I’m not much of a tech-phile, so I was both slow to get a cell phone originally, slow to get a smart phone, and remain a bit of a laggard.
But yeah, my phone is on me basically the whole day; it’s really a requirement in my work and daily life, not just for social media.
The only time it’s not on me is when I do exercise or go for a run; I prefer to run without the extra encumberence, and I’m wary of my phone getting damaged at the gym. (although last time I left my phone in a gym locker, it got stolen, so joke’s on me I guess)
Or, like me, he’s nearsighted. My vision is bad in many ways. I’m about to make an appointment to see if it’s time to get cataract surgery, and without my glasses, i can’t focus on anything more than a foot away from my face. But i can see my phone just fine, especially if i peer over my glasses and hold it close.
My phone’s always in my hand. I’m addicted to it, sad to say. I’d swap it for a flip phone in a heartbeat were it not for the fact that you need a smartphone to negotiate the modern world. For instance, I literally can’t log in to my computer at work without my phone because they have two-factor authentication. In a cashless society, it’s very difficult to manage your banking without an app. Plus, there are a couple of apps I genuinely love, like Spotify and Audible.
If I could get a smartphone that only allowed maybe half a dozen apps and didn’t have a web browser I’d probably become 500% more productive overnight.
Single woman here. I always always have my phone with me when I go out. I take the phone with when I get Ariel from the pasture. I have the phone in my pocket if I climb a step ladder. IOW, anytime I’m in a situation where I might need to make an emergency call. If I’m just hanging at home the phone is in its designated charging area in the kitchen. I do take the phone into the bedroom when I sleep but it is on silent, no vibration, etc.
I’m seriously nearsighted and these days also farsighted with some astigmatism. Yes, I can read small print better with my multifocals off than with them on, if I hold the print the exact right distance from my eyes; but I find it unpleasant to do that for very long.
On the tablet or desktop I magnify the print till it’s easy to read with my glasses on (and the whole rest of the room isn’t out of focus.) I prefer the desktop’s larger screen, on which that doesn’t result in requiring as much scrolling.
Samsung makes a folding screen flip phone, but I don’t know that I’d recommend it. My husband had one and in less than 2 years, the screen quit working. He took it to a tech who said the screens don’t last long and they’re $$$ to replace. Plus his was no longer in production so all he could have gotten was a refurbished one. So he got a regular smartphone. Just FYI.
I often go for days without turning it on. Nobody ever calls me and the texts are almost always spam from politicians. If not for my wife, I could probably die and nobody would notice other than the housekeeper who comes once a week.
If not for the GPS feature, I could probably do without it.
I didn’t get a cell phone until my wife started having health problems and I needed to have one to keep in touch with her doctor; I got a basic “candy-bar” model and only turned it on when needed. Later I upgraded to a flip phone and again only turned it on when I expected to need to make or receive calls. I didn’t upgrade to a fully functional cell phone until just before the pandemic, when I realized I was going to need to need some of the app functions. Still, I did not carry it with me or have it with me at all times.
Finally a few years ago I started keeping it with me when I got yells at by my niece because she had been trying to reach me and I hadn’t responded to her texts. Now it’s always on and withing arm’s reach. However, I only have apps that I need on it (I refuse to have FaceBook on it, for example).
Back when I was using a flip phone I had several shirts that had pockets on the sleeves which were just the right size to hold my phone. This was perfect for when I was flying, because it was much easier to get to my phone than having it in my pants pocket.
Unfortunately, the pockets are too small to hold my current phone.
Yeah, I generally have it within reach. I mean, I would hate to think I wouldn’t be able to look up some arcane bit of trivia on the internet at a moment’s notice! Generally, the only time that it’s very far away from me is when it’s charging in the bedroom while I’m fooling around on my desktop computer in the living room (probably looking up some arcane bit of trivia on the internet).
I learned the hard way what can happen when I am out of reach of a phone in February 2024
I was hanging up washing on our balcony, at about 9 °C (48 °F). The balcony was ~ 12 m above ground, so trying to climb down would have amounted to suicide. I was in shirtsleeves as hanging the washing was to take some few minutes - no need to put on a jacket.
My wife was about to repair to he bath for purposes of beautification, and absentmindedly locked the balcony door from the inside. When I noticed that she already was out of banging-on-the-door hearing range
Half an hour later she found me on the balcony sitting down with the empty laundry basket over my head and hugging to my belly a large glass teapot that she had put on the balcony in order to cool off the tea to take on our hike.
Since then I have made a point not to venture outside the doors of our apartment without either phone or smartwatch.
That paid off now some days ago, when she made the same mistake and I simply called our landline phone from my smartwatch.
That happened to a friend, but on a roof balcony in a shared building. They didn’t have their keys and just propped open the door. Another resident came by and closed the door without checking. 30 story building, but I guess you need to watch out for ninjas.
I may have found a solution to my problem! There’s a wonderful little gizmo called ‘Padlock’ which is designed to help the terminally phone-addicted. Here’s how it works:
You buy the physical ‘Padlock’ from the company’s website (link below). It’s a little piece of plastic shaped like a padlock which contains some kind of reader device.
When it arrives, download the Padlock app.
Grant the Padlock app access to all your apps.
Using a menu, select all the apps you’d like the Padlock app to block. Then tell Padlock the times that you’d like it to block them. In my case, I block all social media apps, streaming services, and games between the hours of 9:00am - 17:00pm and 19:00pm - midnight. You can also block websites.
Touch the padlock device to the phone to ‘lock’ all the apps and websites you selected. Then go and put the device at the back of a kitchen drawer or somewhere similarly inconvenient.
If you want to unlock the apps you’ve blocked you either need to (a) retrieve the padlock device and touch it to your phone again, or (b) delete the padlock app entirely. Both of those things are so inconvenient that, in practise, you just put up with the restricted access to your apps.
I’ve only had it a couple of days but so far it feels like a real game changer. I can keep the apps I want (e.g. Spotify, Audible, etc….) while blocking the ones I’m addicted to and that I resent for sucking away my free time and pissing me off into the bargain (all social media, basically).
which I’ve done on occasion. I’m a teacher so I keep it on silent mode.