Life before smartphones (2020)

And he doesn't even mention that you could just be outside, and be unreachable and not able to reach other people too.

As a kid I used to play outside a lot, and my mother had no clue where I was, nor could she easily find out. I could be outside all day without her worrying that I'd be abducted or involved in an accident.

Now that all has completely changed, and my mother has too. Some years ago when I walked into the hallway of my house I coincidentally noticed a lot of people in front of my door. So I opened it, and it was the police that was about to bust the door with a battering ram. As it happened I hadn't answered my phone in a couple of hours. After multiple calls unanswered, my mom had called 911 on me. And my doorbell was broken, police didn't even knock.. they wanted the action, probably.

I was just freaking programming with the deep-work-destroying phone thingy on silence (where it should be most of the time, imho).

Regarding photos:

People our age only have a few childhood pictures, and they are warped by time on analog media. Those pictures of us as a kid look really old because they are naturally filtered. Soon people will wonder WTF old-pic filters are for, and some historian will have to explain why it's blurred and the colors are faded. Also why did people have clothes for each decade?

Our kids, by contrast, have had pictures taken of them every week at least. With metadata so you know where you were. And they're digital images that won't fade. When our kids are 40, they can look at an archive of how they looked pretty much every week of their lives. Not only that, they can already search the archive for particular situations.

I remember back when I got my first digital camera, people would routinely ask me "ok but how do you look at the pictures? Do you just print them out?". Looking at them on a screen was almost unfathomable.

Nowadays, a physical album seems to have taken the place of your camera in the 90s. Not quite a luxury item, but you'd have to be "into that" to go to the trouble of making a physical album.

One thing I've noticed is that while everyone can take photos and video anytime they want to, many folks simply forget to. How many people have you seen who have timelines of only selfies, food, and/or cats/dogs. I've been making a point to take just a few photos or videos while spending time with friends after a show and many of my friends are thankful when I do and share them (directly, not online and tagging them).

As a parent, I've been watching this play out in real time among other peoples' children.

Most parents I know are deliberate about limiting screen time and ensuring their children don't substitute screen time for other activities. It's actually not that difficult to do so as kids are really good at finding entertainment in their environment even without electronics.

However, some parents give their kids all the tablet, TV, and phone time they want. As they grow up I can see them failing to learn how to play with others their own age because they'd rather reach for a screen than make an effort to do something. They can be frighteningly grumpy when separated from their electronic devices and can even throw tantrums until their parents cave in and give them more screen time.

FWIW, I've also watched parents reverse this trend by slowing weaning their kids off of screen time and substituting other entertaining activities. It doesn't take a whole lot to nudge people in the right direction, but putting that phone down and doing literally anything other than stare at a screen can be a difficult first step to take.

I've started weening myself off of everything that's instant-gratification. No reddit, no imgur, no short-format news stories or list articles. A week ago I drove 9 hours for a camping trip and spent several days without my phone and smart-watch. For several months I've made a point to walk at least an hour a day (to go about 5 miles) without looking at my phone -- but I still wear my watch to track the distance. I still feel like I have to have some form of audio going in the background - maybe something educational, maybe ASMR - while I'm browsing hacker news. If I play a game, I still choose one without a narrative so that I can listen to a podcast while I play. I'm not sure that any of these habits are beneficial.

I think Nicholas Carr had a great point in The Shallows (2010) [1] -- our brains have a lot of plasticity, even into late adulthood. The way we use the internet probably has a much larger impact on the way we think than we are currently willing to acknowledge. There is a healthy way to integrate electronics into our daily lives, but I don't think many of us have found it.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shallows_(book)

I’ve been suffering the same thing over the last few months. A helpful technique for me has been to swap out my smart watch for a dumb watch, and to put my phone in a drawer unless I intend to use it.

I also heavily limited the types of things Facebook will send push notifications for. It used to be that if I got a notification, it was because one of my friends actually interacted with me in some way. Now I get a bunch of junk notifications that I feel are designed to pull me into the app and not really inform me of anything, to get me back to scrolling a feed. Like I’ll get a notification that someone I don’t know made a post in a group I’ve been in for years without ever getting a similar notification in the previous years. So I basically turned off everything that doesn't involve my actual friends doing something relevant to me.

I recently quit all social media. There was a bit of withdrawal but I can confirm that my attention span has started coming back.

Have you been to a college campus in the last two or three years?

There is a serious smartphone addiction problem. It is seriously worrying to see so many of my peers craning their necks, starting at their phone for hours on end. On the bus, in class, while hanging out, it is an observable fact that everyone is almost always on their phone.

I personally believe we are in a watershed moment for human civilization. The harms of this smartphone addicted world will snowball down into later generations who have never known a life without every need catered for and every boring moment seized by entertainment.

> More than technological advancements or anything else, all of this nostalgia is really just about getting old.

The other side of this is that only people who are older can actually notice when things have changed. So, of course it's older people who talk about it the most.

I don't pity today's youth. I do pity myself for not having young knees anymore...

I don't get the sense that the author is trying to say that the past was better. Although I could be misreading you and you're not intending to say that he is. I suppose this is another consequence of getting old.

Yeah I remember waiting for people - I got a smartphone at 16, in 2004, something like that, so it's hard to really imagine how it was for adults...

My parents told me they spend evenings at the phone booth talking to each other - but even that is ultra convenient compared to my grandparents sending letters :D

But I think it's better anyway - we sample mating candidates more, we cycle through faster, we can stop and try anew nearly any time until 50, and with some difficulty above.

I mean my aunt had a crushing divorce when she had 3 young children and stayed alone working with all 3 until the internet arrived and she could find a partner much faster...

In 1989 I wrote a letter (i.e., mailed) to a friend from grad school (ASU) pursuing her studies at a Northern UK university. I sez we will meet you at the center of Piccadilly Circus at such and such a time, on such and such date. She wrote back, "of course." This took a month or so. We flew over, and showed up. So did she. I still remember meeting up: it was no big deal.

We had also written to Czech friends from grad school (U FL) that we would show up in Olomouc on such and such date (Jun 1989, interesting times). They were visiting relatives and we showed up. And were whisked off to 5 days of whirlwind touring the soon to be de-Sovietized Czechoslovakia.

We hosted quite few Eastern Europeans in the '90s, all arranged over snail mail. There was a sense of responsibility that we don't really experience today when dropping in on travels. All the modernity in the world, and nowadays we occasionally get ghosted, even after making repeated prior arrangements using the latest hottest smart phone technology.

I will say this: google translate + maps are the two great inventions we appreciate most. The rest is a solid meh. We have a theory that maximized immediate convenience has an unanticipated effect of atomizing and devaluing some relationships.

Per the parent, I too remember those paper maps while cycling. As in, riding from the Portland Airport to Arcadia and down to LA, using a tour guide, quite tattered at the end. Most of the times before an extended trip (100+ miles) I would memorize the route the night before. This worked fine for 25 years.

I (legally) smoked on a plane!

Smartphones or not, being very late for planned meetups definitely hasn't changed as a concept.

I have a rule when in pubs - no Googling answers to the inane argument. Inane arguments in pubs aren’t about getting the right answer, they’re about the tangents you end up going down from them, something that’s lost if you can just immediately get the answer.

> * Inane arguments in pubs about facts that couldn't be instantly googled.

I don't miss those. Before the Internet, if it wasn't on an encyclopedia and you weren't at the library, you had no way of corroborating information.

On the other hand, since facts are so accessible right now, those arguments have shifted to voicing their feelings and wishes because those can't be falsified.

Just a random thought you inspired. If any "collective consciousness" ideas are grounded at all in reality does missing the shared episode experience negatively change it?

I remember that the Game of Thrones red wedding event still seemed to happen at the same time even though it was re-watchable on demand.

Another thing was regional music. I used to hear about GoGo music in DC, but I couldn't get access to it on the West Coast. People who had access to lots of different music were the music elites. I worked in college radio and set up the college's first Real Audio server and that was a game changer (we were admittedly late to the game, but the whole notion was a game changer).

And now music really knows no bounds.

Im planning on getting an old-school non-smart phone to take with me sometimes, just to disconnect without being uncontactable for this reason.

disabling notifications on apps goes a long way. and they all clearly hate it and bug you to turn em back on constantly

Can't you uninstall or limit the apps that try to steal your attention?

I've been intentionally cutting things like TV or internet out of my life at certain times, and can definitively say I'd rather be bored. All these things I tell myself I want to do are actually not that hard when I'm bored. Writing, drawing, having more conversations with loved ones. It's a lot easier when I can't say "let's watch the new episode while we eat" or "I'll surf HN for a bit." The boredom builds until it finds release, eventually being high enough to do the things I actually want to spend my time on.

If all I can do is watch paint dry, I'll find something else, whether it's rewarding or just mindless dopamine.

That said, I'm totally addicted and cutting out the internet is extremely hard when I sit in front of it for work and my computer and phone are where a lot of the rewarding things are too (e.g. cell phone drains time, but you need it to text friends). I feel like an alcoholic working as a bartender also required to take just a teeny sip of whiskey every time I talk to someone.

> The whole psychologically weird phase of "hmm I'm here and waiting, and all I can do is watch paint dry" seems to have vanished.

I dunno. Infinite scrolling sure feels like watching paint dry to me... but as a teenager my idea of a good time was finding an isolated bit of woods, and sitting still enough for the fauna to ignore me. Actually, that's still my idea of a good time, but I'm too busy and the woods anywhere nearby are too crowded.

I miss being bored. I used to go out of character and explore things when I got bored, now I don't remember the last time when I was bored for prolonged time.

I mean I get bored of a game or an article etc. but I would immediately seek refuge in something else that is easy to reach.

Before constant connectivity, I would have attempt to cure my boredom in much more hardcore ways.

> not being bored

People weren't necessarily "bored"-- remember that the boredom one feels when not hyper stimulated is due, at least in part, to adaptation to their peak/typical stimulus.

People probably got sufficient dopamine, from "less exciting" things such as small talk, looking at the clouds, contemplating the meaning of their life while waiting for an interview to begin etc.

It's practically nonsensical. I had a "dumbphone" up until 2011. I'm not even a luddite, I just did everything on my computer (and still pretty much do) because the general early phone OS experience was vastly inferior. 'Life before smartphones' was thus almost essentially the same going back to like 1996. I still spent all day on the internet, except now I can read it while I take a dump I guess.

Yeah, doesn't it seem natural that being around a persistent social group and spending the majority of the day hanging out made us happy? Seems like pretty much what we evolved for.