84 Comments
Oct 15Liked by David Farrier

I for sure have to make myself out my phone down. The irony isn't lost on me that I've picked it up and read this article and started commenting.

But I've been getting better. I'm reading a lot more, I do a lot of puzzles, ( for those in the UK, Take a Break and That's Life aren't just for your granny 🤣).

I also build LEGO but that's an expensive way to stop screen time.

My partner and I have gotten into colouring recently too.

To be honest I feel slightly proud of myself when I spend an hour away from the phone screen.

I've always said to people that the best thing about the internet and social media is that it's given people a voice. That's also the worst thing. The bad may outweigh the good.

However I must say I'm so happy to have come to this Webworm community - it's a lovely place. Everyone's respectful and interactive. If only more social media was like it.

Damn. That got deep. Back to my Arrowwords.

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Recently, I have had to deal with an agency connected to the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care here in NZ; I asked for all my medical files. Connected to my Gmail is an email tracker that shows when an email is read, how many times, and forwarded, but most frightening is that it shows how long an email is active. I saw in action the other day that this guy called Ray was reading MY medical files for nearly a fucking hour! The days before, he had accidentally sent emails about me to another survivor with a similar name; I then had to deal with her trying to manipulate me on FB messenger to give me those dam emails. During the phone call to this service with the stupid name of Survivors Experiences Service, I tried to explain to this numpty about what personal agency means. How as a child abuse survivor my sense of agency was always taken away without a choice. Therefore no one dealing with me in a professional capacity should ever be taking my agency away, as that is how I learn to grow a sense of agency in my life. I also see this with Everything to do with smartphones/the internet. Smartphones actually give me a sense of agency. What I do with that has to be on my terms, otherwise it's still all about them. I need to be connected, the idea of being off grid feels like a baby boomers idealistic dream of how the world was. As a Gen X, I remember that world and it wasn't all that great.

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🤦Sometimes you wonder how people get screened & trained for these jobs that OBVIOUSLY require competence at a minimum, but also awareness of the unique requirements in a specific role like this. 🫂

🙋I also like the "agency" of a smartphone as opposed to life before, so it is now possible to be out and about instead of stuck at home waiting on an important call or e-mail, or in case a family member needs to get in touch in an emergency, and the nightmare of turning up to meet a friend/relative somewhere & not being able to find them or know if anything has happened, compared to NOW a quick TXT or message (especially for the neuro-spicy who panic easily!) And being able to download articles or even books onto the phone & go off to read them somewhere peacefull 👍 "Agency" is all, especially how you USE the world of smart-phones & apps 😎

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Thank you for explaining

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Oct 15Liked by David Farrier

Well I’ve got rid of social media,due to people I’ve known for fifty years or more morphing into conspiracy believers but oh the shame as I still managed to average four hours a day reading the Gaurdian,plus mindless drivel on utube.Since going on Substack to read David’s epistles it’s opened up another endless doomscrolling range of reading the opinions of people I already agree with🤯I feel that I have to try and get a grip on it but then find myself having spent an hour looking at car chases,and Trumps latest raving.Considering that my first memory of a phone was a sort of a box thing that a had a crank on the side to get the attention of a telephone operator,to carrying around this attention seeking monster I must admit to a sense of despair.On the plus side I now understand how people get addicted to drugs etc ,always chasing that last high.I swear I’m going to stop wasting what’s left of my life gazing mindlessly at a screen,but here I am writing this on it🫣😂😂

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Oct 15Liked by David Farrier

What really bugs me as someone who used to partly look at kids’ development, is the number of under 5 year olds parked in front of screens. To me, under 2 year olds should have very limited/no screen use. I see little kids looking at phones while they eat. I understand why parents give kids screens to look at, so they can get things done, but I’m concerned about the neural pathways affected by this. Then there’s parents sitting on their phones and not interacting with children. Or the tv just being on in the background all the time.

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It's like crack for their brains, right? The number of kids I have seen losing their shit when their screen is taken away blows my mind. I don't have kids, so can't really talk to parenting and screens but good Lord they seem bad.

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Watching a video of a baby trying to press the home button on pages of a magazine solidified this for me.

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I saw a vid a few years back of a toddler with a magazine, and they didn't know how to turm the page, they were "swiping" as if on an ipad. Scary stuff.

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My 5 year old gets minimal screen time. But what's interesting is, if she is on the iPad playing a game (mostly educational) she's always completely normal after. BUT if she watches a video/movie/tv show...she turns into a zombie after.. It's actually crazy the difference between when she watches something opposed to playing something. I no longer let her watch anything on the iPad. Luckily, she is far more interested in playing outside etc than screen time. So it isn't much of a battle, but scary to think what it is doing to kids who get extreme amounts of iPad time.

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I think a lot of a new parents spend any time that they are not paying attention to their child giving their attention to a screen. Babies notice this and get interested in this bright colored thing that takes attention away from them. I don't have kids yet but I have been thinking that I have to spend less time in front of a screen once I do, especially in front of them.

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Oct 15Liked by David Farrier

I definitely spend too much time on social media, so I've been making an effort to take some time to do something physical or more productive - like cross stitching or crocheting a giant mushroom hat for my first ren faire. It's definitely helping me feel a bit better! But being forcefully disconnected would be anxiety driving for me, I think, because I keep in touch with my pals throughout the day on apps like discord and I love that.

I am definitely already thinking about how we're going to handle internet access and smart devices with my my five year old as he grows up, though. It's going to be a difficult thing to navigate with intentionality, I think, when my own experience was being left alone to the wild west of the internet from the age of 13.

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Oct 15Liked by David Farrier

Moby convinced himself that he was dating Natalie Portman when she was in college. She said that she found him to be creepy and that they only hung out a few times but never dated. I wouldn't trust him to tell me how to sit right on a toilet.

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That was in the book, right? I remember seeing headlines about it, but never read the book. PS - this is a great listen: https://gimletmedia.com/shows/heavyweight/brholm

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Yes it was in the book and blurbed so extensively that Natalie had to issue a response and he just doubled down and said that he was not surprised she tried to forget she dated me or something like that.

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Oct 15Liked by David Farrier

I have been thinking about switching to a dumb phone, but not to be less available (I already keep my smartphone on silent and my work smartphone gets shut off at 5pm on the dot) but to avoid all the AI bullshit that's being shoved down our throats lately. My smartphone just recently updated the Notes app so that it can turn your shitty line art doodles into full color gorgeous illustrations! (I hope the sarcasm came through with that sentence.) That said, I do make a point to reduce my time using various social media apps because I found they had a negative impact on my mental health - facebook and instagram both got deleted in this past year, and twitter and tiktok got deleted well before that. Now I spend my days on tumblr if I need a mindless scroll, here if I need intelligent conversation on the state of the world or just to indulge in sharing silly sock photos or whatever with people I trust aren't going to turn an innocuous thread into a dumpster fire of insults and arguments, or using discord or text apps to chat with friends. And I make a conscious effort to be present when spending time with my kid or when I'm watching a movie, and I try to turn my phone off at 8-9pm and not look at it again at least until I've gotten out of bed, made a cup of tea and fed my cat. That's what works for me. But unfortunately, I don't think living completely without access to a smartphone is possible anymore. At least not if you don't want to or aren't able to go completely off grid and be totally self-sufficient.

Also, I hate the argument that people are worse off because they're constantly staring at a screen in public spaces... as if I didn't have my nose buried in a book any time I didn't absolutely have to engage with humans I didn't know out in the world. We're no different now, we just have different tools to engage with the world and news and stories. Instead of lugging several books with me everywhere I go, now I make sure to throw my kindle in my bag. It's a screen, sure, but it's really just a tool.

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Oct 15Liked by David Farrier

The thing about disconnecting for me is that the longer I'm offline, the more I panic about the volume of things waiting for me when I come back. It's definitely tied to my anxiety and if I'm offline for more than two days, part of me feels like I should just never come back and go live out in the woods from now on. So yes, this whole thing is clearly very healthy.

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Oct 15·edited Oct 15Liked by David Farrier

I've definitely made an effort to exit out of online spaces that I think are causing me more harm than good. Once you start dreading opening an app, it's probably time to delete that app from your phone. I also don't necessarily disagree with idea of banning phones from school. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I doubt there's anything kids should be doing online that can't wait a couple hours.

But I also wonder if a lot of this is just a generational cycle where we blame the latest technology or fad for societal problems we've always had? Before smartphones, it was the internet. And before the internet it was TV. We're always going to be concerned about the next generation, because "it was better when we were kids". Not that it necessarily WAS, we were just kids and didn't know any better.

(Not sure where I was going with this, and not sure how to end it. Please forgive the inelegant signoff....)

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author

Totally - we were having the same arguments over TV. You're bang on.

I just think we have so much more control than we give ourselves credit for, as Elle argued. The App I refuse to use is Slack - it's like it combined email and social media but for work. I did one project using it, and the little noises it made would almost trigger anxiety sweats.

In the bin for that app.

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PS: I know some people are forced to use such apps for work - I was in the lucky position of throwing my toys and just saying "IF YOU WANT ME, EMAIL ME OR CALL. BUT DO NOT PING ME ON THAT HORRIFIC APP. Or you can, but I won't see it, because I have deleted that cursed thing!"

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Oct 16·edited Oct 16

Yeah, I've used Slack for work and volunteer projects, and I don't care for it. If "too many cooks in the kitchen" were an app.

I have similar problem with Discord. I guess I just don't need to have that many real-time conversations going at once. It's probably why I was never interested in chat rooms.

(Plus I sound much smarter than I really am when I'm able to think about what I want to say with no pressure, but that's just a side benefit, honest.)

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I've been online in one way or another for about 35 years, through the birth of many of the various technologies we've encountered (and listening to plenty of dial-up modems negotiating) and what works for me is that I just don't worry about what other people think or are doing. I used to spend a lot of time online talking to friends (well before any form of social media existed) and while that was nice I really wanted to be doing things in reality instead of just "virtuality". I have always kept my smartphones (back to the early days of the Blackberry) in a state that they are disabled from any alerting except to the equivalent of the old land line phone at home ringing. Even that's been constrained further by ignoring all numbers I don't already know, so the only alerts that come through are phone calls from people I know, text messages (which are curated to eliminate all marketing ones I can), and appointment reminders. Then I put the screen face down any time it is out so even silent notifications aren't visually disrupting. I'm using it on my terms, when I have something I want to do, rather than letting it try to lure me in all the time with casino-level variable feedback mechanisms.

And there's not any social media stuff on there - if I want to look at any of those (which generally I don't - mostly just to have individual conversations with people that I know) then I do that from a computer in a browser. The extra hurdle there takes away the addictive temptation to open the app and scroll mindlessly, which I will completely admit I did with one platform for a while and had to retrain away from worrying I'd "miss something". Because guess what - no one is sitting around on there waiting for me, so I should instead go live my life in reality rather than be worried about that artificial virtual platform. I watch a TON of television and movies, so I'm not saying that screens are bad and being "holier than thou" - just use them with specific intent rather than as an addictive crutch.

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Oct 15Liked by David Farrier

I managed to swing a three-week stint as a hut warden in the remote southern alps of NZ, coinciding with the 2020 US presidential. No outside news, emails or texts for three weeks - bliss!

In a fortuitous repetition of this situation I am off to remote Lake Angelus on Nov 5th this year, for a week. Just music and books to look forward to.

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What a world to tap out of! How did it feel catching up? It's like a form of time travel you did, in away. Enjoy Lake Angelus - I hope the world is not on fire when you return!

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Sounds kind of like the Big Brother US contestants just finding out earlier this week that Biden exited the race, or Jared Leto having no idea what was happening with COVID in Feb/Mar 2020 as he was off disconnected on a retreat. And what you often learn in those things is that you didn't need to know about any of those things and could instead just be in the moment with whatever you were doing.

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Uttering Jared Leto's name is banned here on Webworm! (ha!)

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Oct 15Liked by David Farrier

My iPhone recently brought me the green screen of death, during a Pink concert nonetheless. It was odd being at a concert and not being able to snap a photo or take a video. But I found I was in it so much more. (As much as I can at the back of the general admission of the back of the stadium as a 5’1” woman.) The next day we headed for the store to purchase a new one. I pleaded with my husband, couldn’t I just use his old one (the battery sucks in it and the technology would be so slow, was his excuse to not.) As we walk in and I see the $1000+ price tag, and pay off my broken phone (we still owed $100, it was less than 3 years old,) I found myself saying to the young man, can’t I just have something super simple? He looked at me like I was crazy. He brings out the box of my newly (leased, rent to own?) teal iPhone 16? I’m not even sure, I don’t care. He asked me if I wanted to asmr the box, do the unwrapping. My turn to look at him like HES the crazy one. About an hour later I walk out with my brand new iPhone, and a $30 charge per month for so many years…I don’t know and I don’t care honestly. (I’m grateful, and realize some people would like to be complaining about having a brand new iPhone.) But as I proceeded to drop it less than 24 hours after I had it, and getting “the eye” from my husband, and less than 72 hours later the security guard at another concert venue, sat my keys on top of my phone to hand them to me and scratched my screen….. I just kind of miss “the good old days,” when phones were those things connected to the wall by a fun swirly cord. I miss actually talking and engaging with people. Put your phone away for just an hour at the store and see how many people you could flip off or stick your tongue out at and they’d be none the wiser. Yes phones and tablets are a godsend for parents to get 5 minutes of peace, but it is kind of sad seeing little ones engaged in a screen and not the world around them. Idk, call me old fashioned. Tweet about it why don’t you, or do they call it X about it now? Again, I don’t know, and I don’t care

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Please tell me you have a cover of some kind! All that dropping!

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I do have a cover, a pretty good one. My husband thinks the screen protectors are a scam but I intend on getting one of those also

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Oct 15Liked by David Farrier

I love the “if books could kill” podcast and was excited to see it mentioned. Worth a listen if you don’t already.

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Mike and Peter are awesome together. I loved their analysis on The Anxious Generation.

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Oct 15Liked by David Farrier

My sentiments exactly. Bans and prohibitions have never really worked very well, have they? People keep reaching for them as the answer, because they are easier than education and mindfulness about using these things judiciously. There is a reason they say "complete abstinence is easier than perfect moderation" - but it's just not always possible. A much better way is really educate our population on how and why to use all the technology available to us, and having that as part of core educational curriculum would go a long way (though I know how hard it is to change those things!).

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Oct 15Liked by David Farrier

100% this! Teaching resilience and balance and how to safely and wisely use our devices is a much better way forward than prohibition and is a more effective way to keep children (and everyone) safe. Banning teens from social media is not the answer when the mental health impacts of the Internet are much more widely felt than with young people. It would also remove children's agency as well. Much better to put resources into parental support and courses for parents and children on how to stay safe online, and of course to be supporting Frontline mental health.

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As a retired teacher after 35 years, my concern is not adults. You do you. 👍 But what saddens me is the number of kids who are shoved in front of screens bc it’s easier for parents than having to deal with and parent them. And it is evident in kids’ attention spans, attitudes and lack of perseverance. I taught students long before technology and left after we are well into it. Their brains are being rewired before they even get wired! Have you ever seen a toddler with a pacifier/binky, etc. in its mouth navigating an IPhone like a teenager? Hang out in a grocery store and you’ll see them. Now that I mentioned it, you’ll be amazed at how many you see. And before I sound like that old, bitchy lady, I do think phones/tech have value. In the proper time and place. And for example, our neurodivergent nonverbal students, phones, Ipads, computers etc. have opened the world. There are other uses of course. My concern is that phones are everywhere for kids. As adults we struggle with limiting their use. And now kids’ brains are wired for them. It’s not good. If, as adults, we can’t stop our own phone addiction, how will developing brains learn to control its use?

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From what I can tell from friends' kids, screens are basically a highly addictive drug that you scream at when it's taken away? It blows my mind. And yeah - it's scary. It's also terrifying being a parent to me in 2024 and I have no doubt it's overwhelming whilst trying to manage life and a screen is just this magic thing that gives you 5 minutes peace. Or 30 minutes. Or an hour. Or a day.

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Oct 16Liked by David Farrier

all of this. as adults, we can somewhat decompartmentalise, but children and teens trying to deal with what is online?! no wonder they're all anxious and depressed, with no patience. Combined with all these kids now are "fussy eaters" so get fed processed meat and sodium with maybe a side of broccoli.

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Oct 15Liked by David Farrier

Food for thought. I never bought into social media because a friend who signed up to Facebook when it first landed said it was ‘completely addictive’. Coming from a family mired in various addiction issues, it was a hard pass for me. I’m grateful for my smartphone, but it isn’t ‘smart’, I’m supposedly the ‘smart’ one as the human that controls it. It’s on me what I sign up to, what I scroll and whether I’m aware that there’s a cost to me, whether that be time, social connection or mental health wise, to my use. That’s great because I’m an adult, it’s a slippery slope for kids whose pre frontal cortex hasn’t matured. I have no answers other than take notice of what your kids are doing online.

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Oct 15Liked by David Farrier

Great article, it definitely is harder to move to another activity especially after my kid is in bed and i cant leave the house. But ultimately, we have to take individual responsibility for our own usage and showing our kids that there is something other than a screen to fill our lives with dopamine and fun.

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