I’m one of the ones who doesn’t carry their phone around inside the house. I can’t even wrap my head around it.
For example, I did a ton of laundry this weekend. Eight loads, I think it ended up being. I was all over the house collecting and folding and putting away and didn’t have my phone for any of it. Do people really just keep their phone in their pocket while they are home? That seems as unnatural to me as wearing my outdoor shoes at home. (I wear indoor moccasins/slippers.)
Yes. Of course.
The vexation of it making noise elsewhere in the house reminds me of the vexation when the landline phone used to ring in the other room and there was a mad dash to answer it before the other end hung up.
Why would I set that primitive vexing situation up here in 2024 when having the thing in my pocket at all times prevents that? I’d be happier if it was the size and weight of a paperclip, but that’s coming.
I need my pockets to be completely empty when I’m home, to be comfortable.
Not always, but much of the time, yes. And, when I don’t, I usually keep it nearby. I barely get phone calls, and few people even can make my phone ring if they call. But, when it does happen, it is usually somewhat time sensitive, like someone asking what I need them to get me while they’re out.
I don’t view it as all that weird, since the home phone was always set up to be loud enough to be able to be heard in any room. Cell phones tend to ring a lot quieter, so keeping it with me at home keeps me as connected as I was when I had a home phone.
Of course, there are alternatives, like hooking it up to a Bluetooth speaker. I have one that is loud enough to hear in my whole house, but I don’t use it for phone calls. It’s actually used as my alarm, since I started being able to sleep through my alarms on my phone.
I guess that explains it. I don’t actually answer my phone. I’ll respond to texts like a civilized person, but as a general rule I do not answer a voice call. What am I, a caveman?
How else am I going to count my steps?
In reality, I would probably leave it sitting but it is my music machine and if I’m out to the garage, I have to have my music. Also, I have four very elderly parents and I don’t want to miss their calls.
Amen! I only have one friend who calls me, but he realizes that I don’t pick up.
(Come to think of it, he’s large and carnivorous, he may be a caveman…)
But I keep my phone with me because if I’m doing housework, I’m listening to a book on it. If I get too far away, it drops out… just as the old sea captain reaches for the blunderbuss… why, yes, I am listening to The Wreck of the Mary Deare.*
*Just got a collection of Hammond Innes audiobooks - good ol’ adventure books from the twentieth century! Very motivational to keep me working, or working out.
Sorry, I DO wish this were on topic… Wait, this is how I’m Countering Digital Hate!
It’s here. Okay, airpods aren’t quite as light as paperclips, but they’re pretty damn light. No need to carry your phone around, though.
The one thing I rarely do with my mobile is talk to it or listen on it. I interact with it mostly by screen and keyboard. It’s an internet terminal that can make phone calls; it’s not a “phone”.
On the rare occasions I am listening to music or on a voice call, I can easily walk out of Bluetooth range while at home. So if I am using my headset / earbuds, I need to carry the phone with me, lest I wander into the Cone of Silence.
You may soon be able to dispense with the paperclip-size thing, too, and just have a cell phone implanted directly into your brain! Elmo’s Neuralink tech may be able to help with that. 
Here’s my policy. My cell phone permanently lives on the little half-wall between the kitchen and the family room. Why? Because I almost never use it. Sure, it beeps, warbles, and squawks from time to time, apparently desperate for attention, but I just ignore it. If anyone has anything important to say to me, my landline desk phone is right here beside me. Though if I don’t recognize the caller I ignore that, too. The ringer is turned off. I know there’s an incoming call only because of the flashing light, and the dimly heard ringer from the phone downstairs, which is turned down very low.
The only reason I have a cell phone at all is because I take it with me in the car for emergencies and other exceptional situations.
My whole attitude with regard to our modern hyper-connected society is “leave me the fuck alone”. I’m not saying you’re wrong, esteemed @LSLGuy, I’m just remarking on how different we are despite being of the same generation.
Regards,
An Old Fart extremely protective of his peace and privacy and his kid-free lawn.
Yeah, not me. Phone is always on silent, too. For good reason. A lot of times I am somewhere where I don’t want the phone to ring and draw attention to me, and leaving it on silent always is just the easiest way to ensure I don’t fuck up and accidentally have it ring in the middle of a wedding ceremony or what not. If I forget my phone, I generally leave it at home. Unless I have a good reason to need it. I’m 48. I’m not at all a Luddite or tech-averse. I had an iPhone from the day it came out in 2007 to having the 15 now. It’s just not something that needs to be around me all the time. I take it out of my pocket when I get home, as I do my wallet, and often I just even take my pants off, so none of that stuff is gonna be on my person anyway. I also don’t answer 90% of my calls, anyway, so that helps. If it’s important, they’ll leave a message. My wife is in the tech industry and half the time she doesn’t know where her phone is at, either, unless she’s working.
But they have limited range. I’ve definitely left my phone behind and gotten too far away from them. Besides, if I have them in at home, then I’m using them to listen to something. It’s not about being able to receive calls.
And when you’re watching TV and an actor comes on ho looks familiar but you’re not quite sur from where, do you pause, stand up, walk to your computer and look him up on IMDB?
Do you have any idea how many Wikipedia tabs I have open on my phone at any given time?
I don’t carry my smartphone around for “connectivity”. Fuck other people. I do it because it’s a wonderous device capable of transmitting information directly into my brain, any time, any place. It’s my link to the sum total of human knowledge.
Apologies for the hijack, but …
No, but do you have any idea how I watch TV? The answer is, I don’t. I don’t think my TV has been turned on once in at least the past couple of months. I watch a lot of movies, though. Mostly as a late-night treat, on my tablet, in bed. And, yes, sometimes I’m curious about an actor or some other aspect of a movie. So I tap the browser icon and look it up. Meanwhile my stupid cell phone remains downstairs, beeping and squawking to itself.
I think you have the cell phone confused with the internet. The internet (and social media, specifically) have some major downsides in terms of proliferating disinformation, but overall the combination of the internet and powerful search engines like Google have been a boon to mankind.
Steve Jobs is a hero in my book for inventing the tablet, though the one I use isn’t from Apple. And all the people who helped advance the internet and cellular technology are greater still. But when Jobs invented the so-called “smart” phone, he inadvertently unleashed a curse upon the world. And yes, I realize that the smartphone came first and that 99% of the population in the industrialized world disagrees with me.
A smartphone is just a tablet or laptop you can put in your pocket, plus it makes phone calls. If Jobs hadn’t done it, someone else would have very shortly after, since the technology existed and “computer in your pocket connected to the internet” has a very obvious marketability.
My smart watch takes care of all that.
No, it isn’t. First of all the difference in form factor makes a fundamental difference in practical functionality, with just some overlap. And a laptop is a real computer with an actual keyboard and pointing device.
Secondly, tablets and laptops are not normally cellular-network enabled. The curse of the smartphone, as a perversion of the genuinely useful cell phone, is that it’s immersed an entire generation in a virtual reality instead of the real world.
Nah. I had an iPad and it broke. Turns out I use my iPhone for pretty much everything I used my iPad for and never ended up buying a new iPad. This was like four years ago. A phone is essentially a mini-mini-iPad to me. The only thing I haven’t really tried to do on it is read books (I don’t like eBooks.) But play games, surf the web, do crosswords – all of which I did on my tablet – I just do on the phone now. And it’s more practical to carry with me.
And I don’t particularly think there is a problem with immersion in “virtual realty,” as you say, and I’m someone who, as mentioned, doesn’t always have their phone around and always keeps in on silent mode because they don’t want to be bothered.
This.
While I was employed I was instantly on-call 14 hours a day 18 days a month. And had a wide variety of people scattered around the planet I communicated (not “talked”) with frequently. As such I was habituated to being highly responsive to beeps and boops even while sleeping. Despite that, when it was a call from a number my phone didn’t recognize I usually didn’t answer it.
Now that I am retired for 6 whole months I find the communication use of my mobile has plummeted. But the uses like @Alessan cites have grown.
The net result is the instant urgency to respond to a beep has declined to near-zero, but my use of the device in total has increased. Such that having it readily to hand is as important as ever.
A recent (last few years) surge in mobile use is the number of websites wherein they have to send you a text message with a one-time use code before you can log in. Yes, I’m aware of the academic arguments that this is silly / far from foolproof. I merely point out that it’s now quite common. Trying to log on to e.g. my bank while my phone is in the other room just necessitates a forced walk across the house. Uggh.
At this moment (~9am) I’m sitting outside on my patio typing away on my tablet with attached full keyboard. I’m wearing a tracksuit with typical pants pockets. My mobile is in there and has been since I got up & pulled the pants on 2 hours ago. The mobile hasn’t been touched since I dropped it in the pocket, nor has it beeped that I heard. But it’s there and completely unobtrusive.
I can certainly see how someone as long-retired as our esteemed @wolfpup could have transitioned to the point where the interpersonal communications have long since dwindled to near zero.
Oh, you’re one of those high-class folks that deigns to wear pants around the house, so of course you keep an expensive phone in the pocket, just like you have a bejeweled watch in your smoking jacket.