Adults and teens concerned about their screen time are turning in their smartphones for “dumber” models.
Buried in the settings of many smartphones is the option to look up how much on average you are staring at your phone per day.
It can bring an uncomfortable realisation, that what was supposed to be a useful piece of technology has become an obsession.
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According to a study by Harvard University, using social networking sites lights up the same part of the brain that is also triggered when taking an addictive substance. This has raised concerns about phone habits among youth.
In the UK, research by Ofcom estimates that around a quarter of children aged five to seven years old now have their own smartphone.
Links have been shown in some studies between use of social media and a negative effect on mental health - especially in children.
Without knowing anything about you or your habits, I’m going to offer a counterpoint -
I’d suggest you don’t need music streaming, email, or a fitness tracker built into your phone. “Back in the day” we’d have a small collection of tapes / CDs in the car for trips, most (all?) email providers offer decent web apps, and while I agree it’s useful to track steps and food intake and such - anymore I’m not sure I trust the makers of these fitness apps to not sell my health data.
Personally, I’m trying to move towards a “dumb phone”, but like you I use my phone for a lot more than just social media & I’m finding it very tough. I think a phone with just a decent web browser could do the trick.
It’s 2024, a lot of people haven’t stored music locally for a decade or even longer. You are likely asking them to completely build a music library from scratch. This is no small task and it requires constant attention to keep up to date if you’re into new music.
Yeah, digital sales have greatly outpaced physical, but more people are discovering how little control they have over “their” music library.
The alternative to “building a library” is to stick with services that will constantly increase in price & decrease in quality. You have no control over whether your favorite band(s) are available, and no recourse if their catalog disappears for whatever reason. You will be forced to scroll through “suggested content” (ads) regardless of your subscription, and the musicians see depressingly little of the money they make for the service.
“Building a library” can be as simple as buying an album based on a song you enjoyed on the radio. There’s no “lock-in”, there’s no always-increasing monthly bill, and there’s no chance of the store saying “uh you can’t listen to that anymore”. It’s dead simple, but certainly not as flexible as streaming.
Side note - I’m absolutely the type of person who would take the time and “re-build” my library, but I acknowledge I’m in a small minority of people, there. I also love shuffling through playlists which is impossible to do with physical media. Until I find a magic answer I’m right here with the rest of you with a streaming service.
You purposely cut off “a lot.” Your comment is completely unnecessary.
I don’t need a lecture in people’s incorrect idea of digital “ownership.”
Then what are you disagreeing with me about?
lol genuinely misread you there, however if you read the rest of the comment that typo makes no difference. I’ll correct it
It makes a ton of difference. “A lot“ acknowledges that there are people who do and people who don’t keep music locally. You responded as if I said the former doesn’t exist, which is ridiculous because I run my own home server and manage all the media for my family. The point is not everyone is interested in doing this stuff - you even acknowledged you’re in a minority who enjoys managing their own local media. I don’t get what this is even about anymore. What are we even disagreeing about? What warranted this lecture about how we don’t own media (as if I ever said otherwise)?
It seems like you’re just grinding an ax about something and I don’t quite know why I’m the target. And frankly I don’t now how you could’ve misread it when you even went back to quote it and just cut it off right after the words, but I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt here.
I got a couple hundred gigs I collected over the years, and haven’t touched it or added to it since streaming was viable.
was exactly in the same boat until about a year ago when I got sick of Spotify’s shit and the way they treat artists, so I slowly rebuilt my library and run it through my Plex server. I ultimately want to get over to Jellyfin, but it was more important to me to have something that my family can access without much fuss since they are not as technically inclined as I am. If there’s too much friction they’re just going to default to Spotify and such lol
I paid for google music from release till they killed it. Now I just use YouTube since its free and has the neiche stuff. No point in paying if an adblocker can make it tolerable.
Still dependent on google/YT and adblockers, so I’d start working on a backup plan!
The only other option is to torrent everything but thats a bit of a pain. If YouTube can stop me from blocking ads, they would have actually done it by now.
Personally I wouldn’t bet against the multinational corporate juggernaut with no moral scruples lol but you do you. Going full on yar with music is easier than ever now with services like sonarr
My bet is they know they would cause an YouTube exodus and thats why all their attempts so far have been passive aggressive annoyances rather that slamming the door.
They can’t give any potential competition that kind of advantage.
But I want music streaming. I am not going to buy a cd player just so I can listen to music on the train.
Also even if I had a car there is no way I’m buying CDs (or tapes if you can even buy or listen to them anywhere) for everything I want to listen to. That would be prohibitively expensive.
But personally I don’t use social media that much. I pretty much only use Lemmy and Reddit and very occasionally Instagram.
Yar + MP3’s can live on a lot of dumb phones (just fyi) but I also get this completely. Building a music library from scratch or at least for the first time in years is a big task.
Hey, that’s fine & I get it - so much easier to shuffle a playlist than figure out which album you won’t mind hearing front-to-back again. I’m eyeballing old iPod Classics for that - I’ve seen folks mod them with sizable drives and better batteries. Dunno that I want to put in the effort, myself, but I love the idea of “upcycling” old tech.
Getting back to my original reply: my main point was you don’t need these conveniences, much less having them built into your phone. Yep, music streaming is wonderfully handy & I use it every day, but practically speaking there are other methods.
True, but I don’t need a phone either.
Or well I actually do because of the digital ID we use where I live but apart from that I never really need to talk to anyone.
I have a work phone (iPhone SE) and I do need that one, but I won’t install social media on that one anyways even though we are allowed to use it as a personal phone and even transfer our personal mobile number to the company. The only restriction on the work mobile is that no TikTok is allowed. A lot of the employees do use the work phone that way, but I refuse.
Music streaming does not seem at all incompatible with a dumb phone. Maybe you have to go to your desktop for advanced settings, but the basics should work fine.
Also, with their oftentimes crazy physical configurations, and strange yet wonderful assortment of doohickies, dumb phones were way cooler than most smart phones today. But I will burn this shit all down if they dont ALL have USB-C charging going forward.