I am near a landline 90% of the time, am reachable by internet during working hours on weekdays, and go to my desk to check emails and chats multiple times a day on weekends. It turns out you do not need to be reachable or online every second of every day to do virtually anything in the modern world including raising kids.
Oh, this sounds like you work from home and can just substitute your landline and PC for 90% of contact, this wouldn't nearly work like this for most people.
I had this lifestyle when I worked from an office, and at home, in both individual contributor and leadership engineering roles. I also travel quite a bit.
Just set expectations with others and it works just fine either way. Only thing in the way is cognitive dissonance for most people.
In my case people absolutely forgive not being able to reach me every second of every day because I am a productivity machine due to being able to actually focus.
Back them, they did called you to work and it was customary to rely message by two other people. There is no such desk anymore and they dont want to be handling your life.
And if your kid needed to go home and sleep in bed, you had to take the day off instead of home office. There was price to that.
Oh, and back then school did not expected parents and kids to have phones, now it does. Information about schedule changes, homework, what needs to be paid and such is broadcasted with the assumption that everyone has a phone.
If you have an unusual lifestyle choice, you simply need to communicate that to all involved. Any that do not respect it, you can seek out alternatives for.
One clinic denied me for not having a Google or Apple account, so I took my business to one that would accommodate me.
Rolling over and doing what the majority of people want you do to is not how change happens.
And to be honest, that reaction is part of the reason I keep doing it.
When people ask for my number and I say I don’t have a phone, 99% of all people say very passionately “omg, I wish I could get rid of this thing”.
Most people don’t like their phone, which confirms my belief it won’t make my life better.
If you wanted to be vegan as a personal choice and everyone in your life wanted you to eat meat anyway, who cares? No one gets to decide your lifestyle but you.
Make them adapt.
You can get landlines (via a VOIP conversion box or otherwise), and beyond that what do you really need if you are honest?
> it’s not manageable to be offline all the time here
> it is if you’re all offline together
> but everyone doesn’t want to be offline with me
> just be offline by yourself; what’s the big deal? <— you
The big deal is all the stuff called out above. My kids school, child care, my work, pizza delivery, everyone has built up infrastructure that assumes virtually always online.
If it works for you to just not be online anymore, cool. But it’s not trivial for many people to make this change.
This is still not an answer to the comment chain. The real answer is “if you want to live this way, you give up a bunch of conveniences and have to deal with it.” It’s less convenient with schools, with childcare, with work, and everything else that assumes always online.
> No one gets to decide your lifestyle but you. Make them adapt.
Make them adapt is some nonsense. You’ve made multiple comments that through sheer force of will you can make other people align with your choices. You’ve posted zero evidence, or even claimed, that you have succeeded in doing this yourself.
> My kids school, child care, my work, pizza delivery, everyone has built up infrastructure that assumes virtually always online.
Is there actually a pizza place that refuses to bring a pizza to someone without a cell phone app being involved? Like they have no phone number you can call from a landline or a website where you could place an order? Odds are good that you could get by just fine letting your kids school/daycare know your email address/landline phone number. Some people's work is much less flexible, but everything else should be accommodating people without cell phones.
You can surely get pizza delivered, though certainly I’ve had pizza delivery people text me because they couldn’t find my house. So having a cell phone is valuable even then.
Part of my problem with the claims that cell phones are the problem is that the answer often seems to be a landline that you’re still available on. If you replace one phone with another, what’s the difference? This isn’t a sarcastic question, either. The differences are key.
No one worried about the impact of dumb cell phones on our kids. Maybe the texting was a bit annoying but that’s all. What really changed is smart phones, the Internet in your hand all the time. The doomscrolling Instagram or TikTok and completely disconnecting from the real world most of the time. The Facebook-type sites that enable anonymous bullying.
It’s important to understand what the actual problems are because abstaining from phones entirely is just not realistic. Possible? Yes. Realistic? No.
I don't think anyone said it's trivial, but they are saying it is 1. possible, and 2. overall a positive change. But merely that has upset people in this thread.
It saddens me that this is a real thought of yours. You just need a bit of creativity and trust, my friend. Something it seems people are lacking these days... likely due to the very thing we are discussing now: smartphone addiction!
As has already been pointed out to you here before, these social moves you fear are awkward or impossible were EASILY handled by generations before you... and all without cellphones. Go figure.
I live in silicon valley, have an active social life, travel frequently, have a family I spend time with every day, and am co-running two tech companies.
People did all of these things before smartphones and all those methods still work just fine today.
I have tons of friends and a very active social life - in person.
I bump into friends in town, at the ski hill, at the bar and grocery store.
I ask people for the time, directions and how their day is going. I’ll never have a phone.