Not sure I get this. What do you consider “fully participating”?
I think that things like smartphones and Facebook can be useful for almost everybody, it’s just a matter of finding out what you want them to do. The navigation app finds me better routes around traffic sometimes, and it knows when most businesses will close and can predict if they’ll still be open when I get there. The OP might not need those things, but I think there’s probably something of value.
You mis-quoted control-z. They said that IF YOU GIVE FACEBOOK YOUR EMAIL PASSWORD, Facebook will contact your email contacts. But that is only if you give them your email password. And only for the email address you used to sign up. If you keep your work and personal email accounts separate, and sign up with your personal email account, you won’t even accidentally have this problem.
I’ve been on Facebook for like 8 years or something and I’ve never given them permission to connect to any of my email accounts and therefore Facebook has never connected to any of my email accounts.
Yeah, it varies. For me, Facebook doesn’t seem like it would add anything important. I recently started twitter, and find it underwhelming for what I do with it.
On the other hand, despite being a late adapter, I use my smart phone for dozens of important functions. I could live without it, but I am really glad I don’t have to.
Controls my Sonos music system at home. (they don’t even sell a controller anymore, you must have a tablet or smart phone)
GPS
Uber
email and texting
photos
airline check in, boarding passes, flight status, etc.
lock my car doors, check tire pressure, charging status.
Operate home security system when home or away
Check ferry schedule (on other cities, can be sued for bus and subway schedules)
check tides
access internet, (restaruants, fact checking, or just bored)
check my calendar
alarm clock while traveling (hotel alarm clocks confuse me)
Meh, I’ve been on Facebook since 2008 and I really don’t enjoy it anymore. Sure it’s great to reconnect with old friends and family members. The downside is when those friends and family members turn out to hold really loathsome opinions, or they post 900,000 photos of their kids every day. You can hide/unfollow those people, but I kind of liked it better when I didn’t know that my college roommate is now a Trump-supporting racist.
I’ve gotten to the point where I’m no longer checking Facebook out of real curiosity, just habit.
Yes, I can see how it is a great help to you. As you say, it depends. My life is pretty simple in that I don’t have any association with half the things on your list. Anything I can do on a computer I do, because I sit at one all day but if I didn’t have that luxury(?) I’d probably use my phone a lot more too.
As an introvert, it helps me maintain the strength of my relationships. Left to my own devices, I tend to drift away from people I’m not in contact with and it’s harder to interact with them later. For example, there are certain friends and family I only see once in a great while. Some of them are on Facebook, some are not. For the ones on Facebook, I feel closer to them when I see them after a long time. For the ones not on Facebook, they tend to fade away and I care less about them–out of sight, out of mind.
You can participate as much or as little as you like. You can just browse what your friends post and be invisible. Or you can click the ‘Like’ button for the posts you enjoy. Or you can post your own status of what you’re up to and other people can interact with your posts.
Simple solution. Set up a free e-mail account on Outlook, Hotmail, or Gmail, and use that address to set up a Facebook account. They can’t contact anyone through an email account that has no contacts or history.
Before I got a tablet about four years ago, I didn’t know what an “app” was. Every time I’d hear the word, I’d get irritated. And it was everywhere. I began to associated the whole concept with those damn annoying hipsters, with their skinny jeans and strange hair.
Before I got my smartphone, I used to hate on everyone who can’t go five minutes without checking their phone. I used to get mad at people standing in check-out lines, totally engrossed in their phones, deadening themselves to the environment around them. I’d automatically subtract several IQ points from anyone I saw looking up information on their phone. Because they looked like a damn idiot to me.
Now that I have a tablet and a smart phone, I realize how important it is to try to keep up with things just a little bit, if only to keep me from feeling totally alienated from humanity. The more separated you are from what’s going on, the less “with it” you can appear. And there is practical utility to beng “with it”.
And although it is true that you don’t have to use social media to keep in contact with others, it is also true that people tend to have a preferred mode of communication. If everyone in your social circle prefers Facebook communication, they aren’t going to always remember to shoot you an email or leave a voicemail. Perhaps this arrangement is fine for you (it would be for me). But some people don’t want to risk being marginalized by their friend group.
Social media be all dumb. You ain’t missin nuthin.
However, smart phones are great. Just think of them as pocket-sized computers, which, I guess, can ALSO be used as a phone. GPS, The Dope, Wikipedia with you at all times to win you all sorts of stupid arguments at the bar.
On the other hand, Facebook frequently suggests people I might know, based on the activity and interests of my approved Facebook friends. It’s often right. Very few of my co-workers have send me Friend requests, but I assume that a lot more of them have been notified that I’m on Facebook and that they probably know me. That has nothing to do with my e-mail contacts, though. It’s solely based on my Facebook activity.
What are you missing if you don’t have Facebook? I’ll summarize it for you.
[ul]
[li]Graphics with inspirational quotes against nature backgrounds[/li][li]Invitations to play Candy Crush[/li][li]“Let’s see who’s brave enough to repost this”[/li][li]"‘Like’ if you want to find a cure for cancer"[/li][li]Inane, bogus trivia (“This is the first month in 823 years that has five Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays!”)[/li][li]Variations of “Keep Calm and _______”[/li][li]Pictures of food at restaurants[/li][li]People who think Onion fake news is real[/li][li]Vaguebooking (“Sometimes I just want to give up” without elaboration)[/li][li]Nutrition woo (“Apples cure diabetes!”)[/li][li]Upworthy clickbait videos[/li][li]Selfies taken inside cars[/li][li]“Which ______ Character Are You” quizzes[/li][li]Lists of stupid “lifehacks” (“Turn a toilet paper tube into an iPhone speaker!”)[/li][li]Astrology text graphics (“Betray a Scorpio and prepare for World War III!”)[/li][li]Minute-by-minute vacation updates (“I’m in the security line at the airport!”)[/li][li]Marital advice from newlyweds (“Communication is key!”)[/li][li]Discovering that you have friends with repulsive political and social opinions[/li][/ul]
I don’t think you’re missing much. True, it’s probably difficult, or at least troublesome, to get along today without internet access, but everything else mentioned is a convenience as far as I’m concerned, hardly a necessity.
I don’t get the “How did I ever live without my smartphone?!” thinking. I can see advantages, but it’s not something I’d trade my family for. GPS? Use a map. Connecting by phone or text is nice, and convenient, but during my life, it can wait until I get to a phone (particularly while I’m driving – talking on the phone or texting while driving? Stupid!) Photos? While the quality of images is technologically impressive, that doesn’t mean people are photographers. Plus, as has been mentioned in another thread, you get the blurred borders when TV news shows cell phone video. Stupid!
In Michael Palin’s “Around the World in 80 Days,” he wondered how much technology is really necessary. And that was in 1988, before the Web even came about. I wonder the same thing.
TL;DR: There’s a difference between convenient technology and necessary technology.
That is exactly why I asked the question. I don’t miss it, but I was wondering what it is that I am not missing. Several of the replies thus far have given some insight, such as Waxwinged’s story about finding a pet-friendly hotel in the adjacent town and booking it online. I can certainly see some advantages. As far as reconnecting with old friends… I am in the phone book if they want to call.
As far as “fully participating in modern life”. Thanks for the reply but I really had to chuckle at that one. I am 60+ years old. I do not want “modern life”. I want old school life.
As I read through the comments I find it interesting that many of the reasons given for wanting to be on social media are the very reasons I do not want to be on it. Thanks for the response.
You’re in the what now?
I don’t know if you’re missing anything, but I don’t know why anyone who can afford it, and use it with ease, would go without a smartphone. Instant access to nearly all the information you could ever want, nearly every book, every song, a video camera, a link to your family and friends, and it fits in your pocket. They’re everywhere, and they don’t seem remarkable anymore, but it’s truly incredible.
ETA:
Well, as long as you’re happy. I’m not your age, but I truly feel lucky to be alive at a time with so many technological advances. I wouldn’t go back to the 90s at all.
Cars and airplanes are not necessary technology either. Yet I think anyone who avoids these technologies is making their life needlessly difficult.
Smartphones enable rapid access to information. The same as desktop computers. I’ve witnessed meetings become productive affairs–when otherwise they would be horrible time-wasters–simply because someone was smart enough to bring their smartphone. I’ve been able to save myself from embarrassing tardiness simply by remembering to bring my smartphone with me when I’m driving in unfamiliar territory. YES, i could stop and buy a road atlas, but if this solution doesn’t keep me from being embarrassingly late(perhaps because the road atlas is hard to use when you’re driving alone and you are looking for streets rather than roads), then it is an inferior one.
I have to admit that I have low regard for people who don’t take advantage of the wealth of information that technology provides. If I assemble a team for a brain-storming session, I’m going to look more favorably at the people who come up with ideas rather than those who don’t contribute anything. If the only way you can contribute is to report what turns up on a google search on your smartphone, that may not be ideal but it is still SOMETHNG. At the very least, you are able to do some real-time fact-checking. I get frustrated when people think not knowing the answer gets you off the hook for answering the question. “I don’t know” would be an acceptable response five or six years ago. But today, folks want to hear, “I don’t know. Let’s see what comes up when I do a search!” So while smartphone technology may seem like a convenience today, I think it will soon be a basic requirement for business, if it isn’t already.
Yeah, this is pretty much facebook. If you’re not on it by now, there’s no reason to change that.
Twitter is somewhat useful for the latest news. I don’t tweet, but I read it. I don’t instagram or snapchat, so not sure what I’m missing there.
Online chatting…is that still a thing? Are there chat rooms out there?
And that’s okay as long as you understand why people will treat you as if you are invisible, like your opinion doesn’t matter, like you aren’t relevant anymore. If you can’t communicate in the same language as folks in the “new school”, then you should not expect those folks to make much of an effort to share their discoveries with you.
My father is 70. If you aren’t on Facebook or not someone who regularly texts him, then you might as well not exist to him. I for one am grateful that he has managed to keep up with the “new school” becausse he thrives on social interaction. I have no doubt he’d be a miserable grouch without his online interactions.
(Note: I don’t do Facebook or Twitter. But I do socialize online. If you’re doing that, you"re “new school” enough IMHO).
A lot of what you say is true – and I’m not going down the rabbit hole argument of what technology is necessary, otherwise you could say “Why do we wear anything but animal skins? It was good enough for our Neanderthal cousins and other species that settled in cold climates!”
That’s not what I’m saying at all. What I really argue about is the confusion between necessity and convenience. When people spend all day on Facebook, and say they can’t live without it.
Now, to the part of your post I bolded. People have always been that way. Simply saying, “I don’t know,” and dropping it has never been acceptable in business. “I don’t know, but I’ll find out!” is acceptable. The difference is you can search during the meeting.
And I’m glad you’ve been a part of productive meetings where people have smartphones. Most of the meetings I’ve attended where people have smartphones have been anything but productive, because people sit and text or search Facebook, or play games–anything but pay attention to the meeting.
Truth be told, the problem I really have with people isn’t the technology so much, as they think whatever is current is the greatest of all time. it’s true with sports stars (do people still think Mike Tyson was the greatest?), and with technology. Personally, I think the Second Industrial Revolution was far more impressive than smartphones and iwatches and Facebook. That was when technology really soared: within a couple of generations, the internal combustion engine came about, as well as the telephone, home electricity, radio, the airplane, the automobile, modern medicine, etc.
All those changed the world in ways that smartphones haven’t. So while I’m not knocking technology, and I’m also not saying people on this board say that smartphones are the greatest thing ever, I think as a society, we take things for granted that we shouldn’t. After all, where would we be without the steam engine, or railroads?
I recently read a history of WWI, and was amazed at how they used (then new, now commonplace) weaponry, like barbed wire, which was virtually unknown before the mid-19th century. Or the zipper. Or any of a thousand other things.
That’s what gets me about arguments about modern technology I think. Smartphones have been built on the shoulders of giants. My rant is over now.