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Of course, when I say "smartphone" here, I'm NOT talking about older QWERTY keyboard smartphones (such as Blackberry Curves or T-Mobile Sidekicks), nor am I talking about PDAs (such as the Palm Treo), which functioned sort of similarly, but were primarily used for business purposes and lacked any calling or texting features.
What I am referring to of course, is the ever expanding (quite literally, now up to comically big proportions where you can't even slide it into your pocket), yet still homogenous, giant slab of glass rectangle that seems like everyone, their children (you can already see a big gap in Generation Alpha children who are being raise properly versus the iPad Cocomelon zombies), and their mother seems to own in the yet of 2024, even in spite of growing evidence of the harms they, along with most modern mainstream social media, can cause, especially to developing children and adolescents. Chances are, you either own one yourself or have owned at least one at some point in your life.
I should know what it's like to be hooked to such a device from a young age myself, unfortunately. I got my very first cellphone (a blue Nokia Lumia 750 if I remember correctly) at the young age of 11 years old in September 2017, shortly after I had begun the 6th grade. Although even before then, I would still ask my family members if I could borrow theirs for a few hours, and for a short time in the 2nd half of 2015, my uncle let me use the family Samsung tablet he got for a few hours a day (although the chargers for it kept getting worn out/broken so quickly to the point where nobody in my family was using it by New Year's 2016, funnily enough).
Now, although I do wish my preteen years hadn't been spent like this and that I believe deep down it truly would've been better off had I been born and grew up over a decade earlier, I'm not as devastated by the destruction of my tween years as I am with the destruction of my teen years (mostly for unrelated reasons, as I've discussed in another recent blog post). However, I believe this is perhaps the biggest reason as to why things just started feeling "off" to me since 2015, and I've been trying to put my finger on it for all these years since I was 9.
I found myself spending less time in the real world in those years (and up to the age of 15 1/2) as opposed to the time I'd spend carrying around one of those addictive, glowing rectangles everywhere I went (although thankfully, my folks at least had some sense by not letting me carry it to school with me). Yet, I'm one of the luckier ones, as many of my peers still seem to be hooked and exploited by the big tech conglomerates and are also users/addicts of modern mainstream social media apps, some of which they've even had accounts on before the age of 13, disturbingly enough. One reason why I prefer hanging out with people older than me (especially those born prior to the year 2000) is because I know that these people are more likely to understand that I'm not really into social media (besides this site and YouTube, of course) and are less likely to try and ask if I have an account on stupid Instagram or whatever.
I don't believe in giving a child a smartphone or tablet and honestly believe that children should ideally never own one prior to the age of 18, especially with more and more studies coming out showing how addictive these devices are and their detrimental impacts on developing brains. Who would've ever thought that the same device that many of us adults take with them everywhere and very easily become hooked to could be even more addictive to children and even stunt their development during some of the most formative years of their lives? .
I'm surprised it took me until July 2021, shortly before my 15th birthday, for me to want to ditch my giant slab of glass as I had developed an interest with older cellphones considered the possibility of perhaps getting myself a Blackberry Curve to replace it prior to learning about the demise of the company and the unfortunate, upcoming death of 3G in the United States in 2022. :'(
Still, I did not let that stop me from having my hopes and dreams, and when my mother finally wanted me to start carrying a cellphone to school with me starting in spring 2022 (right after the time I had stayed around for a little while after school to attend the 2022 honor roll ceremony at my school, walked home from school on my own, and then lied about why I was late due to my circumstances involving my helicopter maternal grandmother), she suggested that I bring that stupid slab of glass with me to school. However, by the time I was 15 1/2 and would observe daily how many of my colleagues didn't even try to pay attention in the classroom and were glued like zombies to theirs even inside of the classroom setting, I had decided for myself that enough was enough and that I asked her if I could get a flip phone to carry around with me to school.
So then, a few weeks later, we went to get me a 4G flip phone, and I immediately fell in love with it and starting from then on, would use the stupid slab of glass main line less often and would take my new 4G flip phone with me everywhere. I'd then go onto ignore phone calls coming from the main line and would call my relatives back on my flip phone or wait for them to take the hint and only then would I answer.
However, such excitement would be short lived, as in June 2022, I unfortunately ran out of minutes (it was a pay as you go plan) and my folks had failed to get me some more minutes for it, expecting me to take my stupid smartphone with me outside the house and to also always be available to answer their calls every waking moment of my life (the latter of which they still sort of expect from me, but have at least been taking the hint lately). This really pissed me off and gave me yet another thing to ruminate about during an already vulnerable time in my life. I soon began constantly fantasizing about "losing" my smartphone, slamming it against the wall, drowning it in a lake or other large body of water nearby, you fucking name it, just so I could finally be freed from such a device for once as I'd spend much of my time thinking about the major mistake that both I and my family had made in the past few years, and yet, feeling a need to have control over this aspect of my life, especially in May 2023 as I was watching the episode of "That's So Raven" where Raven gets her first cellphone and couldn't stop ruminating over having been born so late and being utterly resentful over being a teenager in this stupid decade (something I still resent to this very day). >:(
Finally, in June 2023, I was liberated as I got my current flip phone, except this time, it's on a monthly plan and is actually my main line.
You know, perhaps the Mayans were right after all, just not in the way any of us were expecting, of course. And this theory here is especially credible when you consider the fact that around 2011/2012 is when half of US adults had owned these repulsive devices.
Small ramblings aside, I feel disgusted and concerned whenever I'm out in public and I see a little kid holding an iPad while they're out in public instead of playing with real toys, drawing in coloring books, or hell, even just watching everything that's going on in the place they're at like I did as a young child.
This leads me to my next major point of this blog post being that I'm sick and tired of companies shouting "download our app" and "scan the QR code thingy" bullshit every 5 minutes, whether it be in television commercials, on paper signs, in restaurants (looking at you, California Pizza Kitchen, you fucking bastards since 2021), at school (since at least my sophomore year of high school), etc, even for simple little things such as signing in to events (which I don't see why couldn't have been done with paper and pen or even just having a typed out web address that I could write down and log onto using my laptop later) or fucking menus at restaurants (not sure if CPK has changed this since early 2022, although I'm sincerely hoping they've realized their mistake by now). To this date, I still have refused to cave into this stupid system and will especially be continuing to do so for as long as I live. I'm sure I'm not the only one who not only finds these "QR codes"' to be stupid, but also, inaccessible for those of us who choose not to own a stupid modern smartphone or have one that still can't even scan those stupid little barcode square things.
Then of course, there's still the problem of companies shoving their stupid (cr)apps down your throat whenever they can. I recently went to Knott's Berry Farm with the tickets/season pass receipts I had purchased online and printed onto paper in my school's library and then my mother asked if we could get our season passes cards physically, to which the guy who gave them to us warned us that unfortunately, the 2025 season will be the last season they give out the iconic purple physical cards to season passholders, meaning that I will need to figure something out by the time I renew our passes for the 2026 season next year. A few ideas I've worked out in my mind are either to show up holding printed out emailed passes on paper that I can easily get printed out, or if I absolutely MUST solely for this reason, to consider getting myself a Unihertz Titan Pocket on a cheap, pay as you go plan, and use it as a secondary cellphone (I'm keeping my flip phone until the very day it croaks or if it gets lost or something and hopefully by the time said things happen, I can replace it with yet another 4G flip phone, since thankfully, 4G should still be good for at least another decade or 2 thanks to Dynamic Spectrum Sharing) for the sole purpose of getting my ass into the park in case plan A manages to fail (even though they can easily scan the papers with their barcode scanners) and to still be old fashioned and prove my point to the world.
Finally, does anyone else absolutely HATE how prolific touchscreens are these days? I know I certainly am, between the touchscreens of modern smartphones, tablets, and hell, for some stupid reason I fail to wrap my head around, even in newer model cars for some fucking reason (even though there are laws against texting and driving, the monsterous touchscreens in contemporary cars are somehow legal). Touchscreens were a huge mistake, change my mind. Why did we abandon the tried and true physical button in favor of a flat panel that is hard to take your eyes off of, is dangerous while on the road, and is just overall pretty lame compared to real buttons?
Am I just an old soul who is lost and stuck in this stupid current decade and so desperately desires to be back in the 2000s where I truly belong and could really enjoy a simpler life without the intrusions of this stupid current era trying to creep up on me every once in a while? Definitely. But you can't deny the damages that these devices have done to our society, to innocent children, and to our attention spans and our abilities to just live in the moment and log off every once in a while. I'm doing all that I can to preserve the good things of the past, and you guys reading this should be doing it too.
I intended for this blog post to be a follow up to the previous one I published after being reminded of my burning hatred for the stupid modern world and modern tech this weekend, although other than that, I had an amazing time at the park going on the rides and making the most of my time there.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to log off and get ready for another day at school, attend a tutoring session before I leave the campus, and return the DVD I rented at my local video rental store later today, on a positive note. Maybe I'll take out some cash and call up my local Pizza Hut or Domino's Pizza later this week to order a pizza and pay the driver in cash, if I'm feeling up to it as well. :) Additionally, I want plan to finish off the roll on the 27 exposure disposable camera I purchased last week for this vacation (I still have 10 exposures left on the roll of film).
Comments
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imberrysleepy
"You know, perhaps the Mayans were right after all, just not in the way any of us were expecting, of course. And this theory here is especially credible when you consider the fact that around 2011/2012 is when half of US adults had owned these repulsive devices." hits hard asf, great line
My phone had broken on octuber n i'm gonna get a new one in some weeks (late February) and it wasn't really a big diference. I still have my laptop to be on internet and it's the same but I can't use social media (i never used it anyway) or take photos. I also noticed how people tend to favor playing with your phone over, for example, books or cards. During classes, i could play solitarion online on my phone all the time, but if i even had a deck of cards on my table, teachers were like crazy
magilon
i think i need to rant about this too…
i totally agree. i’ve been missing my blackberry for so long. it brings tears to my eyes. i am definitely sick of phones but they, like you said, are kind of a necessity these days.
for me, instead of ditching the phone, i’ve just used it less/differently.
i really like to use my phone to listen to music, though i really want to invest in physical media to support artists i like.
social media is…well.
my favorite social media platform is pinteretst. it has been for a while. i find it “simple” and i don’t find myself unwittingly sucked into it’s UI. i avoided instagram because it scared me. specifically, how people would just sit and scroll on it. like yes, i do that with pinterest but idk it just seemed different.
i eventually got on insta the end of my senior year of high school. i think i like it…? i like being able to post and look at my friend’s posts. that’s it though. i guess it would be more appropriate to say “i tolerate it.”
i honestly don’t know how people can sit and scroll on the app. it is truly exhausting to use the app. my least favorite part is the story feature because it really plays on FOMO. when my friends use it, i want to see what their sharing but i also dont want to click through stories bro.
i think the thing that makes me annoyed with the big social media platforms is the notifications like please leave me alone. they are so desperate to get you on the app that they send me the stupidest notifications. like i don’t care if someone left a comment on a random post of a person i don’t even follow. LEAVE ME ALONE -_-
i also don’t understand why people won’t just text me. i remember when people would deliberately say they don’t reply to texts and pretty much only respond to insta dm’s. i want to turn off notifications but people are actually trying to reach me on these platforms so i’m conflicted. i mean yes, it’s probably not important, but idk man.
there’s also the crazy amounts of references that are from a random TikTok. I am already pretty unaware of a lot of popular memes, now there are references being created and discarded so fast. the turnover is crazy. i have social media and i still feel out of the loop. i can’t imagine if i just didn’t have it. like wth is “chill guy” and why is everyone using this one song (it’s actually kind of annoying)? it just makes having conversations hard sometimes.
in the end, yeah, i find most social media apps so draining as they try to get your attention. there is way too much going on. also, i hate seeing people not be able to form their own sentences like why are we copying and pasting comments? just speak your mind?? yeah very concerning.
i feel i spend too much time watching videos/tv/movies and reading on my phone, but that’s for another time.
anyways. thanks for bringing this up haha.
vxmpyre_mcr
I'm in grade 9 rn and I hated social media since grade 5. I refused to get tik tok for years, until I finally got it in grade 7 and now I regret it. I hate how my family and friends focus on their phone more tham me and barely even realise that I'm trying to talk to them. Sometimes I wanna break my phone and once I almost purpusly dropped it down the balcony, but I didn't cuz I would get yelled at. I've been asking my mom for a flipphone or iPod if I give her my iPhone 8, but she says that I can't get one and idk how to convinvce her. I think that phones are really stupid so I asked my mom if I could get a casette player for music so that I don't need to use my phone for it, and she said that I can't get one cuz spotify is better. If I had another way to transport music, I would probably throw my phone down the balcony.