it looks like this addiction crosses all age groups from what I can tell

I can easily live without my phone - heck, it's in airplane mode most of the time

Which sounds suspiciously like "Get off my lawn!"

But I agree that I could live without my phone. It's a convenience that becomes a nuisance most of the time...

Being part of the older "get off my lawn" generation, I can honestly say that I leave my smarty phone home when I go out to shop or eat. Sorry..

Could you imagine if Trump didn’t have his cell phone? Well, other than peace on earth.

But it's only a senior moment that has me not bring my smartphone with me. Then again, I need it with me, between an elderly parent, a husband who works oddball hours in the middle of the night, and my own medical issues.

Consider yourself lucky that you don't have serious health issues that require you to keep a phone with you so EMTs can contact your spouse when they find you passed out on a sidewalk. And notice I didn't say "if," but "when." Because I did pass out once on a public street, and my husband was at the hospital almost as soon as I was checked in, thanks to the EMTs finding my phone and calling him. The husband would have F-R-E-A-K-E-D if he had come home and found my car there, but me nowhere to be found, no note, nothing.

And no way for anyone to know whom to contact even if it could be opened.

The EMT can put your finger to the button when you're passed out, to get the phone to open.

You do realize that, right?

With beepers.

We also used film cameras, pocket calculators and dayrunners.

And slam books, too.

That's what.

If someone in your family was injured and didn't have identifying information on his or her person, you were left in limbo with wondering what might have happened to them if they didn't come home at their usual time.

I was taking a walk the day I passed out. Had no ID on me, because I thought I was walking around the neighborhood, and would come right back home. I did have my phone, because it's my pedometer, and thank goodness I did. That's why the EMTs were able to contact my husband about where I was. They put my thumb on the button, my home screen opened up, and they went right to my contact list to see if they could find someone who knew me. My husband is the first entry in my contact list for a reason. You can put your emergency contact as the first contact in your list of contacts by putting an A and a space before "Honey" or whatever pet name you call your spouse. EMTs will zero right in on it.

In the past I have been stuck on the side of the road with a flat tire or out of gas - both times when I'd left my cell phone at home.

It is a tool for me to use when I need it.

On the other hand, I do not have social media on my phone and I consider those the addictive parts. My husband does have Facebook on his, and when his notification chime sounds, he HAS to pick up the phone to check it. I find it very annoying.

Was because I worked nights. And I'm talking 10:30 at night to 7 in the morning. If I got off work early or got sick and needed to come home, it was better to have a cell phone on me than not, in case I was in an accident or my car broke down on my way home. The last thing you want at oh-dark-thirty is to have a broken down car on the side of the road, and no way to call for help. The husband was adamant that I have a cell phone for that reason.

I haven't been without a cell phone since then. When the people working on a construction project severed the main landline trunk for our neighborhood and we had nothing BUT shitty phone service after it, we got rid of the landline and became cell phone only. Haven't looked back. Don't miss it at all.

Twenty years ago when I got my first cell phone, my husband worked nights. Sometimes I'd drive in to see him at work and that cell phone was a life line just in case.

Ironically when I ran out of gas and another time when I had a flat, I'd left the cell at home. For the gas, a nice couple stopped and took me home so I could get the gas can and put some in the car. The flat, a deputy stopped and called AAA for me since he couldn't take the time to change it himself. Since then, I have been better at keeping the cell charged and remembering to take it with me.

My newest phone gets a signal here at home, but it is the first in twenty years to do so. I'll keep my landline, though since I have to have one with the DSL, plus I've had this number for forty years

That cell phones have legit uses, and aren't merely goof-off accessories. There are lots of things that a cell phone does nowadays that make it a great tool for all kinds of non-phone things.

It's my food journal, my pedometer, my glucose tracker and my high blood pressure tracker. Now instead of bringing file folders of crap to an MD's office, I can break out my phone, and show how I've been doing with sticking to a prescribed diet and exercise regime, and with keeping my other health issues under control.

I can order my med refills with my phone now, rather than having to call the pharmacy for them. If I'm out of refills, I can use my GP's app to request an update to my prescription.

When I'm at the supermarket and have that sinking feeling that I forgot to put something on my list, I can look up recipes and see that, yep, I forgot to include X ingredient, so I don't get all the way home and then find myself in a bind when I don't have that ingredient while I'm cooking. I use the digital coupons app at my supermarket to get all kinds of great deals that aren't available to paper coupon users. I invariably have a $3-5 off coupon just for shopping. Or I get free items through the digital coupons. One time, I walked out of the store with $30 worth of items, and I paid only $2 for them, thanks to all of my coupons and discounts.

As for the old-fashioned landline... I didn't want to get rid of the one we had, but the crappy repair job that the phone company did gave me no other choice. The static on the line after that was beyond unbearable. Nowadays, I find it impossible to justify the expense of having a landline, when my cell phone is always near. But I live in a city, and can cut that expense without paying too much of a price for it. If I lived in a more rural area, I'd have a landline because it's so much more reliable.

As long as we had a drought, the line was fine. As soon as it rained, static and bad internet connections. I called the phone company every time it got bad but they would never check the line while it was raining. Eventually it got so bad, they finally admitted it needed replacing - and it was the fault of their sub-contractor who had cut the line and did a bad splice.

They ran a brand new line, no splices all the way to the house, about a quarter of a mile the way the drive runs. Since then, we have great phone and great internet - except when a hurricane knocks out all power and all telephone service in the area...

I'm in my 40's and can't even watch a TV show without checking social media multiple times.

as an experiment, of course

Thanks for the chuckle!
To the poster who posited the question, I wonder if he/she knows you've been here nearly 20 years.

A twenty-something male who was always laughing and joking around at the gym. One day his friends hid his phone and he went off the rails. He started tearing the place apart looking for his phone and threaten to kick everybody’s ass in the gym.

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My outfit makes me use one when I'm in the States, and I only know probably 2% of what it can do. I'm not interested in being encouraged to live in the stupid thing.

I think the illustration is pretty accurate in depicting the dependence many people seem to develop for these devices. I realize how many things that can be done on them, but for exactly that reason, it seems that a real dependence can build up quickly, and to the point where losing the thing can be more traumatic than an amputation of a limb.

A group of Asian tourists passed by, and instead of looking up at this magnificent city they were in, every one of them had their heads glued to the screens of their phones.

If that's all they came to France to do, why the hell didn't they just stay home?

bored or something, and then it's usually to clear or deal with my email, text and phone messages. The one thing that I really like it for is when I am on public transportation, or in a car or waiting at a doctor's office and then I use it for DU, to play games, Pinterest, looking things up on Google, etc.

However, I hate texting and apps like Facebook, Snapchat, etc, so I don't really use it to communicate w/ others except for logistical purposes. Most people know that I don't want to be bothered.

dweller and i'm smartphone addicted 😞

had that panic/distress recently when i woke and reached for my iphone where
it sits every nite plugged to charge ... wasn't there, so i got up and went to
lr where i must have left it on table by chair ... not there either..
went back to br to get my glasses (which i have to have to see clearly) and checked the plug again, back LR to look again and all the while an anxiety is growing in my solar plexus because there's only 2 places the damn thing ever
is if not on me, table by chair or plugged in (checked plug again) checked coat
pockets, checked plug again, back to LR and found it on the floor, leaned up against a stack of books ??? how it got there i'll never know
i actually cussed the little f'r for putting me through the panic, then went and
tied it down good by plugging it in ...

now get off my lawn

✌🏼

but ONLY because now they are making us put work password generators on it - Symantec and Authenticator, for example. SUCKS!

i'm having life/health issues and i have no other communication device,
and in an emergency its not like i can yell for an ambulance,
or stand on my porch and cry 911 !

sigh, getting old sux 😑

✌🏼

I freak out until I find it, this happened just last night.😳
Even though I have a laptop and a tablet, I barely use them. I use my phone for almost everything, it is a part of me.

If 40 years ago they would have told us that in the future we will have devices that can track our every movement, we would have been furious. It would have been near revolt.

Now we carry said devices and we can’t live without them. Welcome to our “brave new world”.

appendage, a detachable appendage all kinds of awful things can happen to. At least they are fairly easy to replace. Last night in 10 minutes, I was on my way to a full blown panic attack, it's a real problem.

I freak out because I don't want to have to scramble to buy a new phone. I don't do the idiocy of getting a "free" phone with shitty overpriced service. I always outright buy my phone and use a prepaid carrier. So if I lose my phone, I need to get a new one, pronto. And money isn't always at hand to do that if the worst should happen.

I can't imagine leaving my house without my iPhone and Apple watch. From navigation to entertainment to price checking (with the Amazon app).
I rely on my electronics to keep me in touch with friends, family, and golf partners.
For navigation - Waze is easier than using my car navigation.
For entertainment - Music and podcast make running errands less annoying
For availability - I get a lot of "wanna play in 30 mins" invitations.
For communications - car breaks down -- 1-800 AAA help and I'm usually back on the road within an hour
For price checking - if I don't need it right now, I check to see if Amazon has it for less money - I can usually get it delivered the next day.

Phones and watches are just tools - they are neither good or bad.

Shocking, and where we're headed sadly

Who remembers the Palm Pilot? I slept with mine the first month I had it but then I'm a know gadget geek. It had a modular black and white camera. I loved that thing!! Then bag phones, flip phones... I had a Nokia that could double as a lethal weapon it was so solid. Good times. I wish I could see the devices of the future. I hate that I have to die. I've got some serious fomo on the future.

for that one.

I want to point out that the smart phone is the single most important piece of computing technology most of us have. It contains contacts, apps, calendars, communication and entertainment tools


Eventually these things will probably be literal body implants, but I’ll be long dead


I would be anxious about not having my phone, or my watch. It contains a lot of information I use for day to day life. This does not mean I have my nose struck in it all the time.

But, I lose my phone all the time and usually can’t remember the last time I had it.

given my observations. My lady was in the hospital for about eleven days, and I saw loads of younger people glued to their smartphone screens.

Listen or else!

LOL

I was considered weird when I spent hours a day on my laptop, but I can't imagine wanting a "smart" phone. Maybe it's my fat fingers, but I loathe touchscreens in the first place.

Never mind being complicit in my own surveillance and brainwashing.

The only time I do not use my phone is when I am asleep. With all the electronics these days, I really envy younger people growing up with them. I was born 40 years too early.

we're like, probably the most pivotal folk ever, to have known both worlds

They came out my senior year in HS. I remember pricing it out with all the options, and it came to $10K. This was back in 1975. In today's dollars that would what $60-70K?

And this was with 5 1/4 floppies only, no hard drive.

young people today don't have.

It is wonderful to be able to access information in ten minutes that used to take months to gather. But if a person doesn't put that power into perspective, it can be psyche damaging. We know how to expect a lot without expecting too much from technology.

I have a strict "no electronics" policy in my classroom.

About 10-15% of my students do not follow it, even when it causes them to fail the course.

On the rare occasions when I arrive at work noting that I left my phone at home, I fly into a panic. I'm fifty-one years old. Stop blaming young people!

Picked it up yesterday.

I give my cell phone number to my students - but warn then that there's only two times during the year they are likely to reach me if they call (last week in July & last week in February - some of you will know the significance of those two weeks . . . )

Nope. Not addicted. (Not young, either, though.)

I’m not going to panic without it but I certainly have made it a part of me. GPS for driving, email, social media, some games when I’m just watching mindless TV, phone, music, texts with the kids, and in case if emergency. I like being able to move about the house and world and still have access.

due to slouching your head at 45 degrees for hours on end, or running into sign posts and telephone polls while walking on the street?

Anyone that saw the mid 2000s NYC cabbies drive know what I saw.

If he had taken two more steps he was dead. He was pissed that I saved him from stepping in front of that cabbie while lost in his phone screen.