Today, I read a Reddit post titled “What silently destroyed society?”, along with the comments left by users in response to the question.
In the top ten comments, the following four were present, collectively raking in over 17000+ upvotes:
“The obsession with being constantly available. We lost boundaries the moment everyone started expecting instant replies 24/7. It’s exhausting.”
“Social media”
“we traded connection for convenience and didn’t realize the cost”
“Dopamine addiction, not just TikTok or Instagram, YouTube or Reddit are also a time sink, and no, it’s not better because of “high quality content”, or “I watch only meaningful things”, I think we all watched a “how is X thing made” video at 3AM and went “why did I do that” after that.”
Each one, in my opinion, is either partially or entirely a result of the mass adoption of smartphones.
Yeah, I used to think that just because I spent huge portions of my day watching crap on youtube it was better than tiktok somehow. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve learnt some amazing things on youtube and entertainment isn’t bad inhenrently but DAMN have I wasted so much of my life just consuming empty information and videos. Hard to avoid it entirely, but not having a smartphone certainly helps so so much. I think you’re right in saying that all those startements can be boiled down to “the mass adoption of smartphones” overall too.
I haven’t bothered to research the scientific communities findings on smartphones adversely affecting mental health. But it is my personal opinion and experience that tells me having time to yourself has a positive affect on mental well being. Humans were not meant to be overwhelmed and bombarded every waking moment.
I was lucky enough that I never really got sucked into my smartphone. I was a long holdout and I didn’t get it until I was in my mid-20s (2016 or so), which probably helped. But even I felt a weight lift when I switched back to a dumbphone. All the notifications just… stopped.
I was dating a girl a while back who had a local news site set up as push notifications on her phone. At fairly random intervals, her attention would get “jerked” towards the site by a notification and she’d read some horror story or other (it was never good news, go figure). It was eye opening to see that. She was… not a happy person.