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The Terrible Costs of a Phone-Based Childhood
(www.theatlantic.com)
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this post was submitted on 13 Mar 2024
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This article strikes at a very salient set of points about smartphones and social media. As someone that specifically tries to only use federated social media because it avoids some of these dark patterns, I certainly agree with. I also use my smartphone without any notifications turned on, ever.
Unfortunately the author has a few paragraphs that miss the mark and strike me as coming from more of a centrist or right-wing "kids these days are too soft" which feels very off-base and disconnected from the issue. For example:
The scare quotes around microagressions, a genuine issue faced my marginalized communities, is really uncomfortable and gives an unfortunate perspective on some of where this author is coming from.
Putting that aside, I really do feel like most of what is said here is on point. Reducing social media use is imperative. Designing smartphone UX that doesn't shove notifications at you would also be a good idea. Getting younger people involved in communities and forming friendships is incredibly important.
Indeed, that's why I don't trust any of these "kids these days" articles. Have they considered that the world is shit and their generation is making it worse and all the kids can do is watch isn't good for their mental health?
Welcome to The Atlantic. It's telling they think all these issues are because of phones and not other aspects of society or something like the looming, ever present threat of climate change.
It's basically The Economist lite at this point.
I hear all the time about people turning their notifications off and it feels so bizarre. Do you guys keep an internet connection on at all times? That just feels so bizarre and counter-intuitive... I saw several people around me that don't ever turn off the connection and that gives me massive cognitive dissonance.
presumably the idea is just to use/interact with the device on one's own terms, rather than being harrassed by it into engagement?
i do both, but they're different things.
Turning the internet on only when interacting with device does exactly that. That seems like the intuitive thing to do - yet I see people with it on all the time and it feels very bizarre.
I use notifications, but the only apps that can send me notifications are either ones that use UnifiedPush, or have some sort of notification service of their own. So, most of the apps on my device do not send me notifications, and there are only a very few that will. Lemmy (through Thunder), Molly, and Feeder are the big ones that notifications are allowed on. Even ProtonMail doesn't support UnifiedPush so i have to check email manually.