Majority of Americans Would Like to Return to Time Before Cell Phones, Internet, According to New Poll
Majority of Americans Would Like to Return to Time Before Cell Phones, Internet, According to New Poll
Even younger respondents who have never lived in such a world voted in favor of giving it a whirl
Seventy-seven percent of middle-age Americans (35-54 years old) say they want to return to a time before society was “plugged in,” meaning a time before there was widespread internet and cell phone usage. As told by a new Harris Poll (via Fast Company), 63% of younger folks (18-34 years old) were also keen on returning to a pre-plugged-in world, despite that being a world they largely never had a chance to occupy.
I call BS. I think this is something that people like to think that they believe, but they really don't.
The first time they found themselves standing in the kitchen and thinking, "How long am I supposed to cook chicken?" and realizing the only way to find out is to clean up, get dressed, drive down to the bookstore and find a cooking-for-beginners book (or, if they're lucky and know somebody who would know the answer, they could try to call them, but it would only work if that person was home and able to hear their landline and felt like gambling on answering an unknown call - unless they maybe had caller ID), they'll be right back on board with the digital age.
Like, go watch early-seasons episodes of The X-Files and realize how many of the plot lines only work because the show started in a time that was pre-mobile phones, and then realize that kind of hilariously stupid and inconvenient situation was just, like, everyday life for everybody not so very long ago. Plan to meet a friend for lunch but they don't show up? You can decide to wait and risk eating alone, or go home, because there's literally no way to find out if they're just running a little late or if they're completely unable to come or what.
Sure, social media is a bit of a hellscape, but there is so much convenience that people take for granted that comes from cell phones and internet. I just do not believe more than a single-digit percentage of people would seriously enjoy going back for more than a few days, tops. No more than a camping trip.
I have trying to find the poll by following link and found nothing but this.
According to a new Harris Poll shared exclusively with Fast Company
So there is no actual source, no ways to check if the poll actually exist or not, no way to check if poll's question phrased in a way to get certain response, how many actually responded to the poll, etc. And, compare to most big news published poll result, a confidence and margin of error.
There for, I simply view this as click bait article to generate engagement, which it did.
Do people really want to go back to the dark ages before Wikipedia existed? I know I don't. Knowledge is power, and the Internet is a treasure trove of it, if you know where to look.
That said, I do want to go back to computers that obeyed only their users and no one else. Malicious hardware like TPM and Pluton is really scary.
I feel like, for the 35-54 bracket at least, this must be less about giving up all the modern conveniences we have today but more about wishing they could raise their children in that simpler time. You don't want your kids to be left out of what's new and cool but you also don't want them exposed to EVERYTHING these platforms bring. It's a tight rope to walk and I'm not looking forward to it when my kids are older. I know a lot of people who have gone down the road of, "I didn't have a cell phone growing up, my kids won't either." But it's not very realistic in today's world.
If you are longing for a world that you never lived in, there's probably some "grass is greener on the other side" in play. The world before smart phones was considerably worse. I bet that most of the people who are asking for this don't know how to read a paper map and have never seen a phone book. They aren't considering getting lost or into a car accident and needing to find the nearest house to ask a stranger to call emergency services on their land line.
The good news is that, if you don't want to use a smart phone, you can just... not. Nobody is forcing you. If you really wanted a world without smart phones you would already not be using one!
I don't think people actually would, if push came to shove. They're just expressing nostalgia for a simpler time, which is pretty easy to understand, given all the dystopian effects of social media and smartphones.
I think smartphones have done a lot of harm, but they've still done far more good, which is why we use them. Especially in poorer countries where smartphones are often people's only access to the internet.
That said, there's nothing stopping any of these people in the article from being the change they want to see in the world. Not to send anybody to Reddit, but r/dumbphones is a fast growing subreddit for people that want to try that. A lot of the users are Gen Z who never got to try them and want to give it a whirl.
Seems reasonable to me. I'm in the upper end of that range, center GenX (yes I know you don't remember us). I vary between wanting it to be 1970-2000. 1990 was nice, good industrial music, many of the old blues musicians were still alive & playing, computers were still fun, BBS's, the early non-shitty Internet, pagers and car phones if you wanted to be reachable that much, but you could just NOT be. Go out for cigarettes and never come back.
Anyone who thinks this panopticon hellscape we live in is better, is nuts.
This is also pretty common. People tend to think like that about everything they had in their formative years.
It's nostalgia plus a realization of how entrenched tech bureocratic processes have penetrated their lives, oftentimes making them worse, not better (many of the improvements are taken for granted).
But my point is you can take this "old times were better" in most of every case when doing these surveys. About music, TV and everything.
What people really want are the benefits without some of the cons that they've very willingly accepted out of laziness and/or ignorance.
They've lost a ton of privacy and rights and ability to discourse and act by being so heavily surveilled and "panopticon'd" into superficial uniformity of opinion.
Many of the things they complain about they can still do "non tech/non online" but it requires more effort than pretending that there should be just one way so they don't have to choose.
I like the internet. It's been integral in my life becoming myself. I've met some of my favorite people through it.
It's my hope that the era of social media comes to an end and the internet transitions back to how it used to be pre 2008 or so (iPhone and Facebook changed things), less centralized and all-consuming. A return to smaller communities as opposed to these larger algorithmic, advertiser-servicing platforms. Discord servers and focused forums. Communities of friends over public places to chase clout. In addition to handy services like shopping, banking, maps, etc. In essence, the internet as a tool rather than a social expectation. Because in many ways it is a really powerful tool, and I don't want to see that go away and I don't think it ever will at this point.
There are cracks showing in the social media model, Twitter and reddit in particular at the moment, but it yet remains a hope that we can turn it back to a more positive thing in our lives.
I don't want to go back to a world without the internet or cell phones, but I would like expectations to change. Just because you can theoretically reach me at any time doesn't mean I'm obligated to respond to you or acknowledge you at any time. Whether it's work or personal acquaintances, I can't stand it when it's treated like a horribly rude thing to not immediately acknowledge and respond to any communication, no matter how trivial. A lot of times, I'm busy working on my own thing and don't want to kick off twenty minutes of back and forth texting over some trivial thing that's going to distract me from what I'm doing.
As someone who is Gen X or millennial depending upon the day and the years they pick, I don't want this. It's very easy to look back through rose-tinted glasses, but there are a lot of things, which many commenters already touched on, that were much harder or worse then. One that I didn't see early was maps and navigation. I had to lug around a giant atlas and plan out my routes to get somewhere. If there were a new street or development or something, I was SOL. Even in the early days, printing out MapQuest maps was far better, but still had its own issues. Aside from that, many other commenters mention many of the things that were decidedly worse or more inconvenient back then.
As a baby GenX-er smartphones, and always-on internet didn't come into my life until I was at university so I straddle both worlds, and I definitely would not go back. What I have done in recent years is revolt against the always-on side of modern tech. My phone makes not a peep of sound or vibration, it shows no notifications unless I look in the tray, all app badges are turned off. I can't tell you how much this has improved my life!
I even went so far to run my phone in black and white for 6 months as an experiment. That was a real interesting experience! I found it way easier to simply read and then put down my phone. When I finished my stint and turned colour back on I actually felt dizzy using the phone for a few days.
When you look at how Kbin/Lemmy has exploded in a just a few short days it's clear that modern tech can be amazing for humanity in terms of creating communities and bringing people together, but how we do it in terms of app designs, notifications, dark patterns and all the hullabaloo of is somehow anti-human and I think with waves hands all that has befallen us in the past couple of years we are suddenly waking up and trying to find new ways to be people with tech.
Let's hope the fediverse is a good step in that new direction.
I agree with the commenters who said people miss certain things but forget about convenience of the connected world. I wanted to add that people likely misattribute their nostalgia to unconnected world because they were kids. It felt great being a kid not because we were pre-internet, but because we were kids. We had no bills to worry about. We’d always have food. And that was the only food we ever knew about so we loved it. Our worries were to just have enough time in the day to play all the cool things with friends and explore the world. We didn’t feel guilty for just playing video games the whole day or hanging out with friends the whole day. Our bodies could fall from a tree and our bruises would heal in a week. We’d find a motherfucking ant and be fascinated by it for hours! Have you tried staring at ants now? It’s mindnumbingly boring. Of course we miss the way we felt when we were kids. Technology ha nothing to do with it. Every generation misses being a kid.
Been there, done that, and fuck no.
But I also have no problems with leaving my phone on Do Not Disturb and reading a book. I am happy to ignore the world. I don't let connectedness rule me. I use it.
Usually. I also have ADHD, so sometimes I just need my stimulation
They might say that, but they don't really mean "the internet" - they mean social media. Which I can understand, I was bullied "offline" when I was at school, but at least when I got home - I had respite. I can't imagine how stressful it is these days for kids, being bullied online, getting home and still being bullied.
(TDLR: Technology (in its infancy) was something new, exciting, fun and enjoyable. Today, it is manifested more as an overlord whose primary capacity is to spy, intrude and take your personal information in order that they might gain from it.)
I grew up in a world before all of the modern day technology took over. They were good times, but when technology did eventually begin to develop, it effects were initially benign. It was initially adopted by those who were considered 'geeks' and people who were willing to spend money on it (even IBM clones such as the Tandy 1000 were going for $1,000 back in the day).
I remember when pagers were coming on the scene and allowed people to reach out to each other if they weren't at home or at work (which were the only places they had access to a reachable phone number). It gave greater freedom for those who were in positions where they were on call 24x7 - it allowed them to go places and still be reachable instead of being stuck at home and waiting for a phone call that might never come.
Of course, things grew from there which provided many other benefits including access to a huge repository of information. Nowadays, that access to information has become a means of harvesting information from the very individual seeking to obtain it. The innocence of what was once revolutionary has been been upended by and ideology that has figured out and embraced how to consume its own consumers.
I spend more time today figuring out how to keep my data and personal information private and secure. Using Linux on my computer, running GrapheneOS on my phone as well as other considerations all in an attempt to keep at bay invasive companies and their ever evolving techniques in order to pry and spy upon me. It's a shame that what was once fun and exciting is now something to be feared.
I think what people are really missing is being able to feel disconnected.
Like it used to be you'd send an email and you'd get a response tomorrow. Because people would go online occasionally.
Now if I'm not responding to a text within a few minutes people get upset. You'll see people answer the phone during a movie to say "hey I'm in a movie I'll call you back"
I'd like to go back to the world of being connected but having a slight delay is ok
On one hand, shut it all down. We tried, it irreversibly melted the brains of billions.
On the other hand, mega rose tinted glasses. It wasn’t greener days for folks being systematically oppressed, as there was no concept of democratic news sources run by people.
Compromise: shit’s fucked, can’t change that. can control my own internet hygiene to avoid the doom bullshit, will do that.
no thanks
I like having the internet and technology. It's the abusive use of it that I don't like.I am also one who wishes phones were of no necessary use. Why do I need a phone number to sign up to an online service? Why must I have an email address and internet access just to see what lab results came in from the doctor's office? What use is my email address being "real" to some online community and services? I would be okay in a world where the phone and emails were just a nice thing to have and not required. I understand that everyone is saying "just turn off the phone, watch tv, unplug the computer"... But with how just about every company in the world requires this to even function, it's a lot easier said than done. I think the real thing folks on surveys like this are looking for is a world where the internet, phones, computers, etc are nice to have but not needed to live a life. Or maybe I'm just unique in how I feel, dunno, just had to share my thoughts lol.
Not a lot of meat to the story, and it conflates tech itself with the social expectations that have sprung up because of it and the way it's used. "Instagram's pedophile network" (which seems only to be brought up for shock value) is not "cell service."
I'd hazard a guess that what respondents really want to return to is not being expected to be available to anyone at any time. And, crucially, they don't feel they can just ... do that.
Hard fucking pass.
Getting away from it at times is great. I love spending time climbing a mountain or hiking around a lake with a camera looking for cool shit. But the net positive from smart phones is massive.
Now, if I could make Facebook and every piece of software its ever written vanish into thin air, I'd be all for that. And there are other bad actors with inappropriate influence as well. But on the whole there are too many positives.
Eh. I like the internet and the connections it allows us to form. I think internet access for all is a good thing.
I do miss a time when cellphones weren't ubiquitous, though. They have their purpose but there's a certain social expectation to always be available, and I think that is a bad thing. I miss disconnecting. I guess, in principle, I could literally just do that.
A majority of Americans are over 50, so that's no surprise, but so many under 50 and 35 too? That's a surprise. Then why is the public so captivated by it? You don't need to use it for most things.
I don't want to get rid of that stuff, but instead I uninstalled all work apps off my phone. They need me, they can page me and I'll login with my work laptop. When I'm out of work, I'm out.
you know, they say that when asked but having a flip phone and no home internet is very possible.
No thanks.
There are a few very specific things I miss from pre-2007. For instance, I weirdly miss conversations where a whole group of people are trying to remember an answer to a question. I still find my self ask a question to a group and when someone pulls out their phone I'm disappointed because I didn't just want the answer.
But that's not a reason to go back. That's just nostalgia.
Return to it and have my knowledge of all the positive and negative aspects erased would be something I’d consider. But having used all the technology for so long, I couldn’t imagine just don’t having it anymore tomorrow