Is it bad I'm reading this article on gasp a smartphone? It sounds like Mr. Cal Newport has been trying to avoid technology for a while. The reason technology is driving him crazy has little to do with the tech itself. Rather, life is driving him crazy, and he thinks if he unplugs from life he'll become magically satisfied having reclaimed that time to stare at a wall and write shitty self help books (also an addiction see: my brother). Or reading a newspaper. What about decades ago when the average American used to spend 5 hours a day watching television? Everything in life is addictive. Information is addictive. Books are addictive. Falling in love is addictive. Comparing it to cigarettes is absolute mayhem given AS A MILLENIAL there are many people my age hacking the darts and posting on Instagram and only one of those behaviours is giving you a fucking tumour. Somehow my dad managed to get distracted enough to fail out of the university in the 70's without smartphones. It was called playing pool and getting piss drunk every weekend. Didn't need any deep work for that.In 2004, when Cal Newport was still an undergrad at Dartmouth, all his friends were making accounts on a new website called Facebook. Newport opted out.
Okay, well what's the cost in terms of my time attention required to have this device in my life?
No, see also what I said to binder below. The comparison to cigarettes is not about whether it literally causes cancer, it's about cultural norms and what is looked down upon. Have you read this article? Sadly, it seems to have gone, but Wayback archive still has it. The gist of it is that games like Farmville were intentionally maliciously designed to fuck with your brain's dopamine response, that their creators are more than aware of it, and that they did it anyway. That article was written in good ol' 2011, but the practice has metastasized all over our smartphone apps. You can say a lot about books or television, but it does not deliver the completely personalized addiction-inducing behaviour that Instagram does. Instagram, for example, will track your usage patterns to make sure that every time you check the app, you see new likes and interactions. It'll hold back likes and comment notifications just to get you to check the app faster. Ain't no book pulling that shit on me.Is it bad I'm reading this article on gasp a smartphone?