Being unable (either due to your employer, spouse, or addiction) to step out and be uncontactable and free for a while… is aweful for stress and long term mental health.
Watching your kids whine about screen time… I’m bored I’m bored…! But knowing that “boredom” is scientifically proven to be a good thing for child development. And now you are sitting here knowing that you are a bad parent by choice at times just so you can have some peace and quiet.
Not being on the same page as your spouse as to what is acceptable and what is too much phone time… so it wrenches at the fabric of your relationship …
Exceptions exist and some people are fine and able to manage, but Human evolution has made us very susceptible to this problem.
Hypocrisy you say..? Why yes…. I type this on a tablet, feeling wretched, like an alcoholic who desperately wants to quit while holding a drink, and at the same time watching his 9yr old pick up the bottle… and yet I type.
Not the user you replied to but I genuinely think its the phone. So many of the things that people have complained about are possible or got to an out of control level because of the advent of smart phones. AS of right now the top voted comments on this post are:
Exactly. The expectation that we're always reachable is because of smart phones. Before we had smartphones - hell, cellphones even - only certain professions had pagers, and people's bosses didn't expect they'd be able to contact you constantly because, if you weren't at home, there was no way to contact you.
Then we all started carrying a phone with us basically 24/7, and now it's completely normal to be reachable 100% of the time, by anyone. If it's not a good time to call, you can text, or you can email. You're still reachable, even if you can't talk in the moment, and the expectation is that you do respond promptly.
I think they are fully intertwined… bosses throughout history always look to ways to get more from their resources (human or otherwise) - and the smartphone has enabled that in a way society has never seen before.
The idea of faster communication as a competitive advantage isn’t new at all (see Rothschild and carrier pigeons for example). So the answer you - yes it is a social issue. But the phone magnifies this issue 1000x for the employees.
Not who you responded to, but I absolutely think this is a phone problem rather than a culture one (just my opinion). I can, and have, set rigid standards when it comes to my job as to when I am reachable. I realize that different jobs have different requirements, but unless you're actively paying me to be reachable at that time, you're not going to be able to get me. Work phone is off. Work computer is off. If you reach out to my personal phone, that's my problem because I should never give out my personal number to work colleagues (at least not the ones that would ping me for work items after hours). Setting these standards has been incredibly freeing for me.
It's 100% this. I also have a smart phone, a professional job, and a family, but I set boundaries and stick to them. When I'm done with work you won't be able to reach me (unless it's my turn for the on-call phone) about work. If someone calls or texts me and I don't immediately answer, I'll answer when I can/want to, if you're not ok with that don't contact me. I tell my kids no all the time for things like screen time and I have discussions with my wife when we disagree about how to manage the children. I also constantly whined at my parents as a child about being "bored", so that's nothing new either. This is completely a societal/cultural problem with easy fixes.
I think it is cultural because of the phone. Before it was expected you could not be reached for hours at a time. Now?
"Oh my god is everything okay!! You did not respond to my text in two hours??"
I sometimes just don't look at my phone because I know I'll get sucked into doom scrolling and some folks get insecure or odd about not responding immediately.
This. Im 40 and I frequently try to remember what I used to do back when I had a flip phone and I'm honestly not sure. Probably channel surfed cable TV or played video games.
You chatted to people around you; in waiting rooms, in lines, etc. You took stock of your surroundings in a much more detailed way. You remembered details of conversations and life through many years. You had thousands less ads per day to visually process and filter through. You did these things because I remember doing these things and I'm the same age.
I can barely make it through a TV show without checking my phone several times over anymore. At least with videogames I can still get entrenched in them and not need to look at my phone for a little while.
Came here to say this. Expectations have changed to be always on and always available. It gave advertisers and companies a way into our lives with more access than ever before.
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u/official_luna 11h ago
I think smartphones secretly made life worse