AIBU to completely hate my phone?

[Sorab]

I am 55 yo, loved the internet when I first got on it, going on message boards then Facebook, downloading tracks from kazaa all the rest of it. I loved the convenience of being able to shop, bank, book holidays even (!) online and would fire up my trusty modem to do all this stuff.

So when smartphones came along I thought : great, now I can do all this without having to log in to my computer, I can just do it wherever. Everything will be simple and seamless, how freeing.

Fifteen years later and I hate my fucking phone. I had to turn off notifications because they were sending me mental but all that means is that every night I go through them, reply to the ones I can, ditch the others and increasingly I feel harassed and got-at. Because it's fucking endless.

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Fancy a trip to the theatre? Download our app. Talk to the bot in the meantime. It won't help but it does mean your active life span is significantly shorter. Want to see the Uffizi? Wade through endless scam sites and getyourguide scalpers before, eight hours in, triumphantly securing an entry ticket for 4.30pm on the 56th of Doctember 2089. Bank error in your favour? WRONG, you fucking dweeb. I think you'll find that you consented to being hacked by some gibbering fool in St Petersburg when we closed your local branch and now this £2000 shortfall is on you.

And that's before you even consider all the personal communications. Nobody phones any more. It's endless fucking WhatsApps. It takes eleventy billion years just to arrange a drinks meet-up and when you finally get close to zero hour all day it's pingpingping 'i might be late ' 'im on my way ' 'im on the train but it's busy ', yeah sure fascinating but we don't need to know this. It's like being in a constant state of interruption. I'm not even including the hobby group/work/street WhatsApps because I've long ignored them. I figure if my house/child/town is on fire I'll realise and anything else I'll get to eventually.

In just a few short years, really less than 15, I've gone from thinking that technology is brilliant to feeling harassed, bullied and mildly mugged by it.

AIBU?

I too totally resent the power they have over us.
Banking
Ordering tickets
QR scan for this and that
The list is endless

And as someone who goes to a lot of gigs don't get me started on people who watch the whole thing through their phone.

You see friends and family in the pub or restaurant not talking to each other, all just staring at the phone, it's so sad.

My Stepdad (in his late 50s) has never had a mobile at all. It’s is possible to live without one, although he doesn’t drive so doesn’t need parking apps!

I agree completely @Sorab. So many times I’ve just wanted to ditch the fucking phone. But it has me trapped. My whole life is on there. I wouldn’t know how to function in the practical parts of life without it. How would I pay someone, or get paid? Go to the non existent bank branch? I need my calendar on me at all times for work and I’m often out and about. I have to be able to contact people for work, and be contactable when on the move. If I went back to a landline and answering machine, plus paper diary, it would make things a lot slower for potential clients and I would lose out. In fact, hardly anyone calls me. Most of my comms are email or text message, so if I didn’t have a smart phone I think my business would be over, because nobody could message me.
I wish I could leave civilisation behind and become an off grid spoon whittler, but I would very likely starve.
There is no way back. All escape routes have been cut off. Nobody makes any money out of us all connecting with one another face to face. Nobody makes any money from us being content.
I completely hate my phone and everyone else’s.

What I hate about technology is that it seems to have made it possible for virtually every company to "game-ify" every purchase. I just want to exchange fair money for fair goods and services, but I increasingly feel like every transaction is part of a gamble to not be swindled. Even going to Sainsbury's, I might be ripped off if I don't go on the app and click a button to "activate my nectar prices" and then you feel pressure to buy those products as the prices are supposedly better. I know you could ignore it but this is what I mean by it feeling like I have to resist some kind of game. It feels like it's the case with so many products... Don't buy it there, buy it through us/at the right time/on this special day to get the best price. I just want a clear pricing structure based on what stuff costs to produce please.

I agree. Before, it was a nice thing, smoother internet, instant news. Now, it's compulsory. However, I've started carrying a book and old-fashioned notepad around instead. Great for jotting ideas/doodles, the kids enjoy it too.

And the doom. I’m interested in the. Disaster in Nepal but I don’t want to see bits of people. Or worse. I definitelydon’t need to see Ai videos of human tragedy made by wicked people for clicks . But if I want the news I get these horrible and unhelpful things too.

Be more ruthless - block, delete, ignore, switch off notifications, use 'do not disturb' as much as poss, use silent mode sometimes.

Basically make yourself less available. Get rid of the apps which are making your life worse. The deluge of notifications can disturb your peace at the worse of times. The people I know who receive lots of notifications the whole time seem to be in a state of constant high alert. It's not good for your mental health.

I agree.
It is a tiny tyrant.
I have actually started shutting it in a drawer in another room for hours on end which sort of ruins the point of a mobile phone but I feel the need to try to reset this master/servant situation which has developed.

It's called enshittification, and you can get degrees in it.

The UK is a world leader too.

Completely agree. We are not built for being permanently contactable and dealing with 100s of pieces of information an hour.

It was better when the internet was in a separate room of the house!

Although as a millennial who hates phone calls, I love texts/whatsapp

I do miss going online

Agree! I’ve started keeping my phone on airplane mode (I still keep access to my music and audiobooks which is all I really care about) and turning it off at specific times when I have capacity to reply. Also have deleted many apps and have to get the laptop out to use those sites.

Archiving WhatsApp chats was a revelation! Highly recommend.

I try and rationalise it as A) years ago all these messages would be via letter so my late replies are still quicker than a week in the mail and B) if anything is an actual emergency they'll contact my DH and I’ll find out that way.

I have been planning to get a “dumb phone” for a while. An old Nokia or similar. Use that for only texts and calls. Then putting the iphone in a drawer and only getting it out when I need to use banking, google etc.

I’d have to take both out to the shops though, to pay for parking for example.

One positive is that I read that soon AI will destroy itself, because it keeps taking in its own slop and regurgitating it, so soon will be completely unreliable.

I agree! I was actually thinking about this recently, when I was on a flight. I know you can actually pay for WiFi on board now- but I didn’t- and it was blissful! I thought to myself how great it was that I knew my phone was out of action for several hours and there was nothing I, or anyone else, could do about it! I didn’t feel any worry or guilt about checking/ not checking it, because it was pointless doing so without internet connection. Admittedly, I did still use it to watch some Netflix programmes that I had pre-downloaded though

I swear they regularly let work experience kids loose on my banking app, it's always being messed about with and 'improved'.

I saw a good word to describe all this: enshittification

It already is!

Your last paragraph nails it OP! 15 years ago I worked in a media job at the forefront of social community building. Now I just work on projects that are as far from internet news as is possible.

Could not agree with you more OP. Your description is brilliant. My problem Is also smartphone addiction. I hate it but don’t know how to stop. Any tips anyone?

You do have the ability to de install apps if you want to. This can take a smart phone down to a very basic level if you delete enough of them.

The thing that tends to annoy me more is these days everyone seems to want you to go through their app.

I suspect this is because their app is actually a data harvesting machine that tries to get as much knowledge as possible for the app owner to sell on.

The other annoying thing is that because everyone wants to force you to use their app, you end up with hundreds of apps you hardly use. This is especially true if you travel and need local apps for things like train timetables and other things.

Of course you can delete apps at any time, but it is a pain to have to reset yourself on the system every time.

Highly recommend the book "How to break up with your phone" - it's a useful and entertaining read.

On my phone, I have no social media apps, and most notifications turned off. I use the digital wellbeing settings to set it to focus mode when I need to get things done, which blocks chrome too, so I can't access waste-of-time websites. (I've put the icon for the digital wellbeing app on the front page). I often have it set to grayscale, which makes it less exciting to my brain than all the bright colours. I "put the phone to bed" to charge in another room at night, so I can't reach for it the moment I wake up.

Still not a 100% success, but at least makes the fight against phone addiction a more level playing field.

Do you not just disable focus mode when you want to get on the sites?

I found how to set up different notification noises.

So important ones have their own noise and all the rest are muted.

It saves having to pick up the phone to figure out what is going on.