• hersh@literature.cafe
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    11 months ago

    A non-smartphone, that is, a cell phone like the ones that today’s parents had when we were young and with which we made calls and sent text messages, was enough for us, and it did not cause addiction.

    That’s not the way I remember it. Texting addiction was a thing. That’s how Twitter became popular; it was basically a way to broadcast SMS to friends at first.

    I guess it’s a matter of degrees.

    Ad-based services are the real problem here, I think. You don’t hear people complaining about Wikipedia addiction.

    • rufus@discuss.tchncs.de
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      11 months ago

      Yeah and I remember playing Snake for half a day. And spending all the school breaks bragging with the phones. And once they had color displays, we shared funny 5 second video clips each day. And that was more than 20 years ago.

      To be fair, I don’t think we were more addicted than you were ‘addicted’ to Pokemon cards. Extensively watching Peppa pig and Minecraft Lets-plays on daddy’s phone at the age of 3 is a new level, though.

    • intensely_human
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      11 months ago

      Twitter is a pub sub system. SMS is a messaging system.

      Only the pub sun produces the possibility of endless content to just scroll through.