Anyone miss life before smartphones?

Discussion in 'Loneliness' started by Kman20, Jan 15, 2019.

  1. More Jing

    More Jing Fapstronaut

    18
    16
    3
    I was reading somewhere that young people dare I say the word? oh allright Ill say it, Millenials are becoming too afraid to actually pick the phone up and have a one to one conversation with someone at a company they are dealing with ,many it seems hope that the company has a website that has a webchat feature.

    Suits me fine mind I am an outside face to face salesman and people younger than me just do not seem to have the adequate social skills to do my job so I will always be in work as long as I want to be I guess
     
    Kman20 likes this.
  2. Kman20

    Kman20 Fapstronaut

    513
    620
    93
    That’s terrible and it’s scary to know that we’re only getting worse. Imagine we get to the point to where we barely even talk to each other. Machines just do all the socializing for us.
     
    More Jing likes this.
  3. Kman20

    Kman20 Fapstronaut

    513
    620
    93
    I was at the laundromat today and you know what i love about old folk ? When they get together they just sit and talk about whatever they like to without much filtering. They always seem like they’re having a grand time just talking to each other about whatever. Especially old asian folk I’ve noticed. I think we need to be like this again. Those old folk talking to each other look more alive than we do with our eyes glued to our phones within the company of peers we should be talking to and having a grand old time with.

    It’s sad, this technology is making us more and more afraid of each other.
     
    More Jing likes this.
  4. pornlessgeneral

    pornlessgeneral Fapstronaut

    60
    65
    18
    On top of that, we also have lots of New Age websites on the Internet which promise a soon to be golden age. I wish it was true. We are also bombarded by lots of misinformation.

    Anyway, I can tell you this for sure: It's up to you to build your own life. It's up to you to endure what happens in your life, it's up to you to create an amazing life.

    Nobody is going to save you. And in order to achieve that kind of beautiful life , you need the proper information.
    And here, at nofap we already know what masturbation and pornography have done to us.

    The thing is that we have also made other mistakes and suffer from other conditions such as smoking, for some over indulgence in wrong spirituality, not working with our psychology, not studying what we should study, etc.

    4 months ago, I also quit smoking. And everything has been much better for me. Anyway, I still suffer from the consequences.... so tomorrow I have to go to the dentist , so wish me luck!
     
    Kman20 likes this.
  5. pornlessgeneral

    pornlessgeneral Fapstronaut

    60
    65
    18
    Kman20, although I no longer believe the new age stuff, I still want to experience another good age like in the 90'... I hope this becomes possible.
     
    Kman20 likes this.
  6. Kman20

    Kman20 Fapstronaut

    513
    620
    93
    Same, I’ve noticed we always seen to be looking back to the “good old simple times” but I wonder that’s because the more simple life is the better. And we are only growing away from that as the years go on. Less human as we go.
     
  7. More Jing

    More Jing Fapstronaut

    18
    16
    3
    1992 England no one had ever heard of selfies ,,,mind you the big fella at 10:05 had deffo heard of MDMA :)

     
  8. pornlessgeneral

    pornlessgeneral Fapstronaut

    60
    65
    18
  9. onceaking

    onceaking Fapstronaut

    Emm... The first ever selfie was taken in 1839 so I think some people would have known what a selfie was in 1992.

    I'm actually quite amazed people in their early 20's lived without smart phones. I thought people in their early 20's grew up on smart phones.
     
    Last edited: Jul 19, 2019
  10. Awedouble

    Awedouble Fapstronaut

    No. The simple reason is while there were good times, I'm just not that person anymore. Whether it's smart phones or whatever, even posting on a forum it's just not the same as it was back then. A lot of it was based on attachment back then, arguably healthy in some instances and certainly innocent, and this is probably very unusual I realize but I have zero nostalgia left. I mean not for the time as a whole or even specific things like certain video games, etc. - none. Essentially if I was going to have a relationship with anyone from back then they need to relate to a different person now, and not based on what connected them to that version of me back then.
     
    RobbyGo36 and onceaking like this.
  11. onceaking

    onceaking Fapstronaut

    Anyway I'm not a fan of looking back into the past and reminiscing about it. We tend to glamorise it and forget the terrible parts. I don't really miss life before smartphones. I still had social anxiety... I developed social anxiety decades before the smart phone came into existence. Yes, it can be annoying if someone keeps looking at their phone when you're talking to them but there's always something that will annoy you.
     
    Deleted Account and RobbyGo36 like this.
  12. mm
    i do, plus i discovered P with my first smartphone..
     
  13. surtennis123

    surtennis123 Fapstronaut

    129
    123
    43
    You guys are right, social media and smart phones in general are overrated, since the information overload causes your mind to be scattered all over the place and to not really learn anything in particular, at least not in detail. This is why I use YouTube, even though technically it is considered a social media platform, but it offers quite a few documentaries and interesting facts about the world, which I'm into. Do you guys remember getting a Lego set for your birthday or for Christmas and then spending hours assembling the kit? Or getting Yugioh cards, sniffing them, and then taking them out one by one out of the package? I know that this was a form of consumerism, but at least there were rules to learn, and these things required undivided attention, unlike Instagram or Facebook.
     
    RobbyGo36 and Deleted Account like this.
  14. yeahh.. there is so much to explore in yt
     
  15. NES, SNES, Gameboy, Mega Drive, N64, PS1 were the days when playability was everything, I can't be bothered playing video games now it's like playing a fucking movie. As for phones, I was happy texting and making the odd phone call on my old Nokia just to meet up with someone.
    Technology and high speed internet can only advance so much until one day it will all come crashing down and impact humans more negatively than ever.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jul 22, 2019
  16. Yeah, the divided attention piece of smartphones worries me. At many times it seems like a device made to enhance ADD.

    The only thing I do on a phone that requires undivided attention is listen to audiobooks on youtube or librivox, but even then I have trouble following narrative (maybe my mind is too used to being scattered).

    While I agree that looking on the past with rose colored glasses is problematic, I think it can be helpful to look back pragmatically and see what worked to sustain our attention and add value (like Legos) and ask whether these things have a place in today's world and in our present lives.

    My thing back in the day was Magic: The Gathering cards. They've got 15 billion expansion framchises now but at the time I started in the '90s, there was only a handful (Arabian Nights, Ice Age, and Mirage) Most of my time with these cards was spent buying and organizing them, because I only had one friend who knew how to play and he only wanted to play sometimes (there were no comic book store meetups or anything then, you had to somehow know people who played if you wanted start a game and neither of us did). Still the game had a great look and feel to it and I loved reading the quotes and stories written on the cards (in addition to the fantastic art).
     
    Last edited: Jul 22, 2019
  17. Social sites as pure as forums are mostly doomed to fail because the kool kids only use the 'best' 'social networks' like Instagram, where is not about being with other people, but about your incredible oh so original life full of photos, and photos, and photos,...
     
  18. I have to agree with you, most people of my age are social neckbeards, even though none have beards, and like their parents, unable to do any kind of sport or social activity, other than partying fridays (not the parents obv) literal 12 hrs and stay in their homes doing nothing but masturbating and seing shit 'social' apps
     
  19. Summer Son

    Summer Son Fapstronaut

    I really miss those days especially until 2009, then everything changed. Now we live an instant gratification world. I look people on the public places, they are just looking on their smartphone screens. Pornography, social media, video games, surfing aimlessly... We can access everything we want. We live in a world where searching and finding information easily but, we don't have mental capacity to extract, we have short attention span and we have much trouble with remembering and callback information.

    It is not just about mental capacity, also as generation Z, we suffer mental problems much more than older generations. Most of us have smartphones, laptops and constant connectivity to internet but we have less friends, we don't connect much our family like before. When I hanging out with friends, almost every people texting other people which doesn't exist. Also I compare myself and my closest friends, it seems like we lost our deep emotions which is I mostly miss, we lost the job/school satisfaction and enjoy the present moment. We are much more depressed and our teachers try to ask exam questions easier than before because a lot of us have ADHD like problems.

    There are also a lot of pressure if I want to change my phone to a dumbphone. Whatsapp became the standard of communication, people does not call like old times because texting is much easier. There is a correlation between mental exhaustion and technology use. We should find a balance but these devices are creating to get more people's attention. I highly recommend Digital Minimalism and Deep Work books written by Cal Newport.

    Also here is an amazing Simon Sinek's vid here:
     
    Sam78 and LEPAGE like this.
  20. I was about 25, working in a factory when a guy came round with a cell phone.

    It had a grey screen, primitive. He had to keep plugging it into a socket.

    I thought, why does a guy need to bring a cell phone around?

    I think the year was 99 or 2000.
     

Share This Page