Small nitpick: 72% of U.S. teens say they sometimes feel peaceful without smartphones.
This study carries all sorts of biases if the idea is to gauge how teens really feel without their smartphones. What it tells however is that teens have this idea that they spend too much time on their smartphones.
It would be interesting to conduct a proper experiment. For example, have a randomly selected group of teens do some activity where they are allowed to keep their phones, and another group where they are not. And then ask general questions about well being without telling them it is about smartphones, and then, see the differences. A weaker measurement could be by finding correlation between mood and whether or not a place allows smartphones or has network.
And now see if the results match the questionnaires. So see if teens really feel more peaceful (or anxious) when they don't have their smartphone, or if that's just what they want to believe (or want you to believe).
We'll have to get them to promise to be honest before they fill out the questionnaire to maximize the chance they we'll get honest data. I think I read that somewhere.
I’m not a teen but have configured “focus” mode on my phone to silence all unnecessary notifications. Only notifications from Message (iMessage, SMS), Phone (only known callers), and Mail for my personal e-mail. Set this up for a majority of the day. Leave 30 minutes open to view non critical notifications. Then turn it back on.
Increasingly unless I'm on the go or I need it on to receive a delivery or something, I just turn the damn thing off. Most OTPs I have sent to a Google Voice number so I don't need my phone for those.
I lived without a smartphone back before they were invented, it was fine. Life was better in many ways. 4.5 hours of daily phone time is down to less than 90 minutes a day now and life is better in every way because of it.
It's the doom scrolling. When I deleted my twitter account I found life was much better, more relaxing, more positive, more empowering. Before deleting I was worried that I would lose touch with people I followed and not know what was going on but to be honest I didn't miss 99% if it. In fact why was I following it in the first place? Why was I concerned about these things.
> secret: You don't need to care. you really don't.
Instagram and Reddit were my time sinks and I felt it getting progressively worse, leaving "cold Turkey" after a week this was the exact sentiment I felt, "I really don't care". The FOMO is manufactured by the apps by design but it really is such a ridiculous thing in hindsight.
A few years ago, I felt so completely at peace when power went out for a couple of days. We used candles at night. I spent some great quality time reading paper books.
My mind felt focused, free and interestingly... it felt like I had ownership of it again.
So much of the content we're exposed to is opinionated - meant to persuade and sometimes to manipulate. It was nice to be free of that. I make sure to unplug regularly now.
I used to read a lot. Now I just skim pointless internet things. I need to break that bad habit. I've a pile of book "to read some day". I think I'll start tonight. (I hope.)
Phrasing it as phone I think conflates different effects. eg I get anxious without mine because I rely on it for say navigation and calling for help. Yet I get less anxious with out it because I don’t get depressed by people’s perfect lives on insta.
This poll seems to be a blend of those resulting in largely meaningless stats
Can they really be separated from one another, for practical purposes?
iMessage/SMS is baked-in. The rest you can easily acquire within a few seconds (and when does the inclination to "catch-up" via. Insta/Twitter/Snap/etc. come up, if not primarily when on one's phone? Or rather when a friend off-handedly mentions you're not on $APP, and being the impressionable -- and perhaps feeling "left out" -- teenager that you are, you experience FOMO and become inclined to (re)-download).
Yes, a separate study can be done to try to tease out this confounder, but who is kidding themselves into thinking that the majority of time spent on a phone is not within apps? Turning on parental controls that limit app usage and installation has, in my experience, resulted in the phone barely being used at all except for convenience purposes (navigation and such).
>Can they really be separated from one another, for practical purposes?
Partially I guess - depending on willpower. I think it is possible to get the benefits of a smartphone without the bulk of the downsides. And I don't even think you need to go all the way to dumb phone. Just skipping the social media feeds is I suspect enough to tilt the balance. So facebook messenger yes, facebook main app no.
>iMessage/SMS is baked-in.
I personally wouldn't consider messenger apps harmful in the same sense as say insta/tiktok but that is based on opinion alone.
> feeling "left out" -- teenager that you are
Yeah that's true - easy for me to talk about willpower but peer pressure at teen level must be insane these days.
Havok said "I rely on it for say navigation". While I think there are feature phones with GPS/mapping support, they are harder to find than a regular feature phone.
For navigation, it looks like TomTom sells a dedicated car GPS. If getting around town by walking is important, I wonder if a bike GPS would be a good substitute.
While paper maps are an option for some, I know there are people who have a very poor sense of direction. GPS-based maps made it possible to go places without dreading getting lost all the time.
I was thinking of a Nokia 6300 as I wrote it, which has GPS.
It may to to close to a smartphone for some people, but it's missing most of the apps people complain about. There's really a lot of options out there if you go looking.
Sure. "While I think there are feature phones with GPS/mapping support, they are harder to find than a regular feature phone." just means I don't know of a modern system, while I do know of feature phones w/o GPS (haven't looked for a couple years though).
A modern smartphone has advantages, but for dumb phone I don't think it makes much of a difference. The Nokia 6300 15+ years old, but it's still being sold.
Yes - the distinction I had in mind was avoiding the AI driven feeds/reel apps like tiktok and insta. Rather than drawing the line at smart/dumb phone...though yes that would achieve the same I suppose.
Bit of a hot take perhaps but I don't feel smartphones are inherently problematic.
> I don't feel smartphones are inherently problematic.
The point I was making is you can get the bits of smartphone functionality you want without the temptation of an actual smartphone. GPS and the web access exist on phones that are completely unable to interrupt your day with algorithmic feeds.
People still buy ancient phones like a Nokia 6300 because they do enough to be useful ie GPS. You can even swap to such a phone on your current cellphone plan for a camping trip without becoming totally unreachable.
That said, installing apps on a smartphones are almost required in some situations like cruse ships. Great web browsing, top of the line cameras, etc are just hard to beat as long as you can deal with the algorithmic time sinks.
I wonder if we'll be asking the same questions in 10-20 years with kids wearing slim AR/VR-glasses everywhere 24/7. It seems for every generation there is a subgroup that falls between the cracks.
We said the same thing about books, and radio, and TV, and music (ahh Tipper), and the internet (dont give strangers your name, or get in their cars, but you know, uber).
Kids today cant be out of their parents sight, and when they are they are under the eye of Sauron aka someone's phone camera. And it's not like you can let your kids roam like when I was a kid. Some of the nonsense I did as a teen would have the FBI at my door today.
It's not the medium (the phone) that's the problem, it's the apps. I don't have kids, so I don't know exactly kinds of parental controls are in place, but from what I've seen, there aren't nearly enough to give parents guarantees about what their kids consume.
I agree it's more the apps than the medium, but it's still ALSO about the medium. The medium enables the apps because of (1) being in your pocket (2) having notifications (3) this one isn't talked about enough -- the wonderful tactile feedback feeling of seemingly zero latency when scrolling, pinching, etc on the touch screen
Of course, the addictive apps work on a chromebook too, but at least they're less portable and less pleasingly tactile, clunkier
i hope you are right. Things like TikTok are very unhealthy - and now every social media is trying to emulate them with their version of 'shorts'. But i am not sure if we will have the guts to stop this madness, new media and ad-tech are a very powerful force in politics.
> Distracted parenting: Nearly half of teens (46%) say their parent is at least sometimes distracted by their phone when they’re trying to talk to them.
This is heartbreaking. How can parents guide their kids to not become addicted to smartphones when they themselves are addicted? We really need a taboo-reset. Sitting there zombied-out, neck crooked and hunched over your smartphone, dopamine-loading, should be considered as disgusting as sitting there with a heroin needle hanging out of your arm. Society needs to set a better example for the next generation.
Not sure if you have kids, but I am guilty of this.
I used to think exactly like you, especially leading up to the birth of our first. You see in restaurants the parent glued to their phone and the child happily doing whatever. It is sad, even as I think about it now - it is sad.
But, I've become more lenient/understanding over time after having children. It is simply unrealistic to be a the beck and call of your child(ren) 100% of the time. It's quite hard for me to want to play with my children for extended periods. Not sure why. It could be my mild ADHD; my desire for something more intellectual? I just get so tired when I'm with them, and after they go to sleep, I'm so awake.
I finally understood why so many people say "work is easier than being with your kids".
Don't get me wrong, I love my kids so much. It's just the idealism vs reality of parenting is very very far. I'm extremely thankful to my wife who reminds me to put my phone away, and it makes me extremely annoyed to be corrected. Obviously, I need it.
I think the study was talking about teens, which is actually ridiculous because I think most teens are on their phones 1000% more than adults, and a survey of teens saying their parents don't listen enough is hilarious.
But I identify 100% with your post, that's the reality of every parent with younger kids. You connect with them at one level and its amazing, but they're children and you aren't. It's exhausting to stay on their level for long. If I'm forced to put it in terms most HN readers without real life adult experience will understand, there's an impedance mismatch.
This is a good take. I have also stayed single for a LONG time due to having children and separating from their mom and not wanting to not be available for them. I stayed single for over 4 years and gave all my time to my kids. But after a while I realized, as well as them getting older, that I too deserve to get out and have someone in my life to love me. Still working on the love life but do get out with friends a bit more often than I used to and my kids see how much healthier I am taking me time and being active and having a social life.
I am a parent, and time spent engaging with my kid is far more important to me than almost anything I could be doing on my phone. In the rare case where I -have- to do something right now, I will tell her how long this task will take and then restore my attention at that time.
>Maybe they were taking a day off work made only possible by being available.
That's not a day off work, then.
>I think 46% of parents being distracted sometimes by any of those things is not at all problematic. Maybe kids can learn to wait 2 minutes.
If you read the article and not just the HN quote, the full sentence is, "teens who say their parent is distracted by their phone while having a conversation with them." This isn't a child approaching their parent and the waiting for them to stop reading or working on a grocery list before they start chatting, this is a parent losing focus in the middle of a conversation because of whatever is on their screen.
I think we're all pretty aware, and have seen, this behavior firsthand and how distracted people are by their phones in such a scenario. You don't stop listening to your kid mid-convo just to read a sentence in a book, do you? No, you take that moment (the "two minutes" you alluded to) to come to a nice spot to pause and then give them your attention. Doesn't sound like that's what's happening here.
> Would that be a better situation, then periodically looking at my phone?
Inconvenience aside, I think it would at least result in fewer of these distraction scenarios happening, since there are existing taboos against picking up a book, newspaper, music player, or camera mid-conversation and ignoring people to do these things, but somehow there is still no equivalent taboo about phone use.
You're free to do what you want - if you want to do all of that in your phone, go for it! There's no judgement from me. I was just pointing out that we don't have to be doing that.
For me (and this is just me), I actually like taking the time to write out and plan meals on a notepad that I schlep (though it doesn't really feel like schlepping to me) to the grocery store. I hold/read a thick, 500-page Pynchon novel at lunch every day. I have an older Canon DSLR that I take backpacking with me, and keep a smaller point-and-shoot in my pocket if I'm closer to home but feel like I'll want to take photos. I use my phone for streaming, but there's still a small stack of CDs that I keep in my car and rotate out because I collect those (to say nothing of the hundreds and hundreds of vinyl records that my CDs sit next to at home).
I like those tangible things because the experience is focused on that task at hand. I like touching those things, manipulating them. I like tools that are designed to do "one" thing and do it well. I don't like staring at a small screen, and I find it much easier to devote adequate attention to things if I don't have my phone around. I can focus on thinking about the photo I'm taking, the music I'm listening to, or the recipe I'm trying to come up with without a ton of notifications about random bullshit that doesn't matter in that moment popping into my face. Hell, I like the smell of a book and the way that it's just me and the story when I read from one.
None of that feels inconvenient to me and, honestly (and respectfully I should add), I struggle with the idea that it boggles peoples minds that such things seem so terribly cumbersome that they "don't understand" doing it that way when the reality is that's how things have always been done, and smartphones have only allowed us to do things differently for ~20-ish years. Regarding the backpack comment, that's really not that much weight in a pack, and if you're already carrying a bag with a laptop for work then no big deal IMO. But when you think about it, do you really need to bring "several" books, a video camera, a music player and a planner with you everywhere you go? Why not just leave the house with only what you need to do whatever it is you're setting out to do?
But that's just me. The "better situation" will always be what works for you, though I certainly think there's truth to what another user[0] said as well.
Let’s be honest, a lot of time with kids is quite boring.
Dads reading the newspaper at the table has been a a thing forever.
Moms reading a book, crocheting, or doing dishes/cooking while interacting with kids was common.
In the 80s, the TV was ALWAYS on in the background. Maybe the radio or NPR in the 70s?
I would say the phone is probably better than the background TV, but worse than the rest.
But being a working parent is a slog, with very little personal time. 40 hours of a job, 3-5 hrs of commute, then picking up kids, making dinner, cleaning up after them or nagging them to clean up, driving around to activities. Sitting down and scrolling hacker news is a peaceful release. I’ve driven my kids for about 4 hours today, and my day ended at 930 when they finally got home and went to their room to finish homework. Kids are a lot of work for most of the 18 years, not just the baby years.
This is almost certainly overblown, or at least nothing new
I can't think of how many times my parents would be reading a book or watching TV, or talking on the phone, or otherwise busy doing something when I walked up to them and tried to talk to them
I learned pretty young that they weren't going to drop everything and give me their full attention at my every whim
Are you a parent? Do you know any parents? Do you know any drug addicted parents? Do you know any parents with smartphones? The analogy you made is just terrible hyperbole and counterproductive to any real conversation.
This study carries all sorts of biases if the idea is to gauge how teens really feel without their smartphones. What it tells however is that teens have this idea that they spend too much time on their smartphones.
It would be interesting to conduct a proper experiment. For example, have a randomly selected group of teens do some activity where they are allowed to keep their phones, and another group where they are not. And then ask general questions about well being without telling them it is about smartphones, and then, see the differences. A weaker measurement could be by finding correlation between mood and whether or not a place allows smartphones or has network.
And now see if the results match the questionnaires. So see if teens really feel more peaceful (or anxious) when they don't have their smartphone, or if that's just what they want to believe (or want you to believe).