[kaladin-jasnah]

> I personally find the idea of doing homework on my phone horrifying but I suppose kids today are either used to it and comfortable with it, or they've simply never used a computer and don't know what they're missing. Though I'd wager they probably aren't comfortable typing on a keyboard.

For college aged kids, most people are definitely not doing their homework on their phone. Many are still using paper and pencil. The one person I know who did do their homework on their phone tried to evangelize it to their friends and got ridiculed for it.

[technothrasher]

I just asked my college aged kid. He said pretty much everyone does their written homework on their laptop, but many will use their phones to do the reading.

[Groxx]

Aside from being a bit small and having to be held close, phones are good proportions for reading. Computers screens have gotten wider and wider, and UIs bigger and bigger, and it eats into reading space pretty heavily. Especially if you don't have a high-density screen.

[AlBugdy]

> Computers screens have gotten wider and wider, and UIs bigger and bigger

Sadly, most websites forcefully limit the width of the text. It's like they pretend our monitors are oriented to be tall rather than wide. Even HN has unnecessarily big margins. So unless I try to cram another window in my FHD monitor, I have ~50% or more completely wasted space. Margins should be 2-3 pixels wide, not 20-30% of the screen.

[bobthepanda]

There are actual user studies to show that wider text is harder to read. https://baymard.com/blog/line-length-readability

The major difference is that in the era of print, it was pretty logical where a multicolumn wide layout could go like on a newspaper, but in an desktop experience the browser markup is theoretically endless.

[direwolf20]

Solution: rotate your monitor 90 degrees, and inform your OS that you have done so. Now your monitor is 1080x1920. You'll actually be amazed how much more of a document fits on screen without sacrificing readability.

[bavell]

Preach. I have 4 monitors and one is a vertical 1440x2560. Massive productivity boost - terminals running claude code, reading docs, IDE panes, anything with lots of scrolling. Highly recommend it!

[AlBugdy]

I can resize my window easily if I wanted shorter text. Or used ctrl-shift-m on Firefox. But I can't easily make the text longer without userscripts or addons.

> actual user studies to show that wider text is harder to read

That may apply to most people, but not to everyone.

[Groxx]

afaict it applies to literally everyone. there's a variable "sweet spot" of course, but once you get out to "extremely wide" it's reliably worse for everyone, and there are LOADS of computer monitors that qualify for that label.

margins to control the width of large blocks of text have a ton of research in their favor, it's not just "more whitespace = more gooder" UI design madness. there's some of that of course, but there's a sane core underneath it all.

[hadlock]

The studies go back way earlier than that; there's a reason why they call them "newspaper columns"

[t-3]

In addition to more space, having only one foreground application really reduces distractions and visual clutter. Also, for some reason I am comfortable using larger fonts on phones and tablets, which makes doing lots of reading easier than on my laptop.

[sebastiennight]

> reduces distractions

Have you looked over the shoulder of somebody trying to "do" something on their phone recently?

If so you might have noticed the constant pings and notifications from dating apps, news sites, random games and cool-apps-that-you've-long-forgotten-but-still-have-location-and-background-services-turned-on.

[qubitcoder]

That's where Reduce Interruptions on the iPhone (or Do Not Disturb) comes in handy.

[TeMPOraL]

That's not just interruptions. It's the notifications bar itself.

I noticed this only recently - I switched the default phone launcher to a scifi theme built on Total Launcher (there's legit personal research project reasons behind that, it's not just to look cool!) and after few days (and a bunch of missed messages), I realized my life seems suspiciously light in interruptions and random events. It took me a few more moments to pin-point the reason: the theme hid the notification bar entirely. It was still there, ready to pull down and expand with a gesture or a button tap - but that top line with icons was not visible (and through the stroke of luck, I misconfigured something in another experiment and had no notification indicators on the lock screen, either).

Not having notification indicators visible on any surface is really all it took - and conversely, this means that just having them there created the majority of the burden for me. I thought I successfully solved the distraction problem by silencing or eliminating ads and useless notifications, but now I know that even the important ones aren't really that important for the burden their very existence creates.

[Groxx]

I mean, some, sure. but it's a choice, and not all choose to do that. and I've watched quite a few (of all ages) escape it when they realize how much it's harming their ability to do what they need to do.

[Hoodedcrow]

I don't feel comfortable reading from my laptop or phone in general. If a text isn't very short, I prefer saving it as .html or .pdf onto my e-reader, and that's such a MASSIVE improvement. That includes long comment sections too.

[encom]

This is the first time I've heard someone say a smartphone reduces distractions.

As a millennial boomer, I prefer my triple monitor setup and mechanical keyboard, not to mention network- and client-level content blockers, whenever I have to input more than a sentence.

I was at a conference last week, and I took notes in a fullscreened GNU Nano. Distractions, ADHD, etc. Did get some odd looks, but I couldn't imagine taking notes without an actual keyboard. I'm not an ultra fast typer, but I'm decent - I'd challenge any thumb typer on MonkeyType.

[t-3]

I don't have any social apps or games on my phone. Other than the web browser there's nothing to distract me. I find it so easy to get caught up in checking the news or email or the episode of that show I was watching on my laptop, but I don't do any of those things habitually on my phone or tablet or reader so that's my "distraction free" device.

That's only for reading though! For taking notes I go with a real keyboard or pencil and paper whenever I have the choice.

[Hoodedcrow]

For me, a phone is mostly less distracting because it's not very comfortable to use compared to a laptop. It's much less likely to get sucked into doing unrelated things when the experience is actively not that pleasant (especially when it comes to anything with typing).

[Groxx]

similar here, I'm gradually removing more and more things from my phone. at this point it's mostly just a couple actually-important apps, a web browser, and messaging apps (because it's clearly superior to whipping out a laptop for brief things). "social" outside messaging is in the web browser or not on the phone at all. if I want to focus I just turn on Do Not Disturb for an hour.

browsing is slowly reducing as time goes on too, as while it's convenient on my phone, it's rarely efficient. it doesn't take long at all before I'd rather pull out a laptop and finish more quickly.

[fho]

Can't confirm. We had students at university (18-20-ish) that had not used a mouse prior to our courses. That was at least 3-4 years ago now and not a single case.

[Hoodedcrow]

The only situation I can think of is when you're in public transport and settling down with a laptop or paper is not really feasible. But if that came up frequently, I'd rather buy a tablet. Some students in my class also use tablets in class instead of laptops.

[NERD_ALERT]

I started college 10 years ago and all of my homework was computer based, including Calculus and Linear Algebra. Of course for those higher level math classes I had to use paper and pencil to get to the answer but absolutely everything was submitted through an online portal. For any other classes the work was purely done on the computer.

[halJordan]

Kinda stretching the definition of kid there, a little past the breaking point imo.

[dasil003]

What do you mean? A kid is anyone younger than the speaker. My step dad used to refer to Bill Clinton as a kid because he was the first president younger than him.

[sebastiennight]

Fun fact: dail003's stepdad wouldn't have been able to call any president a "kid" for over a decade now.