Spent a morning out on the town on my day off, and everyone is just fucking buried in their phones 24/7. This realization was so absurd to me
Of course I’m not exempt from this shit, but no wonder people are having so much trouble making friends and creating meaningful relationships in this day and age. So fucking bleak
I think when talking about phones, the issue is not so much people are on them but what they’re doing on them. Many people in this thread have pointed out other things that have occupied peoples’ times in prior eras, and phones sort of serve that purpose now. But what is on the phone is so bleak. Social media is horrible for us and pretty much designed to get us addicted. Everything is either an ad or a grift or some sort of astroturfed propaganda. And you have children being exposed to this shit also, extremely young kids with easily molded minds with unfettered access to the most mind numbing and in many cases dangerous content. I think that’s the issue.
That's my concern, too: sure, people wanted distractions and entertainment since before recorded time and they had "do not disturb" ways of signaling that, but they didn't have handheld slop receiving devices that were algorithmically curated to hook them as deeply and profitably as possible.