My D has long been concerned about cell phone addiction. She recently joined a new gym. At her first session, she said literally every single person was glued to a phone.
That was the final straw for her. She has just purchased a dumb phone. She has deleted all social media and is keeping her phone turned off except for 2 x 10 minutes a day until her dumb phone arrives and she gets it set up. (I am finding this annoying because I couldn’t what’s app her to ask her opinion on a shirt I wanted to buy .)
She says she is now always carrying a book. She has puzzles and brain teaser books handy at home. She was super irritated when she went to lunch with my sister-in-law, who she said “actively disengaged” from the conversation by using her phone.
What trends, if any, are you seeing with your kids, or the people you know? Have you made any changes in your life to stop phone addiction?
Mine stopped using social media while still in college a few years ago. She keeps her phone on silent all the time. That.said, she does have an iPhone and I don’t see her getting rid of it anytime soon. She loves her Kindle app and all the New York Times puzzles.
My kids like their iPhones, but D got rid of her FB account several years ago and rarely posts on insta. S still has his social media, but doesn’t use it often.
There are downsides to having only a dumb phone, in that it makes certain important tasks of daily life more difficult. Texting is annoying. Google maps and access to Uber are important and I don’t think they can be done on a dumb phone, though perhaps I’m mistaken. How about plane tickets, wouldn’t that require going back to paper? That would be inconvenient. Ever need to google something on the fly, like in the dr office waiting room, etc.
My suggestion would be to delete the social media from the smartphone rather than step back in phone capabilities.
I check in online and pick up paper tickets at the airport. I’m not very tech minded. I hate QR codes and avoid them whenever possible. Not so very long ago, we just waited until we got home to check on the computer. Apparently there are dumb phones with maps. I personally don’t use Uber. There are still taxis.
The thing I find most useful for smart phones is communicating easily and cameras. I do use my phone a lot, but I could definitely use it less. I listen to podcasts. I don’t read books on it. I do use it for maps because my car has no GPS.
I think my son has a healthy enough relationship with his phone. I’m impressed that he won’t take calls while he’s driving, and he is not glued to it when we are together. I don’t think he has a huge online presence either. My DIL has almost no online presence/social media, and often doesn’t look at her phone at all during the workday. She does sometime go down the Reddit rabbit hole, looking at cat videos for example. My step-d is VERY attached to her phone, and has a really hard time even getting through dinner without looking at it. I don’t know what her social media presence is, but I know she spends a lot of time looking at tik tok.
ETA they (and we) all have smart phones and I would not encourage them to get rid of them.
I think it’s differnet for us old folk. This will vary by kid and their location and lifestyle, but generally, for a young adult, access to Uber late at night is something I would consider relatively important or at least handy.
From what I understand, paper boarding passes are being phased out by many airlines. And as for taxis - uber/lyft operate In places where there are no taxis.
I applaud the dialing down on social media, but I would be very loath to ditch the smart phone.
They will still have to offer some means of a ticket. People lose phones, phones die, disabled people who can’t use them, the elderly, unaccompanied minors, etc… I definitely cannot see airlines providing no means of securing a boarding pass other than with a phone.
I’ve been reading about kids and their addiction to social media and short form video (Insta reels, YouTube videos, etc). My oldest hasn’t ever been much for social media and mostly just plays chess on his phone. But D26 will scroll for hours. I do think there are impacts to mental health, anxiety, etc. Yesterday we were chatting about it and I offered her $100/week if she would stop scrolling- take Instagram off her phone (temporarily), not look at dumb cat videos, etc. I told her music and books online were fine. She didn’t want to give it up because of her fantasy football league..lol. Even if I made an exception for that, I still think she’d have a difficult time ditching the dopamine hits of reels. It’s frustrating, and I’d like to set her up for healthy habits when she goes off to college. Her argument is that she’s in school for 8 hours a day, does 2-3 hours of homework per night, does college essays and homework on weekends and needs time to unwind, and that’s her preferred method of decompressing.
I don’t see any of my 3 getting rid of their smart phone. And personally, I don’t think it would be a good idea to do that! Smart phones for many are truly a lifeline to other daily routines. Keeping/adding to calendar appointments. Getting those calendar appt reminders. Having access to things like medical cards and other important documents. Accessing recipes. Ordering needed items and organizing life things when you are waiting for appts or on public transportation. Listening to music, podcasts, etc. Tracking self/partners/family when running or on long walks as a safety precaution.
They all have mentioned trying to curb time on their devices though. Putting the phone in a box out of sight. Using notification silencers. Leaving the phone on a charger. Leaving it inside when you’re having outside time.
No one better try and take my smart phone away! Like any other vice, it’s up to me to control it.
Not getting a dumb phone…but I keep buying the least costly iPhone because I just can’t justify paying more. I don’t care how good the camera is, etc. I’m not paying $1000 for my cell phone.
I would much(!) rather have dumb appliances and cars before a dumb phone! My phone is my computer. It’s very rare for me to use a computer outside of work.
Neither of my kids will be giving them up anytime soon. They are probably better than me at not checking it constantly when together, and I don’t even do social media (though I suppose cc counts?) or video, reels, etc.
None of us in my family spend much time on social media. For me it’s just LinkedIn and CC - I’ve never had a Facebook or Instagram account, and for my wife and daughter it’s mostly just Instagram.
We are trying to reduce overall phone usage, but we have no plans to get rid of our phones entirely. They offer too many conveniences, from paying at the grocery store to adjusting the thermostats when we’re away from home.
Our kids’ generation has grown up around smart devices since they were very young (even if they didn’t personally own one until later), so I think it’s hard for most of them to imagine life without them. Kudos to those who are experimenting with going phone-free, though! I’m fully in favor of reducing phone and app usage.
I recently bought a brick (saw it advertised on TikTok ironically) which is a small plastic square that lives on my fridge- I can "brick” my phone either on the phone or by setting up scheduled times in advance to block certain apps. Then I have to walk over the fridge to unbrick it. I have all social media, email and safari set up to be bricked at certain times of day- now in the mornings if I open my phone still in bed I can’t waste time scrolling which was a bad habit I had. Before bed too I have definitely found it helpful and am leaving my phone “bricked” a lot of the time now. I can’t imagine going back to a dumb phone - I use my phone for so many things, maps, audiobooks, news, fitness tracking etc.
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Like any other vice, it’s up to me to control it.