I Was Addicted to My Smartphone, So I Switched to a Flip Phone for a Month
7th January 2024
An interesting story about a ‘journalist’ (working for a Narrative media outlet) who deliberately downscales and then uses that experience as a typical Crustian ‘all about me’ source of ‘content’.
Those of us who avoid ‘social media’ tend not to have smartphone addiction quite this badly; I use my iPhone to make (and, more often, receive) occasional calls and texts, but my ‘phone’ is used primarily as a Kindle reader, calendar, camera, and calculator.
One of the most significant indicators of the world in which a Crustian ‘journalist’ lives comes near the end:
“More and more people are starting to see that these platforms, these products are intentionally designed to be addictive,” said Camille Carlton, a policy manager at the Center for Humane Technology, a nonprofit in California founded by former tech employees to raise awareness about the negative effects of the kinds of products they worked on.
Ms. Carlton compared smartphones and social media apps to junk food and tobacco, and suggested that lawmakers should regulate the design of these products to protect our health. Britain’s rules for tech products aimed at children, discouraging the use of infinite scroll, autoplay and addictive design features such as Snapchat streaks, were “fantastic,” she said. (Similar laws in the United States have been challenged by tech companies as unconstitutional.)
Apparently the first thing a Crustian reaches for is government action to ‘solve’ a perceived ‘problem’ that ought to be left as a matter for individual choice in any rational society. Sad, but there it is.