that if you need a dopamine spike every 30s. Boredom has value and letting your mind wander is important for problem solving and the creative process.

[themodelplumber]

I agree, I mean I was born quite a long time earlier but in my career training I was taught to look for tools people can use for restoring energy, comfort, courage, and maintaining contact with long-term values via their interests.

This can also be especially important if you have other sensitivities that can lead to unwanted outcomes, which can be ameliorated more easily with a device nearby.

Also, IMO using "addiction" where "typically need to have this with me for different reasons" would work just fine is pretty inappropriate. The term projects quite a bit of subjective negative & clinical interpretation onto others which is a common ethical mistake, among other things.

[eternityforest]

I think addiction is perfect relevant for the majority of users. It's still a net win to have a phone, but they are addictive.

Any time you would like to stop doing something but are unable to because of a compulsion.... Is that not an addiction?

If you don't know what to do with your hands without a cigarette in them, almost anyone would call that a cigarette addiction.

Most people don't know what to do with their hands or mind without a phone. I sure don't.

[themodelplumber]

> Any time you would like to stop doing something but are unable to

That's the thing. People call it addiction even when nobody ever said anything (see my comment) about that part. You are the one who added the bit about not being able to stop.

So, is it really fair to then project one's own fears or experiences with addiction, or beliefs about addiction, onto such a situation? That's better left to clinical territory, not casual relational discourse.

[eternityforest]

If the person hasn't said anything about being unable to stop, then it might be a bit inaccurate.

But it is very common for people to explicitly say they have trouble stopping. Almost as common or maybe even more common than having trouble eating less sugar.

And it is very common for people to believe they are negatively affected, unable to focus on books or movies, that their relationships are impacted, that their health suffers, that they are stressed by the miserable content they consume, and to be confident that these problems are new or worsened since the phone era.

Maybe addicted isn't the best word for strangers, but "fairly likely to be having some level of addiction symptoms" seems to apply to most phone owners.

[unethical_ban]

There is no going back for me... It is a god like power...

Over using a cellphone vs. not using a cellphone day to day. Yes. That is a problem.

[dmd]

Poe's Law at work.

[svnpenn]

That seems really unhealthy. By your own admission, you are obsessed with it.

[alar44]

I'm almost 40 and I agree.

Phones being addictive or whatever is being massively overstated. Too many people projecting their own issues with social media and lack of impulse control onto others.

If you can't handle it, figure it out. But I'm sick and tired of people saying Facebook should be shut down or YouTube should be nationalized. I don't hear anyone saying M&Ms or cookies should be regulated.

To all of those who think cellphones r bad: You're an adult, start acting like one.

[sidpatil]

> I don't hear anyone saying M&Ms or cookies should be regulated.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junk_food#Anti-junk_food_measu...

[lupire]

What kind of god, though? What are you missing that only exists in meat space?

When you get older you might grow bored of the virtual stimulation trapped inside a screen.

[alar44]

Literally all of human knowledge.

[lolinder]

In this community we tend to overestimate just how much knowledge is found on the internet because essentially everything to do with tech happens here. In the bigger picture, even if you restrict yourself to only intellectual knowledge, there are entire fields that are extremely poorly documented on the internet. Either information isn't there at all, or the information that is readily accessible is plain wrong.

Further, if you consider human experience to be part and parcel with human knowledge, the internet starts to look like a rather hollow shell. Just because you can read huge portions of the body of human literature doesn't mean you're in a position to understand what those authors were saying, and the more you isolate yourself from the physical world the more detached you'll be from their experiences.

This isn't to downplay how much knowledge there is to be found here. It's just that to say that it has "literally all" knowledge or conveys "literally god-like powers" is over the top. I'd normally leave such hyperbole alone, but in a thread that is glorifying smartphones as the savior of mankind I feel it's important to point out that what we have in a smartphone isn't all that it's being made out to be.

[hooande]

if you gave someone the equivalent of wikipedia 1,000 years ago (and the ability to read and understand it), they would seem to have god like knowledge.

[ativzzz]

"seem" is the key word. They'd know a lot of stuff, but knowing stuff and doing useful things with said stuff (or convincing people that your stuff is correct and theirs isn't) are two completely different experiences and require different skillsets

[hombre_fatal]

Sure, but it seems aspirational at best to say "I love having my phone on me at all times because with it, I can access all of human knowledge" while really using your phone all day to procrastinate your goals, waste time on TikTok, and never actually tap into that knowledge except for the rare Wikipedia search.

Kind of a "...but I always can if I want to!" cope.

That said, I was similar to the thread OP in my early 20s when it came to my computer time. I spent all day on the computer which was totally cool because of all the things I could do on it, even though I was addicted to Warcraft or Diablo or whatever. And it took 10 years to admit it and find a healthier relationship with it.

[JADev62096]

Isn't it possible that someone has discovered something and not uploaded it to the internet?

[mensetmanusman]

And all human misinformation.

[nelsonenzo]

I think it's a matter of age perspective. In 20 more years the device will have an exponentially less information that you need to thrive, because now a lot of that knowledge and wisdom is in your head. The device loses a lot of it's value to you personally then, but doesn't mean the device is useless for everyone.

[antisthenes]

> I want my phone at all times to have access to billions of possible thoughts, pictures, memes. It's literally a god like power.

Race to the bottom of the garbage pile.

Don't worry, you'll get bored of it just like the rest of us who hit 30. Except we did it with desktops/laptops and not mobile phones.

[panaffa]

You're right, I'm honestly already bored. The only 2 things I care about on the Internet now are original ideas/art and cool people to connect with.

[Aeolun]

I really desire the feeling that I’m disconnected from the matrix for a little while.

Leaving my phone at home, and foregoing all my other digital tools really makes me feel like it’s just me and my immediate surroundings I’m paying attention to.

[stjohnswarts]

Trust me, there are also plenty millennials, gen-x and boomers hooked on the internet and their phones as well. Plenty.