Today, I read a Reddit post titled “What silently destroyed society?”, along with the comments left by users in response to the question.
In the top ten comments, the following four were present, collectively raking in over 17000+ upvotes:
“The obsession with being constantly available. We lost boundaries the moment everyone started expecting instant replies 24/7. It’s exhausting.”
“Social media”
“we traded connection for convenience and didn’t realize the cost”
“Dopamine addiction, not just TikTok or Instagram, YouTube or Reddit are also a time sink, and no, it’s not better because of “high quality content”, or “I watch only meaningful things”, I think we all watched a “how is X thing made” video at 3AM and went “why did I do that” after that.”
Each one, in my opinion, is either partially or entirely a result of the mass adoption of smartphones.
I don’t actively advertise to friends, family or coworkers that I am getting the Kompakt, it is something I am doing for myself, however, without fail anyone I have mentioned it to agrees wholeheartedly with the argument that our lives have become encapsulated by smartphones and get a whistful look when I describe the Kompakt. I think it’s a matter of time before there’s a real switch in people to favour more intentional technology.
Smartphones facilitate all this but without smartphones, we could also get the obsession (old cell phones), social media (via PC browser), conveniences tradeoff (paying by card) or dopamine addiction (TV, video games).
IMO mass adoption of smartphones allowed to level up this game at scale, but without that there is still some danger out there. Nowadays, even video games and children stories are made to be addictive, dopamine inducing, attention grabbing. See some 50-100 years old cartoons vs Cocomelon, yuck.
It’s a tip of an iceberg when it comes to society destruction. Something made the industries’ practices legal and approved, but I don’t think it’s the right forum to dig that rabbit hole deeper.
I watched yesterday a movie made in 2006, before the release of the iPhone (initially in the USA in July of 2007). The main characters in the movie work in corporate espionage for large, New York City-based corporations. They have the fanciest flip phones and slider phones from that time, but the most that they can do is talk or text. It was refreshing to see the characters NOT distracted by their cellphones!
I wonder what people (and I’m one of them) find attractive about certain technologies like phones. I’ve had a fascination with phones since I was a wee little nipper and have often wondered why this is… I still don’t know the answer…
@galtions I think it boils down to the flash and the ding. That moment when your device tells you, “Hey! You just received something! You should really check it out. Look there’s a little red number 1 that shows I just received a message for you.”
Its like a flag on a mailbox that tells you there is mail inside, but its in your pocket and vibrates and/or dings so you can never miss it.
Hehe, showing my glorious age now, I was alive before cell phones came to Oz but I get your point. I recall the dial up internet with that funky electronic dialling tune and checking the email awaiting the time it might show a 1 in the mailbox ‘You’ve got mail!’
Did anyone else listen out for the postie and run to the physical mailbox to check if anything interesting arrived? (we didn’t have a red flag on ours)
To add onto @urszula 's point, something I can’t help but notice anymore is that many people, it seems, are always fighting for “top comment” rather than taking things seriously and responding with sincerity. Most people have to make some humorous quip for likes or have to be contrarian.
One example is Reddit terms like “This. So much this.” and “So I did a thing”. They mean nothing and are only said in order to fit in and get likes. Maybe it’s just me, but If you make a post nowadays, 90% of the replies will be either some quip, or someone intentionally trying to be contrarian because they know it stands out and gets upvoted.
