Seventy-seven percent of middle-age Americans (35-54 years old) say they want to return to a time before society was “plugged in,” meaning a time before there was widespread internet and cell phone usage. As told by a new Harris Poll (via Fast Company), 63% of younger folks (18-34 years old) were also keen on returning to a pre-plugged-in world, despite that being a world they largely never had a chance to occupy.
Not a lot of meat to the story, and it conflates tech itself with the social expectations that have sprung up because of it and the way it’s used. “Instagram’s pedophile network” (which seems only to be brought up for shock value) is not “cell service.”
I’d hazard a guess that what respondents really want to return to not being expected to be available to anyone at any time. And, crucially, they don’t feel they can just … do that.
I’d hazard a guess that what respondents really want to return to not being expected to be available to anyone at any time. And, crucially, they don’t feel they can just … do that.
I think you hit the nail on the head here. People want to go back to a time when it wasn’t possible, but I think even more importantly where it wasn’t expected, that you are available 24/7/365.
The good thing is we can, as a society, start to not expect that availability.
This is the heart of the issue. People don’t feel like they are allowed to take time to themselves. In reality all it takes is not answering the messages if you don’t feel like it. Hell, you don’t even have to look at them.
(TDLR: Technology (in its infancy) was something new, exciting, fun and enjoyable. Today, it is manifested more as an overlord whose primary capacity is to spy, intrude and take your personal information in order that they might gain from it.)
I grew up in a world before all of the modern day technology took over. They were good times, but when technology did eventually begin to develop, it effects were initially benign. It was initially adopted by those who were considered ‘geeks’ and people who were willing to spend money on it (even IBM clones such as the Tandy 1000 were going for $1,000 back in the day).
I remember when pagers were coming on the scene and allowed people to reach out to each other if they weren’t at home or at work (which were the only places they had access to a reachable phone number). It gave greater freedom for those who were in positions where they were on call 24x7 - it allowed them to go places and still be reachable instead of being stuck at home and waiting for a phone call that might never come.
Of course, things grew from there which provided many other benefits including access to a huge repository of information. Nowadays, that access to information has become a means of harvesting information from the very individual seeking to obtain it. The innocence of what was once revolutionary has been been upended by and ideology that has figured out and embraced how to consume its own consumers.
I spend more time today figuring out how to keep my data and personal information private and secure. Using Linux on my computer, running GrapheneOS on my phone as well as other considerations all in an attempt to keep at bay invasive companies and their ever evolving techniques in order to pry and spy upon me. It’s a shame that what was once fun and exciting is now something to be feared.
Today, it is manifested more as an overlord whose primary capacity is to spy, intrude and take your personal information in order that they might gain from it.
In other words, it’s not so much technology that’s the problem, but capitalism.
No, people choose to give up privacy for convenience. I use almost none of the large tech companies. No Google, Facebook, Microsoft, AirBnB, or Apple. I use Amazon once a year or two.
You don’t need it; people just care more about convenience, just like they choose fast food and processed food over cooking real food.I use them even less than that. But I’m not sure what your point is. My individual choice to use the services of big tech companies as little as possible has little to no bearing on whether they force themselves onto society, and give many people little choice in whether or not to use them.
I mean, I also try to get a new phone as rarely as possible, but my ISP requires me to use one—and not just any, but a new model (within the last 2 years) of “smart” phone that their own proprietary app supports—just to change the security settings on my router. And that is the most minimal example of how corporations constrain society to choices that benefit them and not us.
You can’t use your own router? That’s insane anyway. Changing the security settings by app seems like the opposite of security.
I understand what you’re saying but it doesn’t negate what I said. I have email, internet connectivity, and access to information and services.
Having a smartphone doesn’t mean you are forced to use it for Gmail and Facebook. I rarely use the internet features on my smartphone and manage quite well. I think people have allowed themselves to get accustomed to a lot of unnecessary shit.Sure. I largely agree. I think, though, that we need to recognize the systemic and economic pressures that result in that, not boil everything down to InDiViDuaL ReSpoNsiBiLiTy.
I agree and don’t think everything boils down to individual responsibility. That said, unless you want some elites deciding what’s best for all of us plebs, we have to make certain choices. And the people using services aren’t going to vote in the people who will tell them they can’t use them any more than people with low mpg cars and trucks are going to vote for people who will pass a carbon tax.
New communications tech is always disruptive. People rail against social media, for good reason. But the internet is far less disruptive, at least in the negative sense, than the printing press was. At least so far. Knock on wood. Not that Russia isn’t trying.
Why can’t you use your own router? Having to use their router is a huge privacy risk. Yeah, ISPs can already know your internet data but now they’ve got access to your device data too.
Yeah. I agree. Unfortunately this ISP sucks, and it’s part of the contract. Too bad I don’t have other choices at the moment.
Unfortunately this ISP sucks, and it’s part of the contract.
https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-47/chapter-I/subchapter-C/part-76/subpart-P/section-76.1201
https://transition.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2016/db0510/DA-16-512A1.pdf
It’s unenforceable. FCC has mandated that users can supply their own modems and routers (including if the modem is provided for free). They must allow it. You can start an informal complaint with the FCC if they’re claiming that you must use their equipment. Usually gets the companies gears turning on the matter.
It’s not so much capitalism as it is a weakness of human nature. There are plenty of non-capitalist governments that desire to control, spy and manipulate their citizens.
That isn’t true. I use almost none of the large tech; no Microsoft, Facebook, Apple, Google, or AirBnB. I pay the massive $12 a year for email that doesn’t scrape data because my privacy is worth it. It isn’t difficult, you just have to value your privacy and quality of life.
People prefer convenience, just like they choose fast food and processed food rather than cooking real food.
See y’all on @piracy.No, there aren’t. So called “socialist” or “communist” governments of countries are 100% capitalist. Capitalism is defined by the relations of production, not what a government or political party calls itself.
Everyone can do it for them-self, just don’t use a smartphone or a cell phone if you want to go more hardcore.
I know you mean well but this is kind of a privileged take. Not everyone who wants to disconnect can afford to. It’s kind of like how many people can’t afford to just not use the internet, without it they will likely lose access to many essential resources.
“Just” not using a smartphone is viable for an increasingly vanishing portion of the population, in the US at least.
No, you just have to do what everyone did back then. Which is buy and mail checks, balance your checkbook, and go in person to buy things, go to the bank, or get service.
I’m not sure what can be done on a smartphone that cannot be done on a computer. Not much that is critical for sure. I have a smartphone but rarely use any of the internet capability.There’s that “just” again. :)
buy and mail checks, balance your checkbook, and go in person to buy things, go to the bank, or get service
It’s simply unrealistic to expect your average American to add all of this (and much more) to their routine and expect the benefit of ditching the smartphone to somehow outweigh the additional time and energy investment. Going in-person for anything in an average American city these days is far more of a hassle than it was “back then”. This is at least partially due to the fact that our cities are built with cars in mind and not people, but that’s a rant for another day.
I’m not sure what can be done on a smartphone that cannot be done on a computer.
Basically any form of two-factor authentication which is becoming increasingly more common and necessary for the average user to access anything from banking to employee services. Sure there are desktop 2FA programs that you can use in certain scenarios, but using these is often bad practice and defeats the purpose of even having 2FA in the first place.
Certain food or delivery services require you to use a mobile app to interact with them. Whether or not these services are essential or not depends entirely on the needs and circumstances of the individual.
Sorry, using “just” pisses me off too. It’s a really arrogant way of saying things, I agree. And yes, it would be a major pain in the ass. That is the kind of thing housewives did while their husbands were at work, which is honestly how it was able to work. And yeah, traffic and cities are much more crowded and sprawled now. I was pointing out it is possible though. And a dumb cell phone can be used for two factor auth. But overall I agree with everything you said. I was being pedantic and technically correct.
Small town life colors my view as well. Things are a lot different than in the cities.
My statement was in the context of wanting a world where no-one is using this things.
deleted by creator
I just want to go back to the good ol times. Even if I have to give up some luxuries.
Ah yes, but every time–past, present, and future–is fated to be someone’s good old days. Every change comes with positives and negatives. We tend to remember more positives from the past while focusing on the negatives of the present.
Man I agree with wanting less constant connectivity but I think a lot of people have a rather rose-tinted view of that time period. In most of the world it wasn’t exactly the best of times for people who fell outside of certain societal norms - trans folk were mostly thought of as punchlines to jokes, being gay was a common insult, beating up people for being their genuine selves was still pretty common, and so on.
Seems reasonable to me. I’m in the upper end of that range, center GenX (yes I know you don’t remember us). I vary between wanting it to be 1970-2000. 1990 was nice, good industrial music, many of the old blues musicians were still alive & playing, computers were still fun, BBS’s, the early non-shitty Internet, pagers and car phones if you wanted to be reachable that much, but you could just NOT be. Go out for cigarettes and never come back.
Anyone who thinks this panopticon hellscape we live in is better, is nuts.
I can’t help but feel like a lot of the “the internet was better back in the day” is rose colored glasses. Things were just as fragmented, but were even less welcoming to our groups, there was more questionable content that people were trying to trick you into viewing. It definitely wasn’t all bad, but it feels like it’s coming from the same impulse as every other “things were better back in my day.”
A key difference is that nothing was being shoved at you as soon as you got up from the computer.
You can always put your phone down. I also get the pressure to return a text/dm right away, but as far as I can tell no one that I actually want to talk to expects that immediate response.
That was a key thing to finally learn. I’d removed all the people who expected I was on call for them from my life for other reasons, which wasn’t an easy process, so everyone left is a reasonable person who texts for non-business reasons with a 1-2 day response expectation, though it’s usually much faster. If it’s more important, it’s a phone call. If they just want to chat, they text to see if I’m available before calling.
I set my phone to not ring unless the number’s in my contacts. If someone needs to get a hold of me, they can leave a message … but never do. I get notifications for weather alerts, text messages, my transit app and when a new xkcd gets posted. I certainly check my email and other apps on occasion, but I don’t need notifications.
Other than surrounding yourself with the right people, the whole thing takes minutes once you’ve hit that mindset.
How much did a computer cost back then? How much were the first graphics cards? How compatible were computers with each other? How much did one album cost on CD? How easy was it to obtain information on a problem? How easy was it to price compare things between stores?
The issue is social media and allowing everyone to voice their immediate thoughts on things in pseudo anonymity. It’s also the tendency of people to look at people’s fake persona and then compare themselves to it. I could rent a Lambo for the weekend and use a filter like I’m actually fit and still have hair and make all my former classmates insecure because they never see me in person. That’s the shit everyone wants to go away, they don’t want to give up Spotify.
People forget, or just weren’t around, when only the rich had a mobile phone the size of waffle iron and it just made expensive calls. Even early cells had exorbitant rates for long distance conversations between states, so we had to wait until night when it was more affordable to talk. If I wanted to watch a specific movie, I needed a credit card with a $500 hold to rent a VHS player for 24 hours, and hope that Teenage Mutant Turtles wasn’t on a wait list. Ask Jeeves was better than encyclopedia brittanica, but digging deep required a trip to the public library. And scanning, copying, or printing anything meant driving to Kinkos with your checkbook ready. Anyone else remember pulling up MapQuest and writing down the directions before going someplace new?
Reminiscers can unplug, but I’m keeping my on-demand movies, cheap phone rates, endless knowledge, GPS, and streaming music.
In 1991 I lived in a small town. You had to sign up at the library for computer time. Once or twice a month I had the opportunity to walk to the library and play Oregon trail on an apple IIe with a green monochrome monitor. We were also fortunate enough to have a lab at school with the same apple IIe computers and got to use them every once in awhile. There wasn’t any Internet for us to use, I don’t recall anybody mentioning BBS or fido net or anything like that.
The most advanced computer I think I saw was in the school library. It had a cartridge based CD rom drive. I remember how awesome that was when I saw it.
It wasn’t until around 95’ that the internet really took off and we were actually able to use it. It was also around that time that we even got our first family computer and dial up service.
Before that we had an NES, SNES, and og Grey Gameboy. We also borrowed a commodore 64 for a time.
Before that we were typing essays on the electric typewriter we had.
I know everyone thinks all this retro tech is so cool. The thing is, as a kid, I had no idea this stuff even existed other than basic VHS players and Nintendo because things like PCs and laserdisc players were insanely expensive.
I’m sure there’s stuff today that I’m blissfully unaware of because it’s so far out of my price range that I have no business knowing about it anyway.
undefined> The issue is social media and allowing everyone to voice their immediate thoughts on things in pseudo anonymity. It’s also the tendency of people to look at people’s fake persona and then compare themselves to it. I could rent a Lambo for the weekend and use a filter like I’m actually fit and still have hair and make all my former classmates insecure because they never see me in person. That’s the shit everyone wants to go away, they don’t want to give up Spotify.
I understood that dynamic was toxic when Facebutt was in its infancy and noped out of that world before making an account.
And I’m glad to give up Spotify or rather, not use it in the first place. I pay artists for their music on their website, or as close to it as I can, or pirate it if they are dead or complete dicks.
So what if some town somewhere were to ban cellphones?
There’s the radio-free zone in VA that has no cell service or wireless devices. You could always live there.
I agree with the commenters who said people miss certain things but forget about convenience of the connected world. I wanted to add that people likely misattribute their nostalgia to unconnected world because they were kids. It felt great being a kid not because we were pre-internet, but because we were kids. We had no bills to worry about. We’d always have food. And that was the only food we ever knew about so we loved it. Our worries were to just have enough time in the day to play all the cool things with friends and explore the world. We didn’t feel guilty for just playing video games the whole day or hanging out with friends the whole day. Our bodies could fall from a tree and our bruises would heal in a week. We’d find a motherfucking ant and be fascinated by it for hours! Have you tried staring at ants now? It’s mindnumbingly boring. Of course we miss the way we felt when we were kids. Technology ha nothing to do with it. Every generation misses being a kid.
wtf that’s fucked up
A majority of people prefer living in the past (because they refuse to chance) - and that’s really fucking with out chances to have a decent future…
It’s really fucked up
I’m surprised even the younger people would say so, since they have no experience with how it was.
I guess I’m “old” now, being 47 and all, but I was part of growing up with computers and the web just before most corporations even had a homepage or had any web presence at all.
I was on irc, forums, BBS:es… The web browser was Netscape in the beginning, and later Internet Explorer. Search engine was Altavista, and the irony here was that it was so full of ads that Google got a golden opportunity to launch their Google Search with no ads whatsoever. It completely wrecked Altavista with it’s clean fast design and the rest is history.
Now Google is the Altavista and we are waiting for someone to come and give us alternatives. Weather that is Kagi or some other AI based engine, we will see.
The problem is always ads. They destroy products and communities. People must change their ways and start paying a little bit for basic services like search and email and support those companies who want to provide a quality service without ads.
Tbf I think I’d like it more if we had online shopping, cell phones, instant messaging etc but we didn’t have social media as we know it today. Like we stuck with phpbb, Usenet and IRC and didn’t move much more beyond that into Myspace and Facebook
With the way social media companies are imploding, you may get your wish.
Who’s “we”, white man? I’ve never had a Facebutt or Twitter account. Or any of the various Facebook sites.
Err “we” as inhabitants of the earth and users of the internet I guess. Even if you don’t personally use social media, you are aware that plenty of others do and it has had a very significant impact on many individuals and societies around the world right?
It’s the punch line to a Lone Ranger joke, when he and Tonto are surrounded by hostile Native Americans.
I realize lots of people use those services. And lots of people remain ignorant, eat junk food and fast food too. No one is forced to consume fast food or its media equivalents, at least not regularly.
Same, only maybe that point for me is a bit later, ICQ and old Skype were nice as well ; I would rather fancy these, only replaced with more decentralized things like XMPP and something instead of Skype.
Sorry in advance for the off-topic rant but I’m still mad that Facebook killed Orkut in my country. It worked the same way, but it also had very active communities not unlike subreddits where you could talk with random strangers about common interests (not sure if Facebook has something like that now but it didn’t back then so I never used it). I can’t tell you how much I missed this feature after Orkut died. Only managed to fill that void when I found out about Reddit around 5 years ago. Glad I have an actual alternative to go to this time around even though Reddit still exists.
I don’t think people actually would, if push came to shove. They’re just expressing nostalgia for a simpler time, which is pretty easy to understand, given all the dystopian effects of social media and smartphones.
I think smartphones have done a lot of harm, but they’ve still done far more good, which is why we use them. Especially in poorer countries where smartphones are often people’s only access to the internet.
That said, there’s nothing stopping any of these people in the article from being the change they want to see in the world. Not to send anybody to Reddit, but r/dumbphones is a fast growing subreddit for people that want to try that. A lot of the users are Gen Z who never got to try them and want to give it a whirl.
Yeah, I think people forgot how terrible it was before email, gps, and etc.
Remember having to find the yellow book to call a plumber only to not get anything after trying 5 numbers? Oh wait, you don’t know how bad they’ll be because there are no online reviews. Memos from your boss via sticky notes? Faxing shit over and over again?
I mean, this study says it all, people need to be paid almost 20k to not use any online search for a year, almost 9k to not use email in a year. These services provide huge value for us in our daily lives. https://mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter/how-much-are-search-engines-worth-to-you
It wasn’t that terrible but it was definitely slower. Some things for sure sucked. Now totally different things suck.
This is a chicken and egg problem, today’s Web is so horrible exactly because most of the boors in it treat it with disgust from the very first moment and try to avoid choices, thus make the worst choices possible.
I mean, it’s a golden rule - if you don’t know what to do, do something. They don’t out of fear, just consume what they are being given, which is the very thing they should fear.
This seems like a sensible take on the subject.
Or you just stood around waiting for a person for 2 hours with no way to learn if they were running late or blowing you off or dead.
Mobile phones were widespread well before smartphones were invented.
I mean it is a pretty brief time period to be nostalgic over. In USA, any cellphone ownership passed 80% in 2010. That is an overall number. Depending on who and where you are it might have been before or after. I think 80% is “widespread”. Smartphones passed 80% in 2019. So you are talking about 9 years.
Source: pew Mobile phone ownership over time
Tbh i do not know if relevant to making/breaking plans because my experience was that as soon as both parties have any kind of mobile device, plans started being more fragile. Not sure if smart/dumb has any impact. Maybe i misunderstood your point…
Honestly, people committed to plans in a way they don’t now. I rarely had last minute cancellations when I was younger. Time might have been cut short or something, but people showed up. Changes of plans happened well in advance. Occasionally, I got stood up, but it was rare.
Now, I’d say probably 20-30% of the time, plans get changed last minute or more rarely, somebody bails.
Otherwise, yeah, having a mobile computer/phone in my pocket is indispensable and I’d never fully give it up.
My family is like this and my wife still does not understand it. We make plans, they are the plans until they change.
“Did you call your mom and see if we’re still going?” Why would I do that? We made the plans. If we say we’re all meeting at the grand canyon at noon on September 1st 2037 then we’ll be there, those are the plans.
All the people who know will be there.
That’s what cigarettes and books are for. Or booze, drugs. Origami.
Plus you usually met up at someone’s house or work.
What you are talking about wasn’t a big problem.
Not a lot of meat to the story, and it conflates tech itself with the social expectations that have sprung up because of it and the way it’s used. “Instagram’s pedophile network” (which seems only to be brought up for shock value) is not “cell service.”
I’d hazard a guess that what respondents really want to return to not being expected to be available to anyone at any time. And, crucially, they don’t feel they can just … do that.
I think what people are really missing is being able to feel disconnected.
Like it used to be you’d send an email and you’d get a response tomorrow. Because people would go online occasionally.
Now if I’m not responding to a text within a few minutes people get upset. You’ll see people answer the phone during a movie to say “hey I’m in a movie I’ll call you back”
I’d like to go back to the world of being connected but having a slight delay is ok
Anyone I talk to regularly, would not care if I didn’t answer their texts for a few days. My phone is always on vibrate or silent. I engage with people only as much as I want to.
What I’m saying is all that stuff can be changed if you want it to.
But that’s okay today? At least in my social circles it is. Just talk about it to whichever friend you have that demands you answer immediately. They are being unreasonable.
I mean my version of “a few minutes” is like an hour. Like it used to be you could respond to a text way later in the day or even the next, and that acceptable amount of time is getting shorter and shorter.
If you are longing for a world that you never lived in, there’s probably some “grass is greener on the other side” in play. The world before smart phones was considerably worse. I bet that most of the people who are asking for this don’t know how to read a paper map and have never seen a phone book.
The good news is that, if you don’t want to use a smart phone, you can just… not. Nobody is forcing you. If you really wanted a world without smart phones you would already not be using one!
If you are longing for a world that you never lived in
Middle aged Americans definitely remember a time before everyone was online all the time. It’s not dreaming of some hypothetical unknown Camelot, it’s remembering a time when people actually showed up for their dinner plans with you because they couldn’t simply text to flake out when you were already seated.
Yep. We remember breaking down in shitty unreliable cars, then walking to a payphone and putting up with whatever shit repair place was available. We remember it well.
Nobody is forcing you.
That is not really true, I mean depending on your definition of “forcing”. Okay, it’s true, nobody is holding a gun to your head.
But depending on where you live, it may be impossible to use a taxi. It would be impossible to work at a lot of workplaces. I work at a university where thankfully faculty are not required to own a smartphone, but students are (if you do not check in for attendance with the university’s app, you automatically fail the course). Soon here it might be impossible to have a bank account without a smartphone app. Any event that requires tickets, forget about it. We’re also getting closer to it being a requirement to see a doctor (some doctor’s offices here already do not allow any patients that haven’t installed their app, and the number is growing).
There’s a lot of soft pressure, too. The supermarket by us doesn’t require you to install their app. You can pay cash without a smartphone…if you’re willing to pay 2x the usual amount for groceries (which are already quite expensive).
undefined> if you do not check in for attendance with the university’s app, you automatically fail the course
That is completely fucked. I would refuse out of principle and demand an alternative based on my creed/religion. Linux is a religion, right?
I work at a university where thankfully faculty are not required to own a smartphone, but students are (if you do not check in for attendance with the university’s app, you automatically fail the course)
You could always not work/attend that school
I found your comment posting at the same time as mine with the same thesis (complete with “can just …”) pretty funny.
That’s not entirely true. I have twice in the last year had no other option than to install an app to use tickets I purchased. An many medical services refuse to do anything that isn’t online or via an app. It’s getting to be harder and harder to not need a mobile device. It’s getting pretty stupid. Theine has been crossed already. I lived half my life without internet, I’d survive without it. But the world isn’t headed in a direction that makes it feesible anymore unless you just completely check out.
A lot of banks here around me are closing cause they want people to use the online banking only, customer service barely existed in a long time now already anyway, but specifically for the TAN you need an app and thus smartphone. Not an issue for me personally as I‘m tied to all this through my job anyway, but for old people and technologically illiterate people it must feel pretty dystopian.
A majority of Americans are over 50, so that’s no surprise, but so many under 50 and 35 too? That’s a surprise. Then why is the public so captivated by it? You don’t need to use it for most things.
Hard fucking pass.
Getting away from it at times is great. I love spending time climbing a mountain or hiking around a lake with a camera looking for cool shit. But the net positive from smart phones is massive.
Now, if I could make Facebook and every piece of software its ever written vanish into thin air, I’d be all for that. And there are other bad actors with inappropriate influence as well. But on the whole there are too many positives.
