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I don't know man, I'm often out and about when I need to communicate to people.
I find it rather convenient to not have to find a library or an Internet-cafe, especially seeing my city doesn't have any anymore probably.
And I remember living without a mobile before they came along. There's a certain romantic novelty in agreeing to meet under x sign in y place at x hour. But it wears off fast, and if you're running a bit late or want to reschedule something on the fly? Good luck without a mobile of any sort, smart or not.
Yeah it certainly got easier to be late and generally not keep commitments, that's for sure.
I do agree that communication when out and about is a genuine killer feature. It's was the original use case after all. But doomscrolling social media, or banking, or shopping, or playing dumb games, or most of the other things I watch people doing in public - personally I am never going to buy the argument that this is about "convenience". To me it's pretty obvious that it's just addiction and irrational social contagion.
"Not keep commitments".
In what sort of a life do you live that nothing surprising ever happens or you interact with no-one because you'd know people are unpredictable.
I'm use to drive a taxi for several years. When I started, GPS was still rather shit. (I usually preferred the street dictionary.) And when I was a kid, my dad had NMT phones in his cars.
You might not have any engagements that require any sort of fluidity, but other people sure do. For instance I'm driving someone from place a to place b. During the ride, they suddenly realise they need something from a shop. That's an extra 10 min now that I could not predict, making me possibly late for the next ride, depending on where and when it's from. Even with mobiles, it was hard to actually tell people times with accuracy more than a +-30 min after I had a fare or two in queue.
So yeah. Modern gps the ability for people to see how long it'll be before you're at their place has really made it more convenient. Not to mention that this convenience includes card payments. Because before you'd have to have a credit card and manually run it through the receipt labeler thingy. ka-chunk
To me it's pretty obvious you're just being reductive because it's not purely positives, like with anything in the real world.
If you don't focus on high-schoolers and instead look at 30+ people going about their day, I'm sure it's not "just doomscrolling and addiction".
Hell, imagine if covid had hit 25 years earlier. The fuck would've we been doing? Working from home like everyone did would not have been possible. But it's not like chilling at home while working is convenient, right?
playing computer games. organizing the CD collection. watching TV shows. mastering a skill like programming or image editing on the computer system at hand. masturbating to VHS porn. having long, undisturbed landline conversations. reading books.
Apparently you didn't have a job 25 years ago?
Not "we" as in "oh god whatever will I do with my personal free time" but "we" as in "the global economy". Moving from offices to homes didn't affect pretty much anything now, as all work is done on computers, papers aren't much of thing, everyone has a computer at home and connections are good.
25 years ago maybe one in four families had a shitty computer which wouldn't be able to run smooth 480 video let alone send or receive any meaningful data aside from some text documents through email
it was a kitchen job at that time and with the shutdown in place i would have had "personal free time".
i was involved with a computer scene some years earlier than that. neither were videos or emails a use-case at the time, yet you could have playful and educating interactions with the available devices.
Yeah my point is rather that logistics companies, healthcare, all the things we consider essential work, need a lot of office workers as well. Like a lot.
If those people could not have stayed at home, the spread would've been much worse.
Not to even mention the long term effects if all "non-essential" businesses with office workers just stayed st home and those businesses would shut down for that while. It would've had massive consequences for the global economy.
Imagine the consequences for a generation of kids, essentially missing a few years of education. Even not it had a significant effect.
So yeah I miss a lazy 90's night as well, just enjoying hanging out outside or if with electronics, still like socially, 4 sweaty dudes hunkered in front of a n64 goldeneye match (no oddjob). Or just fking tossing rocks while sitting on some stairs in the evening sunshine. Into a lake, usually. Ah. Great days.