[wallhack]

Yeah, and it’s also incredibly rude. Like, we’re having lunch together in person, and mid-sentence, they disappear into their phone for minutes at a time.

I stop hanging out with these types of people. If online bullshit is more important than actual real life, what is even the point?

I leave on notifications for calls and calendar events. That’s it. Texts are silenced but appear on the lock screen. Everything else is a red dot only.

My friends point out how weird this is. But when I see multiple stacks of unread notifications on their lock screens, it seems exhausting.

[seszett]

> I stop hanging out with these types of people.

It's a natural reaction, but these people are actually suffering from an addiction and for at least some of them (those who can take remarks and act on them) it's better to tell them in a friendly way that you are having a discussion.

Most people are aware that cutting off a discussion is impolite and undesirable, they just don't realise they're doing it.

[jjgreen]

I admire your positive attitude, but it's similar to smackheads, they're just no fun to be around. "Have you thought of taking less Heroin" won't cut it.

[wccrawford]

I think you're getting downvoted because of your comparison to hard drugs, but you're not wrong about the people.

That phone is more engaging to them than the conversation they're in, and if you try to tell them about it, they use all the same excuses that other addicts use, plus a few more.

[jjgreen]

Downvotes whatever. The analogy is apposite I think, you do see that addicts and non-addicts do tend to gather into groups, neither finds the company of the other very attractive. In pubs, you often see groups of phone people, each with a half-pint in front of them, each furiously texting away to people they'd rather be spending time with. Top night out!

[didntcheck]

How do you know it's online bullshit and not a time-sensitive message from family? I'd never do it mid-sentance, but if I hear my Whatsapp notification tone then I will make a mental note to check that fairly soon, because sometimes it is something important

[tsukikage]

At what point did society, unprompted and unquestioned, shift to using the Whatsapp phone app for actually important urgent serious things instead of, y'know, SMS or a phone call?

[seszett]

I happened because the phone operators made SMS a paid feature, while Whatsapp over wifi was free. Then the people for whom SMS was not free started using Whatsapp (or Messenger or other apps) and eventually those who used to use SMS switched to the same apps because their contacts were using them.

In some places the switch to these apps took longer (like France, because SMS had been free for a long time) but there is a fundamental asymmetry since SMS is free only for part of the users (so the others will never use it) while the apps are free for everyone. In the end, everyone ends up mostly using these apps.

[OscarDC]

From my experience in France at least, nobody relies on SMS anymore and less and less people on regular calls, it all goes through Whatsapp.

Even I am guilty of that for both SMS and calls, having a single featureful app with contacts ordered by the most recent discussions descending (as in my country SMS is largely replaced by Whatsapp) leads to less friction than having to scroll through my actual phone's contact.

[AA-BA-94-2A-56]

I can answer this! The moment that one tenant in my house didn't have an iPhone, so couldn't be in the house group chat on iMessage. It would take too many calls to coordinate the six people we have at home. Group messaging is the best option, and of those, WhatsApp is the best option.

[didntcheck]

Around the time smartphone and widespread data coverage made it feasible. It, and other services like it, offered a clearly superior experience to SMS/MMS, and RCS arrived way, way too late. As for why a particular service succeeded in a particular market, I imagine it all comes down to marketing, luck, and network effects. WhatsApp is probably not my ideal service (mostly because it uses somewhat device-tied accounts) but it's what 90% of people use

Almost all phone calls I receive are "actual" phone calls though. And SMS still gets plenty of use as the lowest common denominator for new recipients, but in practice over 95% of my received SMS are from computers now

[Reflecticon]

YOUR behavior is weird? Looks more like your friends are justifying their behavior to continue doing what they are doing.