Modern life is so tied with smartphones living without it is increasingly becoming harder

Yeah, I love my phone and the whole world it opens up, having access to so much information in my pocket. But I also hate how tied we are to them now. I bought tickets for a gig recently and the only way I can access them is by downloading an app (that I'm only going to use for this one gig). What if I didn't have a smartphone? What if I didn't want to take a smartphone to a gig? You aren't allowed to go to this gig without one, and it's a small thing, but I don't like how the option is out of your hands.

Pretty much every supermarket in the UK now requires you to download an app so you can access their offers. I hate this so much.

I thought I lost my phone before moving states and nearly burst into tears. It has my insurance, the map, what if something happened to me on the road, etc. It was an awful spiraling feeling. Thankfully I found it, but it was a hard reality check of how much I have tied to this little device.

As someone who grew up before computers and smartphones were commonplace, for the most part you could still life in the same way as you did before computers and smartphones, because all the things you'd need still exist. You'd just be horribly out of the loop of the way modern life functions.. But you could do it.

What's interesting is that pretty much no one wants to live this way any more. It was pretty damn boring a lot of the time.

Relevant meme...

The smartphone is the only science fiction thing we have.

We didn't get table top fusion reactors, food pills, Rosie the robot, casual commercial space travel, flying cars, hoverboards, etc...

But we did get a little computer we can carry around that has literally everything in it. It's a camera, it's camcorder, it's a microcassette voice recorder, computer, telephone, book, TV, video conference system, remote control for all my lights, remote control for the TV, a McDonald's ordering device, instant messenger, magazine, radio, GPS for my car, GPS tracker for my family, health monitoring device, flashlight, Sears catalog - It would probably be harder to come up with a list of things that it can't do.

You can take my smartphone from my cold dead hands.

Makes me think of restaurants with QR code menus (been to a couple bars where you have to order through that menu too).

Does anyone disagree with this? My city gives out smartphones to people who can't afford them because it's cheapest way they can get access to city services. Much more efficient then having staff in an office to enter data and make calls on their behalf.

I'll tell ya, it's getting a lot harder to drive around my horse and buggy with all these darned automobiles on the road. These iron chariots are making the simple pleasures a real humdinger.

I have been slowly setting myself up with as many alternatives as possible. We have a Garmin in the car so we don't use Gmaps, I've ditched all corps like Google or Facebook even run my own search engine. Honestly as daunting as it is once your not tied to a phone life is so much better. Don't fall into the trap

And even if you have a smartphone, you are strongly encouraged to get WhatsApp and donate all of your data to Meta that way. Not too long ago someone told me about having sent me messages through a channel don’t even use. I wonder if WhatsApp still shows me as online even though I haven’t used the app in more than 10 years.

I've heard the single most important purchase incredibly low income people can make is a phone, because without it they can't apply to new jobs or network with people because all applications are done online these days

Up until long-covid and being over-worked kicked me out of a job and onto my ass for a few months, I was a caseworker for adults with severe mental illness for years.

Helping people get a government phone was a necessity if we were working on transitioning them out of their residential care facility into more independent living.

It was such a frustrating struggle for the Clients without phones.. Reminders, telephonic appointments, me being able to reach them was so much more difficult if they didn't have a phone. Even being in RCFs, the resident line was always busy or misplaced, and staff at those facilities are not always the most stellar employees...

When covid hit and everything went on lockdown, it was nearly impossible for my team and myself to reach our Clients without cellphones...

Cellphones have become so ingrained in society and are essential for access to not only normal community resources, but also essential for adequate coordination and access to one's treatment team and resources.

It's getting harder and harder to function in society without a cellphone. That trend will only continue. I don't think it's necessarily/inherently a bad thing; it's the evolution of our society. But it certainly is a terrible thing if you do not have one...

The one thing that really makes me sad about common cellphone usage is the lack of face-to-face connection. It's a trip because I went through middle and high-school without smart phones, everyone did. I miss those regular, everyday connections with people.

Those that haven't gown up a significant amount of time without smartphones don't think the difference is that severe, or that the connections we've replaced them with are the same or superior, but it just... isn't.

The thing is, we don't know how viable this is in the long term.

For all we know, every 200 years the Earth is hit by a major EMP sunspot event that will fry our cellpones, cell towers, and satellites.

This isn't just speculative. In 1859 a major solar storm took down most of the electronic communication of that time. Back then, that meant telegraph communication. The first major telegraph message had been sent only 15 years before, so world-wide communications didn't suffer too much.

If we had a major storm now, the winners would be those countries and institutions that still retained paper-based communications and information management systems. The losers would be everyone dependent on electronics communications.

Yeah. Restaurant I was in about a month ago. You need a phone to order, to pay, and to see the menu.

You can almost imagine the conversation

Boss: so we will move everything to app based

Underling: but what about people without cellphones?

Boss: people without cellphones have no money.

You used to be able to get a military discount at Home Depot by showing your ID. Now they won't give it to you unless you have a smart phone, sign up for a Home Depot account, agree to their ToS, log in at the store, wait for them to email you a verification email (which they do literally every single time), and then navigate back to your account, find the QR code, and scan it. It's fucking bullshit!

I need a smartphone app to:

Access mail from my government

Log into any website as 'me' (taxes, car related stuff, my net bank, etc)

Buy a damn bus ticket

In reality i dont need my phone to be smart. But society wants me to

But i do everything i can to avoid getting apps from various companies. Membership bonuses etc. I hate it so much.

I do enjoy my smartphone in the car though, for google maps, music and taking a call. But.. i would much rather, if that was just built into the cars infotainmentsystem.

Fuck society. Grr, I don't like how much we're expected to have phones. It's not just the electronic though, but the number attached to it as well.

I'm phoneless as a stand against canadian telecom companies and wow I'm basically a second-class citizen. Almost any service becomes inaccessible.

Heavens forbid I care about my own privacy and get a vpn. Now I'm locked out of even MORE services that want to ID check me with my phone.

Just let me have what I seek 😭 there's too many steps to these services now

auuuugh rant done ty.

Modern life is difficult without internet access, but yet you can live without internet, the question is, how long?

My phone borked on me recently but I got it up with a complete system upgrade and install from scratch. Meanwhile I realized how dependent I am on it for everything from communication to identification to transportation to deliveries to intercom and beyond. I don't like it with this single point of failure.

It's a good thing and a bad thing imo.

People now can keep and relive moments easier and faster than ever before, but it does suck how big companies now just use it to do anything and how ads are just thrown everywhere to make every possible penny they can.

I have two personas. One with a google phone with FB (to talk to my mom to Greece), and a macbook. And another with a de-googled Murena eOS phone and Linux laptop. One of these two personas will die once I move to Greece next year. I don't mind not being able to talk to friends on FB or IG. If they want to find me, there's email, or they can join federated social media. I won't miss them.

I'm at least happy to see some decent, really cheap (<$100 CAD) smart phones popping up that are competent enough to work with, but it's still such a single point of failure for so many aspects of life right now. Not even not having a phone, but a dead battery (and inability to swap it out with a backup like you used to), spontaneously breaking, losing cell service at an inopportune time to access your virtual tickets and things.

I don't mind smart phones, but the single point of failure for so much is really not good.

A friend of mine has no smartphone (still an old Nokia mobile) and thus has no access to a train ticket in his state in Germany. There is no way of a non-digital ticket. That's so f'ed up

I moved out the western slope of Colorado, to the high desert, after I got an MS diagnosis. I've never had more concentration in my life. I was able to focus without a chime or someone else needing to contact me. Just me and how to move forward. Years later I moved back to the city.

It took my a while to get back to city life when I left, the busy everything, the phone going off, the lights in the sky at night blocking the stars. How do we all do it?

Yes! So many things that where previously websites require apps nowadays. Makes it hard to function in society for me as I (with very few exeptions) refuse to install closed source software on my computer or phone.

Same goes with reading skills, which at some point weren't needed in society I bet.

It how swift it has been. Friend and I went to a "mall" we hadn't been to since we were kids. He pointed out "holy crap, this is where it used to be rows and rows of payphones. Even in 2010 I didn't have a mobile, and only got one as all the payphones vanished.

Now so many things require an app or online sign-up.

I personally abhor the idea of smartphones becoming increasingly more personal and necessary, especially since I live where those little black bricks are the most sought after item for thieves (thousands stolen per month). Add the chance of falls or something else making the phone unusable, the screen unresponsive, and bam, you're fucked up big time.

And let's not forget what great tools they are for spying on you without your consent.

I mean we quit reddit, right?

I love those qr codes at restaurants. No need to interact with waiters. Just browse and order at my leisure.

Are these shower thoughts or are they just thoughts?

Yeah. If calling/sms was all I used my phone for, I would probably still use my old Lumia Windows phone even as the app builders stopped supporting it.

But because its for public transport tickets, accessing the local library, accessing the gym center, ordering at restaurants or food delivery, sending money to family, car navigation, syncing my exercise watch, being invited to social events, streaming my cloud saved music library, rent a city-bike, check my medicine prescriptions..

I need a phone that is up to date. How is people living without a smart phone today?

I can't love a modern life without following of what's going on in the world. Internet is the only thing that allows us to do this efficiently.

Even government services depend on you having a cell phone or access to internet in order to access services like EI.

Yet, internet (or at least decent internet) isn't available in most places in rural Alberta.

I went from a wallet with a bunch of cards and a bit of cash to my phone. nothing else. haven't used cash or my physical card in years

Funny I just was thinking if I could go a weekend without my phone. And if I did it how many people would I have to tell before I did it so I didn't get a bunch of crap for not answering texts for 2 days!

I leave my phone at home sometimes. There's always something that comes up, but in the end I've realized it doesn't actually matter that much.

Buddy, i fell the same! I wanted to make my smartphone a weekend thing, but I just cannot function wihtout it. I literally can not log in my work pc wihtout it, it's insane!

One of my favourite books is Hamlet's Blackberry by William Powers.

"The essential idea is simple: to lead happy, productive lives in a connected world, we need to master the art of disconnecting."

I could live without the memes, cut pet videos, games, camera, social media, gifs and probably other junk. I couldn't do without the phone and the flashlight

This is so true. I lost my iphone three hours ago and I just keep getting harder.

It is basically impossible in this day and age. Similar with credit cards. I have been using a LightPhone for 2 years and before that a Cosmos 3 flip phone for 5 years. Currently 7 years off smartphones and I’ll never go back, but I don’t see how a young person can do it right now. Just doesn’t seem possible and i hate that.

True, but look at it the opposite way - modern life is just getting easier and easier because of mobile phones. Think of all the things that they make easier and replace. When we finally get digital licenses later this year I can officially leave my wallet behind. The only time I'll need it is when I go to the gym as unfortunately they don't have their NFC cards available via phone.

Welcome to 2010.

Yep, the one time I decided to go out without my smartphone it got me stranded in the middle of nowhere without way to contacting anyone until 4 AM.

Yeah... I commented to my friend "and a smartphone is a basic human right, right?" When talking about this. Well, internet is not, either so yeah, your existence is extra gimped or based on touching ground base if you're homeless, phoneless and internet planless.

I want so bad to just get a light phone II, but too many parts of my life need something from a smart phone, end to end encryption on my messages (signal or other similar apps), banking apps, even my job requires a few apps. I could maybe carry both around and use the smart phone as little as possible? But seems too much of a hassle sighs

I like them for being able to text and make calls. Otherwise I hate using them - a desktop computer is far easier for me.

I regularly live with a dumbphone. All it can really do is makes calls and text. Its only difficult if you give a shit about social media and chat apps. I don't so its easy

I guess so but they are rather helpful still, so...

Just give me the bloody neurolink already, I'm ready to ascend into the hivemind

My uncle doesn't have a cell phone and he has to borrow everyone's phones all the time and it's gotten to the point where people are just refusing to let him borrow their phones.

I dont own a cellphone and get by through borrowing family member's phones or asking strangers if I can make a call if I'm out on my own, it usually works out fairly well.

However whenever I run into online services that require a phone to make an account or whatever I usually get screwed- so I usually just use a family member's phone # if I know they'll never use the site or whatever or utilize a 10 minute/fake phone # creation site if I dont care about the site or service I'm signing up for.