A great article about highschoolers rejecting the endless scroll.
Content link | Reddit Link
r/simplelivingu/pm_me_all_dogs (657)

Comments (97)

I find it interesting that giving up a smartphone is considered classist.

lol i was using a dumbphone, but i couldnt set up my internet without using an app that i could only download to a smart phone........and i couldnt just connect my tablet to the apartment wifi to do it either....

​

i am still burning with rage over this

​

edit /: its almost like they want everyone to have a tracking device, implanted right into their hand

I tried having a dumb phone but it really make things more complicated :(. I still love the idea but not in practice.

Sometimes I really wish I could go back to a dumb phone but my work is so integrated with smart phones that even basic functions like logging into proprietary company software requires it (for like two factor authentication).

You should use your work phone for any work applications like work email, etc.

Edit: changed 2FA to work email because of corporate bootlickers in the thread.

They donā€™t give us a work phone though.

They need to. It's a big security liability on their part. You shouldn't be using your smartphone for anything work.

there is 0 security risk for either OP or his work from using a 2FA app on his personal phone

You shouldnā€™t use your personal electronics (items at all?) for work purposes for a multitude of reasons that arenā€™t ā€œtheir security.ā€

Oh yeah, I mean more your security, liability, etc. I just pointed out "their security" as it is dumb on the employer's part as well.

I agree, but 2FA is not the same as having your work email, documents, etc. on your phone. There's no privacy loss; your employer gains 0 control over your device.

Ok, keep using your personal devices for work. I don't care.

will do. you should stop spreading incorrect information about how security works, it's really harmful.

This. The country has adapted to everyone having a smartphone, so there's always going to be basic or essential things you can't do without one.

We went to trivia one night and all of our phones were close to dead and then we found out the trivia was going to be through the phone. Someone had to drive home and get a charger.

did you have to download an app?

seems like every damn thing wants you to download an app nowadays, and i was tired of it when it first started lol

Because in the 100 page long "terms and conditions" you click when opening the app, it asks you to "gather data from other apps on your device."

If the service is free, you're the product.

Can't pay my bills without a phone these days.

Can't get targeted by ads, that's why you have to have one, it's better for the economy and their share value

I still have one, but I have the simcard in my dumb phone. I can use the smartphone on wifi for when I have to, and I can even put the SIM card back in if need be.

"one kid said it's classist" doesn't make it so

I found it very interesting that the classist argument almost shut the club down. It was as if infallible ideological purity was more important than value they got from the community they built. I think it speaks volumes to how the environment young people are growing up in nowadays.

I wish the article had gone deeper into the argument here. My only guess is since so many services do require connectivity, having a flip phone implies you can afford to have another device (laptop, tablet) to take care of basic needs. And/or as teens it implies their basic needs are taken care of by parents, which not everyone experiences. These are guesses.

Because itā€™s easier to try to discredit something by calling it a super vague -ist than actually considering the idea in full.

I'm not going to call it classist, but internet access is essential to do a lot of things in the world, and it's a lot easier for many people to get that via smartphone as opposed to a laptop with wireless access.

I know you can do stuff with a dumb phone and I'm not necessarily poor but being able to take high quality photos, having access to the internet and emails on the fly, being able to have YouTube and reddit, and being able to type a location into Google maps are extremely important to my job and daily life. (Maybe not so much reddit but YouTube is a wealth of knowledge)

I don't agree that it is classist, but I can see an argument for it maybe? Like, you can only afford to give up a smart phone if you also have other devices that can do the things smart phones do. Therefore, people with less money can't afford to get rid of their smartphones, because they can't afford a flip phone and an MP3 player so they can listen to music and a laptop so they can do homework or zoom meetings...

I mean I'm not saying I think that's true, because no one is required to have all of those things. Phones make life easier but they aren't a requirement for life, especially for teenagers (although sometimes it feels that way).

Classist? In what way? I canā€™t deposit paper checks to my bank which has closed most branches (USAA) without a smartphone and I think there are (US) government services that assume you have one, too.

a lot of not-so-great jobs (and plenty of great ones, too) require that you be reachable by SMS, and perhaps even on Zoom (I don't know). a lot of busy lives need smart phones to hold everything together. Having a job or way of life with reduced digital accountability can be a real privilege. So can escaping from endless-scroll temptations. That doesn't mean it's classist to want to it, though.

Apologies, rant incoming, not directed at you: It's a privilege for me to bike for kids school drop offs and errands, to be a full time parent, to compost, to be pescatarian, to work on a garden, to have time to volunteer or do activism, buy lower waste options, be educated, etc etc. But it's the privileged who have the responsibility to move the needle on these things. No time for hand wringing. No time for guilt. If we have privilege, be aware not everyone does and use it to help others who don't have the time, freedom, and money we do. Use the privilege to break down class barriers.

a lot of not-so-great jobs (and plenty of great ones, too) require that you be reachable by SMS, and perhaps even on Zoom (I don't know).

neither of these things require a smartphone

well, Zoom yes if it's an anytime/short-notice thing. all i meant. or some jobs require you to do web search/research on short notice.

what jobs require you to hop on Zoom or do web research outside of working hours (when you'd presumably be near a computer)?

a lot of office jobs at fast-moving companies, probably of more kinds than i can imagine, where you're not on hourly wage and there is a implicit or explicit expectation of after hours decision-making and communication.

Most of those companies provide a laptop.

I'm not referring to being "on the clock" in an hourly job. I'm saying that even in salaried jobs, you have fairly set times when you're expected to be responsive and when it's not expected of you (and if you don't, then you suck at establishing expectations with your manager and colleagues). I currently work in tech and used to be in consulting: even when I was working 80+ hours per week, I wasn't expected to pull out my phone and hop on Zoom at a moment's notice. Being on Zoom on my phone in public would've been viewed as unprofessional by my colleagues.

I'm glad you know that your experiences are fully representative. Some people do suck at things like setting expectations, I don't judge, I suck at some things too. But then some people have exploitative bosses and correctly perceive an imbalance of power where bullshit extra work is actually their least-bad option.

I mean, you can keep moving the goalpost if you want (from "lots of jobs require this" to "probably more kinds than I can imagine" to "if you have an exploitative boss") - the original point was that it's somehow classist to have the privilege to not have a smartphone for work purposes, and I simply don't see that based on anything you've said.

Weā€™ve come a long ways since nextels and the 2-way were all the rage, thatā€™s for sure.

I didnā€™t have my first cell phone til after high school, when I could afford one, working full time for $5.50 an hour at fazoliā€™s

I just heard the Nextel chirp

I could see the argument that rich kids who go phoneless will have less impact on their lives than others. Itā€™s kinda like the privilege of moving abroad

Oooh. I love these kids!

ā€œWeā€™ve all got this theory that weā€™re not just meant to be confined to buildings and work. And that guy was experiencing life. Real life. Social media and phones are not real life.ā€

They are realising that we don't behave like humans

I'm going to delete Reddit again now

See you tomorrow :)

Yeah holy moley, this makes me hopeful for the future!

These teens know what's up.

I refused to have any phone at all until it became clear that adulthood is close to impossible without one in present times. I got one of the cheapest smartphones at the time, a Moto G, at the beginning of college and used it until it became irreparable, and ultimately replaced it with another relatively cheap Motorola phone that I use today.

Getting a phone has been a major nuisance in my life, even after installing an open-source OS and removing all built-in apps and never having been on social media platforms. Between the expectation that people have that you should always be instantly reachable and the spam calls/texts and the products that require using "apps" for no good technical reason (banks, appliances, websites), it's a dystopian nightmare.

The worst part is just how addictive and habit-forming the simple behavior of using a phone can be - just reach for it any time you need instant gratification! And I say this even without social media: if you want to quickly jot something down, or update your calendar, or look something up - all very reasonable things to want/need to do - the phone is the most convenient and quick solution. The problem is exacerbated when you have disordered cognition, a la ADHD, OCD, etc, and can't stop looking things up.

With books, you ultimately just bookmark a page and go to bed, but with phones, it becomes extremely hard to exercise self-control for most people - and that's by design, systemically in the platform. And there are physiological aspects to the problem too - melanopsin stimulation hinders the circadian rhythm and causes disordered sleeping.

I hope these teens go far in life.

do you guys rtemember when we all made fun of people with smartphones, how theyd be on them all the time? remmeber when everyone was outraged over people using their phones at the table?

​

now i feel weird if my friend is scrolling while we are at a restaraunt and im trying to not. i always bring anotebook to scribble in or we can play hangman or destroy it or build a monster........like, hes now the normal one. its fucking insulting to me.

couldve stayed home alone in my house, peaceful as fuck, but instead i am here with you in this noisy ass restaraunt, spending money, so you can look at your phone instead of talking to or even just being present, with me.

​

also weird to see- i bring a book when i go donate plasma......this is not an exxageration-every single other person donating is glued to their phones.

Your feelings of insult are 100% valid, because scrolling through your phone while youā€™re supposed to be engaging with another human being across from you is objectively an a-hole practice.

I really want to start carrying a notebook with me!! My boss gave me one at work for notes so I may make it a daily carry. I love playing little games and doodling and having real fun. I've been really learning a good balance of social media and real life. I can't drop instagram because it's how I keep up with bands touring and the guys at work.

I have a suggestion for the next daily carry for you - a digicam! I just grabbed my first one in a decade from an estate sale, already with lots of an old man's memories on it. I'm so hyped to use it on Christmas and start just snapping pics of my daily life. Every month or so I'm gonna get prints of all the photos on it - no editing or just dumping it on a drive. My partner and I are hopefully gonna start scrapbooking or at least writing about the photos on back and keeping them sorted. It's far cheaper than a film camera and it fits with my nostalgia as someone born in 99.

I am 100% in agreement with all of your points except the last-donating blood is the one time youā€™ll see me glued to my phone too, Iā€™m fucking terrified of needles and I need the distraction of an obnoxiously addictive phone game to distract me

Thats fair, i hadn't considered that

That was a great article and those teens give me hope. I'm glad to it covered the resistance by their parents who were concerned that they would no longer be able to know where their kids are. I've seen it from the perspective of a young adult in the early 00s who resented that my parents made me carry a flip phone so that they can reach me, and as a current parent of teens who does use the share location feature with my husband and kids. The article is a helpful reminder that there are trade-offs associated with smart phones that go unchallenged. Good on them for challenging them.

good on them, I have disabled the all the apps besides audio ones, so audiobooks, podcasts, KEXP, but no browser, insta, youtube, etc.

I was thinking about the lightphone, but I found some apps to dumb my phone down, its been nice.

i still scroll too much though, (here we are on reddit, an endless scroll) so I am trying to do 2 days online, 2 days off, where I turn my computers wifi off, its hard though because I run my business online, and there are a few legit tools I use that I need the net for.

I finished high school right as everyone started having phones with them. I love technology so I was really excited about the idea of having a cell (and eventually smart) phone in my pocket. Over the years, though, I've felt that excitement turn quite sour (even as I walk around with an iPhone in my pocket, an Apple Watch on my wrist, and AirPods in my ears). I just shared this article with my two teen boys (who only have flip phones) in hopes it will inspire them in the same ways my wife and I are trying to raise them.

I went to a flip phone last year as well. No regrets. We don't need computers in our pockets at all times.

Only thing that would keep me from rocking a flip phone all the time would be texting on that awful T9 keyboard. For a while I had a Nokia 3310 that even offered navigation and gateways to apps like facebook and whatsapp in case you were kinda stuck and needed them. Battery lasted for days, phone felt nice to use, but responding to texts? Painful. And if I don't get texts I get phone calls. I'd rather get texts.

Agree the texting experience is awful. I just use it for phone calls. There used to be flip phones with full keyboards, not sure why they're so hard to find now.

There used to be flip phones with full keyboards

I suspect they were too big and complicated for technophobes and not smart enough for the smartphone crowd. I had one of them and generally liked it but being able to back up the damn thing and choose your own apps really made the expense of one of those phones questionable.

The Light Phone is a great compromise between flip phone and smart phone.

Whatā€™s your experience with it been?

Embarrassed to say I bought a Light Phone, struggled w Verizon to switch my sim/account over & then gave up šŸ˜­ Itā€™s just sitting in my drawer now. My current iPhone is falling apart and I need to switch to a new phone so Iā€™m telling myself itā€™s time to start using the Light phone. Not sure why I have such intense anxiety about it.

I didnā€™t come from another carrier, but used their SIM. It worked for what it was, but I stopped using it because (at the time) I struggled not having a Calendar tool and Notes. Then I struggled with not having a solution to an Authenticator app for multi-factor. The Light Phone has a Notes tool now and supposedly are adding a Calendar tool in February.

This would bug me bc I keep everything in Google, especially my calendar stuff. I would hate having a separate phone calendar so they wouldn't update. I guess I would have to change to the phone calendar altogether.

Yea for sure. Iā€™m waiting to see if the Calendar tool they roll out will sync with multiple cloud calendars. I have about 4 iCloud calendars plus an Exchange calendar.

It was not an easy adjustment period, but I love my lightphone. I still have my iPhone, but I only use it for things like music and google maps while driving. Lightphone acts as hotspot. iPhone is dead/off in a drawer somewhere the rest of the time.

Have you tried the Directions tool on LP?

It gives you step-by-step list directions from point A to point B. I use googlemaps/waze when driving (which I don't do often) as it shows me live traffic and where speed cameras are located.

The LP directions is good in a pinch, but these days I just look up directions before I leave the house.

I love my Lightphone. Iā€™ve had it for about 4 months now, I have only put my SIM card in my old iPhone 8 twice since then. I have been much more intentional with my time, and concise in my texts.

This past week was my departmentā€™s holiday party, I was the only one who didnā€™t have their phone out the whole time. It was surreal.

I swear to god, switching to a dumbphone was like doing bikram yoga

What phone do you have?

I was doing 24 hour screen sabbaths once a week and it was crazy how much everyone is on the phone. I know Iā€™m like that too with one, but itā€™s still jarring being the only person at a meal not filling a silence with phone checking. Iā€™m also a compulsive scroller anytime Iā€™m bored for more than 30 seconds.

I would love to switch to Light phone, but I use google maps daily as a GPS. The trade off of not having apps though seems amazing

Thereā€™s a Directions tool. Obviously not the same as Google Maps, but still. Plus OP said they still use their smartphone for GPS and use the hotspot from their LP to use the smartphone.

I still have my smartphone. I use the wifi hotspot on the light phone and run google maps when I drive. Really my smartphone is just a Garmin at this point.

Also interested to hear your experience with the Light phone. Iā€™d have gotten one, but the cost is so damn high. Is it worth it?

I think if youā€™re dedicated to simplifying and breaking the smartphone addiction - yes. Plus, relative to the cost of smartphonesā€¦

I don't know why people think they are expensive. The iPhone LE is still like $500 or something. Yes, it's an order of magnitude more expensive than a flip phone, but it does speech to text and acts as a wifi hotspot (it's got a few other things too, but those are the advanced features I use regularly).

I'd love to get one but they're so expensive. I used a Nokia 201 for years until I caved around lockdown.

Realistically they are cheaper than smartphones. Either you buy the smartphone for almost a thousand upfront, or pay almost the same monthly. And the Lightphone is having a sale.

What? No - a Motorola or something is Ā£80. GiffGaff subscription is between Ā£6 and Ā£15, depending on how much data you want.

A light phone 2 global version works out about Ā£247, including the shipping, tax for importing a phone (don't know about that) and it doesn't work on O2 which (GiffGaff piggybacks on) so I would have to chose a new SIM card provider.

Oh, Iā€™m in the US so everything is stupid expensive.

Correct. In the US, you get the smartphone for "only" $30/month (for the next 48 months)

You can't just buy a phone and get a SIM only deal?

Yes, but you have to be crafty. It's more than possible but it's not the route you're routinely presented with

By caved do you mean you got a Light Phone? I also think there are plenty of basic phones that the major carriers offer (flip phones) that could accomplish basically the same thing.

No, a smartphone. I couldn't afford a Light Phone.

This is amazing, theyā€™re amazing. So happy to hear younger kids are being cognizant of this social plague, makes me hopeful for the future !!

Just limit your phone to basic needs. It's still essential for when you're stranded somewhere and need help, have a medical emergency, need directions, need to call a tow truck, etc.

I keep my phone boring and intrusive apps locked behind a second profile. They're out of the way enough to not use them frequently and notifications don't pop up, but I can still use in emergencies. Going phoneless is straight up dumb imo.

I agree, self control takes a lot of effort and sometimes some tricks (like your 2-profile set up) but I would much rather have the tools at hand than be stuck trying to be the tool-less person in a world that expects you to always have access to these types of things.

The only social media I use is reddit, and during the covid lockdowns I chose to delete the app from my phone when I noticed I was using it too much. So now I have to make a conscious decision to sit at my home computer and browse. After sitting at an office desk all day for work, I usually prefer doing dishes or hobbies over sitting down and browsing!

I got a flip phone four years ago. Back then, in public, people laughed at me when I pulled it out. Now they ask me how to get one.

re: some comments I saw here, the idea of trading in my $1,200 Smartphone for a $75 flip phone being classist is ludicrous. It's classist to construct a world where you need a $1,200 Smartphone.

A comment I thought was quite astute from one of the kids was the idea of having to show up to places you say you'll be, because there's no texting and being like hey I'm going to be late, etc. That's a thing about the current world I can't stand - late people who think a text somehow makes the lateness okay. Back before cell phones you had to be on time.

Oh dear lord, wait until you need your smartphone to adjust your hearing aids....šŸ˜‚

Our current situation is analogous to the moment when multi-cellular animals developed nervous systems. The old endocrine system is still there and needs to be taken care of. If either one gets out of whack the animal will suffer. The internet is amazingly useful. But there are many social and psychological benefits to simple living. This appears to me to be a positive, evolving development.

I remember the feeling of switching to smart phones - when I was 20 my father lent me his blackberry for a month, and during that month I remember thinking "I don't like this constant urge to keep checking my phone." I had a few good years back on the dumb phone but maybe it's time to finally do it. I 've been thinking of banning/severely restricting facebook on my devices because I know it's the only way I won't waste so much time on them.