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Your smartphone is making you stupid, antisocial and unhealthy
A decade ago, smart devices promised to change the way we think and interact, and they have – but not by making us smarter. Eric Andrew-Gee explores the growing body of scientific evidence that digital distraction is damaging our minds.
[...] The evidence for this goes beyond the carping of Luddites. It's there, cold and hard, in a growing body of research by psychiatrists, neuroscientists, marketers and public health experts. What these people say – and what their research shows – is that smartphones are causing real damage to our minds and relationships, measurable in seconds shaved off the average attention span, reduced brain power, declines in work-life balance and hours less of family time.
They have impaired our ability to remember. They make it more difficult to daydream and think creatively. They make us more vulnerable to anxiety. They make parents ignore their children. And they are addictive, if not in the contested clinical sense then for all intents and purposes.
[...] Smartphones are "literally using the power of billion-dollar computers to figure out what to feed you," Mr. Harris said. That's why you can't look away.
Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/technology/your-smartphone-is-making-you-stupid/article37511900/
I am left wondering. Is it the devices? Certain apps? Or ourselves?
Ed's (FP) Note: I seem to remember BBC's More or Less radio program (available online still, I'm sure) addressing the "attention span" claim, and debunking it, mostly by virtue of it being a bit too intangible to measure. However, even if it is only confirmation bias, there's a good chance we've noticed some of the traits mentioned in the article in others, perhaps in ourselves too.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 09 2018, @01:11AM (16 children)
Like the other AC said: They are built for dummies; they aren't tools to aid production, but rather constructs to ease consumption. Total trash.
That's why nobody calls them mobile "computers". The corporate overlords know that such a term is tainted by the notion of personal computing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 09 2018, @02:21AM (4 children)
Massively improved inspection reporting, inventory tracking, financial tracking, navigation, portable video camera, audio recording, IR cameras, sleep sensors, levels, light meters, noise meters, reminders, reusable check lists, 3D scanners, etc... They're only non-productive if you use them like an idiot. Don't try to use them for typing-heavy tasks. Look at them professionally and they've transformed whole industries.
Mobile computers existed before cell phones. They were beasts. Current devices are still called cell phone because that's their roots. PDAs died out instead of adopting cell tech. "Cell" is also far easier to say than "mobile" and mobile doesn't distinguish between all the other types of portable computing devices (there are dozens of categories). That's why no one calls them mobiles anymore.
Your hat has damaged your brain.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 09 2018, @02:45AM (3 children)
Of course these devices are useful to corporations; they have the money to get other corporations to produce useful, application-specific devices for their drones in the field.
I'm talking about personal computing, where a whole world of productivity was open to anyone who bought a computer to own; for the imaginative individual, the smartphone has been a disaster—not only is it constrained by the iron fist of corporate manufacturers, but the philosophy of a walled "garden" has begun infecting traditional computing platforms, too.
Why do you think people like me are so upset? It's because we see the potential of these "devices", if only each of us could more readily use them to compute as each of us sees fit!
(Score: 2) by chromas on Tuesday January 09 2018, @11:42AM (2 children)
I have porn and Java in my pocket. What more does a person need?
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Tuesday January 09 2018, @12:34PM
A 'joystick' to use with the porn.
:)
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 3, Funny) by LoRdTAW on Tuesday January 09 2018, @02:07PM
Less java.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by julian on Tuesday January 09 2018, @03:10AM (7 children)
They're computers, by every reasonable definition of computer. Even an iPhone can, if you jump through some hoops and pay a fee, run your own code. Too onerous? Get an Android phone with root access. It's a Linux computer, you can open up a terminal and it's going to feel completely familiar to any sysadmin. The naive use of these computers is the problem. If you use them the way the companies intend you to use them, then the path of least resistence leads to you spending money and attention in the greatest quantity they can coax out of you--and siphoning off as much personal information as they can in the process.
The fixes aren't difficult or complicated. There's a lot of low-hanging fruit. Simply not installing Facebook, and not having an account, eliminates probably half of all the negative effects that these computers cause for most people. Installing a robust adblocker wipes out another huge portion of negative side-effects.
I can carry Duckduckgo and Wikipedia in my pocket, that's hugely valuable and productive. I can send and receive email from anywhere on Earth. I can run arbitrary code on my phone, if I cared to. It's a computer, and it would have been considered a supercomputer of unimaginable power and sophistication three decades ago; it fits in my pocket and runs almost two days on a single charge. There's nothing in the essential nature of these computers that's stopping you from using them in life-affirming ways instead of degenerate ones.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by jelizondo on Tuesday January 09 2018, @05:13AM (4 children)
Mostly, I agree with you and my comment is not against your opinion, but against the way these devices are manufactured and marketed.
A “regular” computer is something I can build from parts, even if some of those parts are buggy (i.e. Meltdown or Spectre) or infect by some TLA, I get to choose the parts, the operating system and the applications.
None of this is true on those devices. One is subject to the manufacturer’s crap and then the phone company crap, pre-loaded and protected against deletion. And yes, I had a device with Cyanogen and I loved it, but most devices are hard to root and then you might not get full use of the hardware because alternatives are lacking on drivers or features.
I’d love to have a pocket computer with similar features to my regular desktop, being able to install Debian or Mint or whatever I feel like, and to change it whenever I want. Only it is not generally available. Now if you have some secret source for such devices, please share.
(Score: 2) by julian on Tuesday January 09 2018, @05:31AM (2 children)
The nature of these devices, being highly miniaturized and integrated, makes modularity difficult if not impossible. When it comes to software, you do have a choice for the main operating system. You'd probably want something like Replicant [wikipedia.org]. So choose hardware that supports what you want to accomplish. If you contest that the baseband OS is still proprietary, then your problem is with the infrastructure our society has created to run the cellular phone network. I share the concerns, but the overall benefits are worth the costs to me. For people like RMS, they are not. We all get to choose.
You can always buy one of these devices and use it without a cellular connection. It's functionally no different from a laptop.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 09 2018, @03:16PM (1 child)
Except you can't. Adding a SIM card does not magically make a phone able to connect to networks, it even says so in the name SIM=subscriber identity module. It's just the info who to bill and who the powers that be are spying.
(Score: 1) by toddestan on Thursday January 11 2018, @02:19AM
They work fine on Wifi, with or without a SIM. So basically just like a small tablet, except you could call 911 in a pinch.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Tuesday January 09 2018, @07:57AM
Are you forced to buy the phones through the phone companies? At least in Germany, you can buy them in a normal electronics shop, without a contract.
Of course then you'll have to pay the whole cost directly, instead of having it hidden in the communication fees.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 1) by jshmlr on Tuesday January 09 2018, @12:49PM
This. These devices can be used as tools and not toys. The companies that manufacture them are working against us, but you can make a conscience effort to use them in a way that's healthy and useful. You still have the freedom of choice.
As far as these not being "regular" computers, that's a bit pedantic. They're computers in every sense of the word. However, they're really designed to be devices of consumption and not creation.
Need nothing, then see what happens.
(Score: 3, Informative) by DannyB on Tuesday January 09 2018, @03:04PM
On an Android phone, you can run your own code without having root access, and without paying any fees or getting anyone's permission. (Unlike Apple) The development tools run on Linux / Windows / Mac. All you have to do is go to your phone's settings and enable developer mode and allow installing apps from untrusted sources. Plug it in to your computer with development tools and edit-compile-debug away.
You do not have to put your app into the Play store. You can run it on your device and only your device. Or you can easily install it on other devices by the same means of plugging in to your development computer. After your app is installed you can go back to settings and disable developer mode and untrusted sources.
Also . . .
You can put your APK file onto your own website.
1. Your friends (or you) download the APK onto your device through the device's web browser
2. Go to settings and allow installing apps from untrusted sources
3. Go to your file manager and install your APK, which installs the app.
4. (optional) delete the APK file
5. Go to settings and undo step 2.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 2) by jimtheowl on Tuesday January 09 2018, @06:57AM
If your kid is on a "device" all day and is catatonic to the point of not knowing what a computer is, it might be time to pry it off its thumbs.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Joe Desertrat on Tuesday January 09 2018, @09:12AM (1 child)
Maybe we should stop calling them "smartphones" and instead start calling them what they are, "spyphones", as in being tracked and spied upon as one uses it.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 09 2018, @04:24PM
"Smart" literally means surveillance. Try it.