> I care about living an intentional and meaningful life, nurturing relationships, having nuanced conversations, and enjoying the world around me.

These.. are all possible with a smartphone?

ooh deleting and pausing off youtube's watch history is nice, no more getting sucked into videos of someone beating dark souls by only pressing the Z button or whatever other bullshit Google has realized I will waste hours on.

I may be on the outside here but I am all for using the phone or any more mobile computer. Humans are not designed to sit at desks all day and having a good computer with me all day is something I want. Its just that I want it to read books and take notes or sketch to free my mind. Not slurp down rage bait wrapped up with some shop at target. Supporting computers by inviting in the marketing money was a big fuckup.

there is video playing in every house i visit

Interesting blog post. A few thoughts on smartphones, presence and whatnot:

- I've lusted over the fantasy of having a pocket knowledge machine / tricorder-like thing since long before PDAs and later smartphones. Okay, still no full tricorder, but boy, are smartphones ever useful. I really like having a pocket GPS, music/audiobook player, translation device, library, basic sensor package, gaming machine, backup for my most important data, password/document manager and general purpose computing device in my pocket.

- I was a child before the web was a thing but I very much grew up on computers and the web and I have seen and/or experienced all sorts of addictive, gamified and otherwise nasty things those technologies brought with it (or enabled). I'm rather happy to have a bit of context from a time before those technologies and I'm also happy about having grown out of most of my computer-related bad habits and behaviours before the web and those technologies were what they are today.

- I made a decision to get off most social media with the exception of a few forum-like things at the point where I felt that it was no longer mostly about expanding real-world connections. Must have been around 10-12 years ago, I think.

- In my personal definition of "social media", I've included most messengers and certainly the way many people seem to use them. This abstinence can cause quite a bit of social friction and peer-pressure and I'm not entirely sure if I could (or would want to) "resist" had I not first grown up without any messenger and later with (occasionally excessive use of) IRC, ICQ and many that came after.

- If I feel the need to publish something, I'll do it via some long-term channel (blog, newspaper, journal, conference, ...).

- Even without being on social media, it's still relatively easy to keep up with current (app-/web-)culture enough to not get laughed out the room or viewed as a hopeless old fart by younger people (which is important to me because I work with them pretty much daily).

- Even without being on social media, it's still quite easy to keep up with the news and important developments in whatever field might interest you.

- Often, I read "my government / bank / other organization made me have an app / a smartphone". In those cases, I often ask myself it it's a matter of convenience or if those voices come from some context that really does not have any other options. Because I really hope there are no countries where you can't get/use any bank account without an app and I even more sincerely hope that most countries make it illegal to require mobile apps (or even internet access) for any important government service as the only option.

You don't treat the symptoms; you treat the cause. dumbphones, minimalist phones, and crippled smartphones are as effective as a smoker throwing away a full pack, only to buy a new one when stressed or drunk. If you use doomscrolling as an escape, you will inevitably fall back to it when life hits. While a few may manage to change their habits with a restricted device if the stars align for long enough, it won't work for most. You need to first figure out why you do it.

Very occidental perspective. There are places where you need your phone practically 24/7, no affordance of escape. I can give an example of my day, which is basically completely phone centered, the only words I utter in a day is some digits to the taxi driver to verify my identity (when i can afford a ride that is).

Edit: mute button is essential and don't allow any notifications outside important messages/apps

I think the most surprising thing about it, at least in the US - is that mobile bandwidth is THE most expensive. I imagine that's inverted or opposite elsewhere

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> 13 Oct, 2025

Ugh. D M Y date format does not use a comma.