[sigilis]

People in the subway are just people waiting to get somewhere, being on your phone in that situation is no more dystopian than reading a book which may be what’s on some of those screens.

Not saying phone use isn’t a distraction, but sometimes distractions are okay.

[joshmanders]

Yeah I'm frankly getting sick of this whole "The problem is phones". No it's not.

Something happened somewhere and now everyone believes that any type of mental stimulation is bad if that stimulation comes from a device with a screen and doesn't matter one bit what they're doing. Screen === bad!

No instead you should be reading a book! What if they are reading a book? On their phone? NO! Not like that.

How many times I've had something making me not want to be productive and I just sit on my phone scrolling and someone who thinks they know everything is like "Your problem is you're always on your phone" No it's not, my overall average screentime for the past 6 months has been LESS than an hour a day. And it's only that high because of those few days where I do spend 4-5 hours just scrolling randomly throughout the day.

[soupfordummies]

I'm frankly getting sick of this whole "staring at phones isn't much different than reading a book" argument. Yes it is.

There's a difference between "seeking entertainment/novelty/relief of boredom" and the methods/mediums to attain those feelings.

Our collective brains have been seemingly re-wired by these things. I'm not suggesting that we gotta get rid of smartphones or something, I just think it's a little ignorant to be stuck in denial about it.

EDIT: Just reread my comment and it came across much more snarky and confrontational than I intended. I'm sorry for that.

[joshmanders]

How so? I'm sure thousands of years ago when paper was introduced SOMEONE was "the problem with you is that you're reading on paper and not stone!"

If your argument is that staring a screen is bad for your eyes, I'd agree with you there, but that has NOTHING to do with the mental stimulation of reading. You are still reading, stimulating your brain. How those words are presented to you does not change that.

The "rewires your brain" argument is in regards to short form videos and other stuff that is to stimulate low attention spans.

If I read a book be it physical or on a kindle or the kindle app on my phone does not change anything.

[soupfordummies]

Next time you're getting groceries, sitting at a redlight, waiting in line, etc, and you see everyone around you looking at their phone, do you really think they're all reading Kindle? I'd say the vast majority are probably scrolling some sort of short form feed.

[2cynykyl]

This is exactly what a phone addict would say.

Besides I was obviously referring to the type of content consumption enabled by phones, not the phones themselves. Unless by scrolling you mean reading Hemingway on your Kindle app, then I stand corrected.