A few weeks ago I went to pick up my kid from school. As usual, there was a line of cars there with parents waiting for their kids to get out of school.
For shits and giggles, I actually took the time to count the number of cars and to count the number of people in them with their heads buried in their phones. I counted 20 something cars and all but one had their heads in the bow position staring intently at that little magic screen.
ETA: I guess I should say some of them were actually talking on their phones.
Totally agree with the OP. Altho, I have never owned a smart phone. I had a flip for a few years, and then a slider for a few more. Last year, I did upgrade to a smart-er phone - one with a magic screen, camera, and mp3 player, and I have to say I do like the few extra features and the easier screen. It is on a Tracfone pay-as-you-go non-plan, and I mainly use it for, you know, phone calls and texting, with the occasional picture-taking, and music playing (mainly in my car).
I have no desire to equip myself with a smart phone and join the ranks of the chimps. Dumb-phones rule!!
A flip? a slider? pfffff! I have a stupidphone and it doesn’t do any of those flipity things and that’s how I like it!.
My GF makes fun of me about that now and then though.
It’s not as if I am a luddite, heck, I’ve done things like designing and building a 3D printed drone for fun; it just would sap my humanity to, on top of working on a computer all day, be dragging one around, luring me away from those opportunities for introspection and enjoyment of the wonders that unfold around us every moment of every day that one finds when looking away from a screen into that thing some call the “real World”.
Besides, I can drop my stupidphone all day long and not give a damn about it (neither does the phone).
Not to pick on you personally, but when did boredom become such a horrible thing?
A few minutes of quiet contemplation, people watching, thinking about the past or the future, all unscripted and unedited. It’s not a bad thing.
This is me. I do have a smart phone, and the majority of the time on it is spent reading. Usually in bed. Yeah, I could get a Kindle (my wife loves hers) but then I would have another gadget to track and pay for.
On our last weekend trip, my Wife forgot her kindle. Bingo, I set her up on her phone so she could read in bed.
I like all the extras about it. Need a calculator? A flashlight? Compass? Take a picture of something that you are taking apart and want to put back together? Forget your reading glasses and need to magnify? Oh, and I can phone (very rarely) on it, text and email.
If I could uninvent anything, it’d be the cell phone. Yes, it’s annoying to try to talk to someone who’s distracted constantly, but the worse thing about them is the amount of texting/talking and driving. I’m not talking just teenagers, I’m talking grown adults who are like Pavlovian dogs with their phones. I don’t know the stats, but I can tell you that there is rarely a day that goes by that I don’t pass an accident on the highway whereas accidents used to be rare.
Re switching to a stupid phone. The only app I really would miss is a GPS. Everything else I can live without.
Please add to your uninvent list: Leaf blowers and automated phone answering systems. Two more inventions the world didn’t need.
As for having a stupid phone – I never didn’t have one! Now that’s stupid. Okay, my phone is actually a touch-tone. It’s still stupid. (Picture from this page.)
ETA: As long as I keep using it, I keep getting stupider and stupider. And the stupider I get, the happier I get.
I see middle and high school students getting off the school bus, just like old times.
And, just like old times, they form up in small groups and walk together.
It’s just that now, they are not talking to each other or flirting, or doing much of anything
EXCEPT have their noses up to their damned phones.
Just how deep and meaningful of a conversation do you have when you are keeping a dozen of very bestests buds engaged in text, and the really important one might actually rate a live voice?
IME there are too many advantages in having a smartphone not to have one. I tend to use mine less for vicarious socializing than for the ability to do three general types of things:
control the environment in my head when I am in a place where the ambient noise or music is something I don’t care to hear. When I’m grocery shopping, instead of listening to the grating pop music on the public address system, I can listen to whatever I want. I don’t do this when I am with somebody, unless they are asleep and I’m awake.
access news and other media beyond the limits of my geographical media market.
Whatever information I want or need from the Internet, at times when I don’t have my laptop or don’t want to bother firing it up–maps, banking, Wikipedia, message boards including this one, particularly when I have asked a specific question and want to see if it has been answered. Another capability that was more important when I lived in L.A. was the ability to find specific types of businesses, or the outlets of chain stores that were near my location at any given time. It’s been years since I had to use 411, but they could never tell me if a business was in, say Palms, Brentwood, or Sawtelle. All they could ever tell me was “Los Angeles”, which could be anywhere from Boyle Heights to Pacific Palisades.
I do realize that much of the above can still be accomplished with an MP3-enabled dumbphone, assuming you have Internet access at home, but it’s an order of magnitude less efficient.
We’ve tried giving up the land line, but found ourselves using up our minutes too quickly while waiting on hold for insurance companies, government agencies, and similar organizations.
I do have FB and Tapatalk on my phone, and I do use them, but certainly not all the time.
To the OP: Will you keep your smartphone to use wherever you have access to wifi?
I’d miss maps/GPS, podcasts and international media, and everything that falls into the library-in-my-pocket category. But I could probably give up the FB and Tapatalk apps.
I’m not clear on how after-school carpool works, but do I understand correctly these other parents were sitting in stationary cars waiting for their turn to drive up to wherever it is the kids come out?
We spend an awful lot of time sitting in cars in this country. While I don’t advocate operating any kind of phone while actually driving, it still astonishes me that it would even occur to anyone to criticize others for using smartphones while waiting around, instead of, oh I don’t know, living in the moment. How is it your business how anyone else spends their downtime?
I thought flip phones looked really cool when they came out, until I found I couldn’t just jerk it open the way they did with their communicators on ST:TOS. OTOH there are times when I miss my little Nokia candybar-form phone. It couldn’t do much of anything besides be a phone, but it was so compact in my pocket, and easy to use one-handed. My smartphone’s great and I’m not interested in giving it up, but it can be physically awkward.
I apologize if I gave you that impression, I wasn’t criticizing, I just thought it was an interesting observation. Heck, I do the exact same thing when I’m waiting for my son to get out of school. So there’s definitely no finger wagging going on here.
But yes you’re right, they were all sitting in stationary cars.
Now, the kids crossing the street while they got their heads buried in their phones is another story.
I just had to mention I was describing a friend’s disconnected-ness the other day. We’re meeting up a group of us at the Christkindlmarket Thursday, and I said I’ll have to call this friend because I can’t even text her. I said she doesn’t even have a dumb phone, hers is downright stupid!
It’s a pain because we’re not meeting at a set time, some of us are doing something else for a couple hours ahead, and some are coming from home, and some are coming from work. Well, a group text solves any meetup issues. When the later people get close, they just text the rest of us and we all meet up in the same place at the same time, no waiting or wondering where people are, or calling this person and calling that person and calling another person back, it would be ridiculous. Except for stupid phone friend!
