I have come up with a new term know as the "Smartphone Syndrome".
What is it you ask?
Well it's the phase of transition from a phone which has less functionality to a phone which has the power to give you everything in the palm of your hand like an iPhone or a Nexus. So I recently had one of my friends buying an iPhone after years of struggle and toil of using a Blackberry (which honestly, does not have the same functionality) and noticed a few changes in their behaviour. Even though I would not like to point that out to them as we live in a world of "free choice" and "free will", I thought why not stir this conversation at Hubski to get everybody's view. I have noticed that the amount of time they spent talking to me or messaging me has gone down quite a lot and also I have noticed a change in the way they perceive things. It is the same social anxiety that I faced 2 years back when I switched to an iPhone from a Blackberry but I can say that I successfully got over it. By social anxiety I mean, checking facebook from top of the stories to the last one you saw, liking all the posts, Instagram is not spared and double tapped 400 times a day (This is all my experience and I can see a similar kind pattern there as well)
Well I can explain it further once I get to know if this thing is actually experienced by anybody else or anybody they know.
The fact is that this Smartphone Syndrome is like a bubble, it keeps you in a very happy place where you know everything about everyone and they "like" you back but as soon as the bubble bursts, it is very very difficult to deal with it, that I can say by experience. So not to let my friend face the same fate/truth, I would want to spare them the pain of that bubble bursting like I did.
Let me know your views on this.
A different perspective: I grew up at a formative time. Eternal September was my generation. I took a year off before college but September '93 was literally when I was supposed to start college. As such, I am now an internet billionaire and spent more on hookers'n'blow than you will earn in your lifetime. (something something roads not taken something something middle-aged regret) That last sentence isn't true. What is true is that the Internet grew up around me instead of the other way 'round... and by the time the iPhone came out I was on my 5th "smart phone." So a few things about "smartphones" that you may not have considered: 1) The Internet sucks on phones. Always has, always will. It really sucked at 240x320 on Windows CE but it was downright unusable on Blackberry. Nobody bothered. 2) Prior to the iPhone, they were commonly called "PDA phones." This is because they were effectively contact & calendar devices that happened to have a cellular radio. Yes, you could browse the Internet but data rates were ruinous, speeds were pathetic and the people who bought them bought them for their utility. 3) the iPhone introduced the "App" ecosystem as a way to deal with this: Apple took one look at the existing languages necessary to render mobile apps (which are so far down the memoryhole at this point that I can't even find mention of them) and decided the way to solve the problem was to front-load all the wrapping and grab only the data you need. Problem: if you're looking at photos on flickr.com, you can browse away to look at something else. In fact, any ads you serve are likely to take you away from flickr.com especially as nobody could run multiple browser windows at once. Solution: build it all into the "app" (which is really just an html wrapper) so that no matter what happens, it happens on your turf. 4) "Engagement" becomes the watchword, rather than CPM, to determine the value of your "app" (which used to be your "site"). There are plenty of ways to design an app such that it sucks your life away. Somewhere there's a brilliant article by a game designer that talks about how Farmville is basically engineered to hit you like heroin. Blizzard shapes their reward curve for Starcraft such that Koreans will play it for their entire available free time, but not so much that they quit their jobs and starve. Basically, if you're in an app you're subject to far more "gamification" than if you're on a page. 5) "engaged" consumers are worth far more than browsers of a webpage and revenues go up. This drives greater "appification" of the Internet as more and more sites become worthless on the web and addictive in your pocket. They're all competing for your attention and they all want more of it than you can spare and they're all getting ridiculous sums of money for doing things that are fundamentally bad for you. So that's where we are now: instead of an internet that connects you to information, we now have a million little sandboxed apps all competing to be your drug of choice. If the neighborhood didn't go to shit around you, your first experience with a "smartphone" is a lot like an Amish kid on Rumspringa. Except the bars and strip clubs that surround you face no penalties for ruining your life and are remunerated preposterously for giving you heroin. Meanwhile, if you've lived there a while you wonder what's up with the kids with patchy facial hair that can't seem to get enough of the horse. I don't think it's a steady-state problem. As a culture we're navigating uncharted waters but we're also collectively aware that things are different and not necessarily for the better. Fundamentally, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and the rest of the Horsemen do not improve your life. Anyone with a little bit of smarts figures that out eventually. There's a period, though, where the design does what it's intended: hook you on wasting time for someone else's profit. ...Pretty much the same thing you said, except I made it the fault of those Faceless Corporations.
Brilliant!!
Exactly the detailed reply I was looking for when I posted my observations. The last paragraph says it all, "Fundamentally, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and the rest of the Horsemen do not improve your life. Anyone with a little bit of smarts figures that out eventually. There's a period, though, where the design does what it's intended: hook you on wasting time for someone else's profit." Now this brings me to another question that I am curious to ask at this point. Like the way these corporations have found a way to profit on how much time we waste, is there a way through which this can be reversed and made profit out of. A lot of people are realising today that the point you stated is the reality but the rate is very low as compared to people embracing this technology in their life. Leave profit, is there a way to reverse this, without actually messing up on with the "free will" and "choices" of the people which they get very very touchy about?
Humans are adaptable. That's why it's an acute, rather than chronic problem: the "high" of engagement with social media is habituated and provides fewer endorphins the longer you use it. Most people, unless they're suffering an imbalance, eventually reach the point where the world around them provides more engagement than their phones and it ceases to be a problem. But yes, there are paid apps to reclaim the life the rest of your apps are stealing. Wherever there is a need, there is an entrepreneur attempting to strike it rich.
I guess it's just the wait then. Can't force someone out of it for sure, just wanting to save them the pain of that small little bubble bursting that Social Media is actually a "Virtual" world where we have the possibility of losing ourselves. Thanks for your inputs.
My smartphone is straight up just for google maps or email. Uninstalled facebook a long while ago. Snapchat useless stuff, but not very often (at least, I think, _refugee_, be my witness!). Deleted Instagram. Use hangouts/messenger exclusively to talk to my sis. My whole family doesn't have an issue with over-the-top phone, actually. We have a no-phone rule when we eat dinner, and my Pebble alerts me of important stuff, so I don't have to constantly pull out and check my phone for something, afraid that I might miss the rumble. When I eat out with friends, we have a no-phone-rule, where we all put our phones facedown on the table, and the first person who gives into the urge and pulls their phone out has to pay for the largest meal ordered, plus their own. No one's caved yet.
The best improvement upon my Smartphone experience ever has been turning off my Facebook notifications. I am listening to two drink sorority girls talk about their grandMas. Oh look, the sober third just recommended they go next door to smoke weed. One said "we'll be definitely drinking tomorrow." Three girls to two guys not including me. Observing college life as a non-college specimen is hella interesting, especially with groups (sororities/frats) I never had any real experience with. We were so similar, yet so different. Deep thoughts.
EDIT : GOT DAM. I KNEW I DRUNKSKI'd LAST NIGHT!
I just find your observations intriguing. You have the perfect specimen too. This made me reflect on my own habits. I use my phone and tablet almost compulsively somedays. I try not to abuse it when I'm with somebody though. It really is like a drug. Like cigarettes kinda. It's only been what? Ten years? Less for me. I have no idea what I'd do without mine. I'd certainly be completely lost on the way to Mobile tomorrow.
I share the compulsivity with you. Whenever I'm trying to procrastinate a big assignment, I have the tendency to open up my phone and start scrolling through a given social media feed, or launch some game. The problem is that I'm not thinking while I do these things, and I think it's my way of avoiding an obligation that requires me to think, which is a really shitty tendency when you get down to it... I've had mine for maybe only two or three years, but I still feel attached to it. It's a problem, but you can't just throw it out--it's an expensive piece of technology, and even if it's a roadblock sometimes, it still has incredible potential for being useful. I've never let it get in the way of social interactions, though, and it does piss me off when I'm talking to someone and they start checking some feed.
I can totally agree to where this is coming from as I have been there myself. I had the habit of checking feeds from top to bottom, wanting to know what everyone was up to but then one day I just decided that it would not work out that way. You spend an hour on social networking websites everyday: 365 * 60 mins = 21900 mins That's 15 days of a year and I have not even included the weekend social media binges now. Enough reason to reflect I guess...
I caught this this morning: http://qz.com/359426/the-potential-apple-watch-side-effects-tim-cook-doesnt-want-you-to-know/ Even though it focuses on smartwatches, the points made in the article about the watches certainly carry over to phones and vise versa.
Brilliant article!! From this article, I would also like to share this as it seems very relatable to one of the effects of this syndrome.
I've been curious about what life is like for college students with smartphones. When I was in college, practically at the dawn of time, we didn't have mobile phones _or_ the internet. I really don't think I would have had enough discipline to focus on school, with the distraction of social media and texting available. How do you guys who are in college manage it?
I had a blackberry while I was in college, so my world was just around the wonder messenger known as BBM. It was only in my 3rd year that I got an iPhone which actually made a lot of things way easier than before with it's huge arsenal of apps. I didn't let it effect my finals though which I think is manageable if you are determined to not be controlled by it.
Don't use my phone in class unless it's a work call. We also generally have computers in front of us in classes, my solution to that is just to stay off the computer. I do enough of that at work and home.