'Everybody is looking at their phones,' says man freed after 30 years in prison
70 comments
·February 23, 2025ttul
“All right already. Let’s see. Give me a second.” She scratches her chin while a wild animal screams within the Save-On. “I know—I remember when I first woke up how people kept on trying to impress me with how efficient the world had become. What a weird thing to brag about, eh? Efficiency. I mean, what’s the point of being efficient if you’re only leading an efficiently blank life?” I egg her on. “For example?”
…
“People didn’t evolve. I mean, the world became faster and smarter and in some ways cleaner. Like cars—cars didn’t smell anymore. But people stayed the same. They actually—wait—what’s the opposite of progressed?”
Excerpt From Girlfriend in a Coma Douglas Coupland This material may be protected by copyright.
qingcharles
I just spent several months helping someone who got released after 40 years. He got used to smartphones very quickly. He'd seen them in movies and TV, and they have tablets in most prisons these days to download music and movies and do texting.
Had to teach him how to pay with a debit card and PIN for everything as that wasn't a thing before he went in.
Humans are very adaptable.
idoubtit
Indeed, while still in jail, this man surely knew smartphones existed. And, of course, basic usage of a smartphone is easy; it wouldn't be addictive if it was hard.
The point of this (low quality) article was that, after 30 years far from the usual life, the man points out juste 2 changes during the period: "Everybody is looking at their phones" and a 2023 wildfire. He knew people had smartphones, but I guess he didn't not know to what extent. It's a/the most important part of the life for many people.
Last week, I saw a couple riveted to their screens while walking their dog on the river's edge. The woman didn't raise her eyes when she caught and threw the stick the dog had brought. I wondered how the dog could be so obviously excited, despite the lack of attention.
mingus88
Yeah that’s true. Movies and TV would not be very engaging if the characters were doing real life stuff like walking around face down barely aware of anyone around them.
So we depict this romantic view where the phone can do everything we need but nobody is addicted to it
kflgkans
stick is life
mingus88
The UI for smartphones was also designed for the lowest common denominator. It’s so intuitive that we laughed at my toddler as she tried to swipe on a physical picture frame to see the next photo.
I would imagine it would be much harder to adapt to T9 input. My boomer parent stubbornly refused to adopt cell phones early on and that mindset crippled them as the world pivoted to apps and touchscreens.
markus_zhang
Electronics is an escape for people who don't like talking to other people.
Turns out most of us don't like talking to others.
I definitely don't. I enjoy online interactions way more than face to face.
jackcosgrove
I don't dislike talking to others. It's just hard for me to say what I want to say at the speed of normal conversation. I write more slowly and carefully, can edit what I've drafted, and check facts too, all before I hit the submit button.
mikeh1111
I hate my phone. For years I've been mad at the content on the device - the interruptions - but I realized that was all misplaced.
I hate the device and ecosystem itself.
Felt right to finally figure that out
fallinditch
I know that feeling.
It takes some self discipline and effort to use our phones in non-unhealthy ways. I'm still working on it myself: to configure software, notifications, reduce mindless scrolling.
I'm naturally curious and so I often find myself asking an AI chat bot about things: sometimes about random stuff but more often my AI chats are aligned with my learning goals, and I love that proximity to knowledge. I guess this could become a somewhat unhealthy behavior, but I don't consider it a problem yet.
For me the most important thing is to be mindful of the power and addictive tendency of our phones, and crucially for me: to use the phone as a tool, especially for creative endeavors.
JoeAltmaier
Says this man who's lived 60 years. Don't have to be in prison to notice it's an epidemic.
azundo
I've recently tried to get into urban sketching and spending any time observing figures in an urban scene makes this immediately obvious. So many people staring at phones everywhere you got. I'm equally guilty but once you start looking it is quite stark.
Symbiote
I notice it most when the situation is different to my memories.
Earlier this week I took a bus at school ending time. Several children — roughly 8-12 years old — spent their whole journey on their phones.
conductr
This is sad to me as the school bus was some of the best memories of my childhood. I don’t even know why particularly, but I think after being in cooped up in school all day we just got to act like fools and joke around on the bus. We even did this thing where we’d run as fast as we could to get the back seats of the bus.
Having typed all that I realized my kid is in a bus free school, we parents are responsible for transportation, and he’ll never even experience it at all. I’m sure he won’t miss it. Was more of a sign of the times for my era than a necessity for a good childhood but, if you’re on a bus with dozens of peers and all glued to your phones, it does feel like some missed opportunities
codr7
I've stayed at a Yoga school for up to 6 months straight.
Best part, all gadgets are locked up in a safe on arrival and returned when you leave.
_sys49152
selfies and filming events with your phone are diseases
ViktorRay
I saw this while browsing Hacker News on my phone. I wanted to say something but I don’t know what I could say without sounding hypocritical.
I guess I’ll just leave this comment and put my phone down. And try to be more mindful to not browse sites like this aimlessly. But I’ve tried that before too.
codr7
I try to stick to my laptop, at least it gives me the option to be creative which feels so much better.
Being stuck in scroll mode for most of the day is soul killing.
niceice
I heard someone say this last week and they never went to prison.
ryandrake
I still can't get used to it. It's totally creepy. Every time I'm out in public, it feels like the old movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers, where 99% of the people have been replaced with alien, but physically exact, replicas. And they're all just zombied out on their phones. It's an addiction that's run through the population completely wild and unaddressed. Often dangerously, scrolling messages while driving 75mph down the freeway. I used to host movie night, but we stopped because 5 minutes into the movie people were just ignoring the movie scrolling Instagram. You can do that at home, guys, jeez.
meesles
I don't know if you feel this, but there's also a sort of social pressure where if I'm in a situation and everyone's on their phones, it's hard for me to start up a conversation with someone since they seem 'focused' on whatever they're looking at. So I inevitably take out my own phone.
noman-land
Keep interrupting them until you break the phone's spell and then ask them if they actually wanna hang out with you.
samtheprogram
Just talk at them until they talk with you. Works better than you would think, however crazy you seem at first.
callc
Startup that movie night with the rule that all phones get stored away. You will have a good time
dharmab
Phones go into a shoebox. Shoebox goes on the shelf. Everyone participates.
rednafi
And didn’t appear on the front page of the orange site.
Mistletoe
I think a society was just not meant to be this connected. When a brain is this hyperconnected you get problems and the world hyperconnected becomes sick.
>A hyperconnected brain is a brain with increased connectivity between regions, or hubs. This can be a response to neuropathology, such as autism, depression, or schizophrenia.
>Hyperconnectivity in the brain can contribute to epilepsy by increasing the likelihood of seizures. This can occur due to a number of factors, including injury, disease progression, and changes in brain structure.
The world is in one big epileptic fit right now due to tech hyperconnectivity and I’m unsure how to fix that.
AndriyKunitsyn
Perhaps in the future, governments could put strict caps on the amount of data one can download. For example, 1GB and no Internet for a person for the rest of the month.
kylecazar
Not sure if serious or making a point
anonym29
This is some kind of sadistic dark humor, right?
kylecazar
A half-solution that seems to have cut my own phone time down was to remove any app that lets me browse. HN is the only aggregator/exception, because there isn't a lot of bullshit here without intellectual value.
Instead, if I want to use my phone I have to deliberately look for things.
Commenters are criticizing the man for knowing that cell phones exist and for being surprised by it.
I bought smartphones before the iPhone.
I stood in line for four hours to buy the first iPhone (never again).
I still use an iPhone.
Yet, I am regularly surprised by how often everyone is looking at their phones.
(Context: I live in a rural area outside a metro area and don’t go there often, except for work.)
When their kid is at a crowded city park, the parent is glued to their phone.
When their kid is performing, the parent is glued to their phone, their thumb scrolling.
During any break from activity, they whip out their phones.
I used to be skeptical about the claim that devices contribute to societal brain rot through dopamine hits. However, the more I pay attention, the more I notice it. Even though I'm quite disciplined, I still catch myself instinctively pulling out my phone.
I can easily see this man having that sincere thought. You know smartphones exist, but you have no idea how much they are used.
I truly believe we are at a stage where one could argue that smartphones qualify as cybernetics.
1. Insofar as no apps on phone, minimal social media usage at all, and willful focus on a return to my 70s/80s roots where I embrace active boredom doing nothing.