The question is when you are at home, do you always have your cell phone with you even when going from room to room? Or does your phone live mostly in one spot, occasionally taken with you, like maybe to the bathroom?
Post inspired by a very long hijack in the Elon Musk pit thread, which started here:
I generally keep it on me or near me. But my wife often has it nowhere near her when she’s at home.
Most posts from 4 to 45 moved from Pit Thread. If tempers seem a little strong, please don’t flag it, they did nothing wrong. {What Exit?}
I sent a request to the mods asking for the replies to that post in the Elon Musk thread to be moved over here.
It’s a lot of posts – maybe like 40 or so? – so I recognize it as being a pain in the butt. But it would be awesome, and it never hurts to ask, y’know?
I feel this topic is interesting, and a lot of interesting discussion has already taken place. It’s not that feel they should be removed from the Elon thread because it’s a hijack, but rather they should be put here to foster discussion.
My cell phone basically lives in its charging station in my home office next to my computer, where I use it once a day for two-factor authentication (VPN). I take it with me if we go on a road trip, where I might need to call my partner if we split and do separate chores in some alien city. And I take it with me when I go on my long suburban hikes, in case I sprain my ankle or get lost, or to tell her what train I’m returning on and con her into picking me up.
I’m not really a luddite. I just don’t like the damn thing for phone calls or for doing things I can do on a computer. I like the idea of a cell phone but I can’t stand the operating system.
I never used to carry a phone unless I was driving somewhere (in which case I wanted the phone in case the car broke down, once everybody started assuming that you had one.)
Then I got the heart diagnosis. While I’m at low risk for a sudden heart attack, I now carry one all the time. If it finishes me off right away, too fast to get the phone out, that’s OK; but if it doesn’t, I like knowing that I can call for help. Also, I’m now in my 70’s, and a lot more likely to break something if I fall.
ETA: The phone that can survive being carried with me all the time is effectively useless for anything other than phone calls and very short texts. That’s fine with me.
I have no land line so it pays to have the phone near me rather than having to run for it if someone calls.
It is also my alarm clock.
I go days at a time without ever turning it on, let alone carry it around with me. The texts I get largely tend to be from politicians wanting me to take money out of my wallet and put it in theirs. The wife leaves hers on all the time.
Me too. My cell phone just sits on my desk next to me or coffee table when watching TV or playing the news while I cook and night stand when I go to bed since it is the alarm clock. I never put it in my pocket at home unless I am leaving.
When I moved, I decided it was time to lose the landline. Also it is nice have a Googling device so close. Not to mention a calculator. It counts my steps and I can check the weather very easily.
A little less important, but my reminders, texts and Emails all come to my phone. I do some of my moderating from the phone also. My spelling issues probably increase greatly in the evening thanks to this. ’
Sometimes it is really great to have a camera in my pocket. We occasionally get interesting feline and avian visitors to our deck.
I use it far too often for “gee that actor looks familiar” lookups.
I have fought the long war of keeping my Email and Text clean. It takes vigilance but spam is minimal.
Short answer- yes, with an “if.” Long answer no, with a “but.”
Or, y’know, the reverse of that. I intermittently keep my phone near me as I’m using it, but mostly do not carry it around the place. It almost never lives in my bedroom at night - I am unreachable when sleeping, which is entirely by design. I will make exceptions for pre-existing crises.
However I live in a smaller place so it’s never a long walk away. Plus I have a desktop, an ipad and a dinosaur landline for my occasionally poor home reception (also not in my bedroom). I also just don’t get many calls these days as I sink slowly into a lovely quasi-hermitic existence.
I do. I’m not necessarily going to hear it from the other end of the house, and I believe it’s a good idea to be readily available to folks in my inner circle. Especially my brother-in-law, who’s pushing seventy, lives alone, and was, shall we say, a bit accident prone even even during the days when he was in his prime. It’s turned out to be a good idea on more than one occasion.
As an aside, some smartphones allow calling over WiFi. Cell reception in my place is very bad so I use WiFi calling which works great every time (I made sure my home WiFi is solid). Not 100% sure if all phones can do it and/or all cell providers let it work (I have Verizon). Might be worth checking into though.
I’ve lived alone most of the time since my husband died 24 years ago. I keep my cell phone near or on me at all times. Even here at The Home, if I fall, I’d rather call someone than just lie and scream until someone hears me. I often have the ringer off, but I do glance at it from time to time.
Lessons learned:
In 2007 I fell outside and broke my ankle. I did not have my cell phone with me. I lay in the parking lot where I fell until some guys found me and called my then-BF who took me to the ER.
My late mother had one of those alert buttons, but instead of wearing it, she kept it hanging on the wall by her bed. She fell in the bathroom of her apartment in California and lay for seven hours in her own poop until someone noticed that they hadn’t seen her for a while. The EMTs had to break a window to get in. If she had been wearing the device and summoned help, there was a lockbox outside her apt and the EMTs would have been given the code to access her front door key.
Um… you do realize that carrying the phone with you doesn’t mean you have to use it, answer it, or even have it on. It’s for emergencies, which by their nature, we cannot avoid, but we can prepare for.
It makes me nuts when people say they don’t take their phone on walks because they want to disconnect from technology for a while. Fine and dandy: just turn it off, or turn the ringer/notifications off. I saw a friend this weekend who was in that school of thought until one day, walking in the city without her phone, she fell (she was in her 30s at the time, so not elderly) hit her head and had to be taken to a hospital. She doesn’t walk without her phone any more.
I get the gist of your point, but no, we all don’t. 80% of the time outside my house, and 99% of the time inside my house I’m without a phone.
I’m with you. I generally take my phone with me if I leave the house, but I don’t go back for it if I forget. At home, it’s on silent sitting somewhere, and if I remember I check it every few hours. I often don’t see texts or calls until the next day. I am prompt in responding once I see them, if that can be called prompt.
“What if some emergency occurred where someone needs to contact you?” Then they’ll have to employ the same strategy they would have the first 40+ years of my life when carrying around a phone was not a thing.
That’s nice, but you guys must realize that you’re a vanishingly small minority of the human population and represent virtually no-one but yourselves.
Leeches?
Oh wait, that was the strategy when modern medicine was not yet a thing.
Yes, I do realize I’m a dinosaur. I just can’t resist offering a “You go, bro!” when a fellow brontosaurus ambles by.
I carry around my phone everywhere, and yes, Google, my cell provider, and a bunch of other software companies can track where I am. But that’s not the same as a stalker spouse tracking me.
With something like Find My iPhone, I can grant and revoke permissions for someone to track me. The issue with these cars is that there isn’t a way to turn it off, and a spouse doesn’t need access to the source data to track you.
And I hated that. Couldn’t get hold of people half the time, missed important things, and if plans changed chances are you could tell the people. Should we go back to no answering machines, party lines, candlestick phones? Telegraph? 
I mean, yes we got along without tech for millions of years. Doesn’t me we should continue to.
I’m about s paranoid as you can be and be legally sane, but I carry my phone. It’s too useful to be without. Should I ever commit ma crime, I will remember to leave it at home, though.