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.
Did you mean ride their bike to the library? Yeah. You’re right on the money.
Also cars were much less reliable back then. Nothing like breaking down again and walking to a payphone… and that’s just the beginning.Perhaps the key is keeping off of social media when you are recognizing it is making you feel bad. I really started having a negative experience with the facebook/Instagram stuff, but I have also found that more text based stuff that is discussion oriented doest make me feel bad. It does seem that the spulsucking stuff is key to making a platform profitable though. Oh well… I guess I will just have to keep using non profitable platforms.
Tbf I think I’d like it more if we had online shopping, cell phones, instant messaging etc but we didn’t have social media as we know it today. Like we stuck with phpbb, Usenet and IRC and didn’t move much more beyond that into Myspace and Facebook
Who’s “we”, white man? I’ve never had a Facebutt or Twitter account. Or any of the various Facebook sites.
Err “we” as inhabitants of the earth and users of the internet I guess. Even if you don’t personally use social media, you are aware that plenty of others do and it has had a very significant impact on many individuals and societies around the world right?
It’s the punch line to a Lone Ranger joke, when he and Tonto are surrounded by hostile Native Americans.
I realize lots of people use those services. And lots of people remain ignorant, eat junk food and fast food too. No one is forced to consume fast food or its media equivalents, at least not regularly.
Same, only maybe that point for me is a bit later, ICQ and old Skype were nice as well ; I would rather fancy these, only replaced with more decentralized things like XMPP and something instead of Skype.
With the way social media companies are imploding, you may get your wish.
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.
I’d hazard a guess that what respondents really want to return to not being expected to be available to anyone at any time. And, crucially, they don’t feel they can just … do that.
I think you hit the nail on the head here. People want to go back to a time when it wasn’t possible, but I think even more importantly where it wasn’t expected, that you are available 24/7/365.
The good thing is we can, as a society, start to not expect that availability.
This is the heart of the issue. People don’t feel like they are allowed to take time to themselves. In reality all it takes is not answering the messages if you don’t feel like it. Hell, you don’t even have to look at them.
anyone who says that forgets how bad tv sucked back then
I mean you’d have to at least bring back video stores or somethingIt’s true that is really much worse. It’s also true that plenty of people didn’t watch much tv then or now.
That’s like saying the junk food, malt liquor, and fast food was better.
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.
I can’t help but feel like a lot of the “the internet was better back in the day” is rose colored glasses. Things were just as fragmented, but were even less welcoming to our groups, there was more questionable content that people were trying to trick you into viewing. It definitely wasn’t all bad, but it feels like it’s coming from the same impulse as every other “things were better back in my day.”
A key difference is that nothing was being shoved at you as soon as you got up from the computer.
You can always put your phone down. I also get the pressure to return a text/dm right away, but as far as I can tell no one that I actually want to talk to expects that immediate response.
That was a key thing to finally learn. I’d removed all the people who expected I was on call for them from my life for other reasons, which wasn’t an easy process, so everyone left is a reasonable person who texts for non-business reasons with a 1-2 day response expectation, though it’s usually much faster. If it’s more important, it’s a phone call. If they just want to chat, they text to see if I’m available before calling.
I set my phone to not ring unless the number’s in my contacts. If someone needs to get a hold of me, they can leave a message … but never do. I get notifications for weather alerts, text messages, my transit app and when a new xkcd gets posted. I certainly check my email and other apps on occasion, but I don’t need notifications.
Other than surrounding yourself with the right people, the whole thing takes minutes once you’ve hit that mindset.
So what if some town somewhere were to ban cellphones?
There’s the radio-free zone in VA that has no cell service or wireless devices. You could always live there.
I bet it’s cheap too. I wonder if people have ethernet ports in their homes you can just plug into instead of wifi.
I think so. And they use old school wired phones. No wireless speakers.
There’s a service that scans the area and looks for any radio sources. It’s crazy.
How much did a computer cost back then? How much were the first graphics cards? How compatible were computers with each other? How much did one album cost on CD? How easy was it to obtain information on a problem? How easy was it to price compare things between stores?
The issue is social media and allowing everyone to voice their immediate thoughts on things in pseudo anonymity. It’s also the tendency of people to look at people’s fake persona and then compare themselves to it. I could rent a Lambo for the weekend and use a filter like I’m actually fit and still have hair and make all my former classmates insecure because they never see me in person. That’s the shit everyone wants to go away, they don’t want to give up Spotify.
People forget, or just weren’t around, when only the rich had a mobile phone the size of waffle iron and it just made expensive calls. Even early cells had exorbitant rates for long distance conversations between states, so we had to wait until night when it was more affordable to talk. If I wanted to watch a specific movie, I needed a credit card with a $500 hold to rent a VHS player for 24 hours, and hope that Teenage Mutant Turtles wasn’t on a wait list. Ask Jeeves was better than encyclopedia brittanica, but digging deep required a trip to the public library. And scanning, copying, or printing anything meant driving to Kinkos with your checkbook ready. Anyone else remember pulling up MapQuest and writing down the directions before going someplace new?
Reminiscers can unplug, but I’m keeping my on-demand movies, cheap phone rates, endless knowledge, GPS, and streaming music.
In 1991 I lived in a small town. You had to sign up at the library for computer time. Once or twice a month I had the opportunity to walk to the library and play Oregon trail on an apple IIe with a green monochrome monitor. We were also fortunate enough to have a lab at school with the same apple IIe computers and got to use them every once in awhile. There wasn’t any Internet for us to use, I don’t recall anybody mentioning BBS or fido net or anything like that.
The most advanced computer I think I saw was in the school library. It had a cartridge based CD rom drive. I remember how awesome that was when I saw it.
It wasn’t until around 95’ that the internet really took off and we were actually able to use it. It was also around that time that we even got our first family computer and dial up service.
Before that we had an NES, SNES, and og Grey Gameboy. We also borrowed a commodore 64 for a time.
Before that we were typing essays on the electric typewriter we had.
I know everyone thinks all this retro tech is so cool. The thing is, as a kid, I had no idea this stuff even existed other than basic VHS players and Nintendo because things like PCs and laserdisc players were insanely expensive.
I’m sure there’s stuff today that I’m blissfully unaware of because it’s so far out of my price range that I have no business knowing about it anyway.
undefined> The issue is social media and allowing everyone to voice their immediate thoughts on things in pseudo anonymity. It’s also the tendency of people to look at people’s fake persona and then compare themselves to it. I could rent a Lambo for the weekend and use a filter like I’m actually fit and still have hair and make all my former classmates insecure because they never see me in person. That’s the shit everyone wants to go away, they don’t want to give up Spotify.
I understood that dynamic was toxic when Facebutt was in its infancy and noped out of that world before making an account.
And I’m glad to give up Spotify or rather, not use it in the first place. I pay artists for their music on their website, or as close to it as I can, or pirate it if they are dead or complete dicks.
No thanks.
wtf that’s fucked up
I’m surprised even the younger people would say so, since they have no experience with how it was.
I guess I’m “old” now, being 47 and all, but I was part of growing up with computers and the web just before most corporations even had a homepage or had any web presence at all.
I was on irc, forums, BBS:es… The web browser was Netscape in the beginning, and later Internet Explorer. Search engine was Altavista, and the irony here was that it was so full of ads that Google got a golden opportunity to launch their Google Search with no ads whatsoever. It completely wrecked Altavista with it’s clean fast design and the rest is history.
Now Google is the Altavista and we are waiting for someone to come and give us alternatives. Weather that is Kagi or some other AI based engine, we will see.
The problem is always ads. They destroy products and communities. People must change their ways and start paying a little bit for basic services like search and email and support those companies who want to provide a quality service without ads.
A majority of people prefer living in the past (because they refuse to chance) - and that’s really fucking with out chances to have a decent future…
It’s really fucked up
I am 26 and I dont want to return. I grew up before the internet getting dial up when i was about eight. The problem isnt the internet its biliondollar services that make their money through getting as much attention as humanly possible.
I agree mostly with this take. There are aspects from that time I’d like to return to, but for the most part, this poll comes across as far too simplified. I do however, think that social media was a massive mistake and has played a major role in the increased division, hostility and hyperpolitical landscape the world now finds itself in, and I’m not sure how we come back from it. I do believe we are far too connected these days, but it isn’t a simple issue.
I personally believe the centralization of social media and the internet in general will be seen as one of the world’s biggest mistakes in the not too distant future, especially once its (already quite apparent) impact on the mental health of the younger generations becomes widely-accepted and acknowledged. I truly wish for an early-00’s internet landscape again, but I know this will never happen.
Well, at least after this crisis ends with some decentralized solution (I hope for Locutus despite its authors’ communicative problems), we’ll leave such mistakes in the past for like 50 years, or so I hope.
Same age here. However the problem is not only that, but also our (as in “people enthusiastic and understanding of it”) failure to communicate to “normies” (yes, it’s a derogatory term, but a deserved one) what the Web is and how it should function, and what are the threats.
I’m very optimistic about Locutus (Freenet 2023), looks quite similar to things I dreamed about for a long time, only this time it’s real. Imagine dreaming about spaceships and then seeing one built for the same general goal, but for bloody real.
It may really be a changing point (provided it doesn’t get banned and regulated, which is unironically a risk ; remember how BTC ban was being considered in many countries until it became clear that it doesn’t have the potential to be a daily currency due to well-known downsides).
Checked out Locutus’ FAQ, and wow, I see what you mean. For anyone that wants to check it out, pretty cool stuff.
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.
This seems like a sensible take on the subject.
This is a chicken and egg problem, today’s Web is so horrible exactly because most of the boors in it treat it with disgust from the very first moment and try to avoid choices, thus make the worst choices possible.
I mean, it’s a golden rule - if you don’t know what to do, do something. They don’t out of fear, just consume what they are being given, which is the very thing they should fear.
Yeah, I think people forgot how terrible it was before email, gps, and etc.
Remember having to find the yellow book to call a plumber only to not get anything after trying 5 numbers? Oh wait, you don’t know how bad they’ll be because there are no online reviews. Memos from your boss via sticky notes? Faxing shit over and over again?
I mean, this study says it all, people need to be paid almost 20k to not use any online search for a year, almost 9k to not use email in a year. These services provide huge value for us in our daily lives. https://mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter/how-much-are-search-engines-worth-to-you
It wasn’t that terrible but it was definitely slower. Some things for sure sucked. Now totally different things suck.
they couldn’t simply text to flake out when you were already seated.
Yeah, but then they’d get stuck in traffic and you’d be sitting there increasingly uncomfortable, wondering if they stood you up, or worse, got into an accident.
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 Friday is ok
Anyone I talk to regularly, would not care if I didn’t answer their texts for a few days. My phone is always on vibrate or silent. I engage with people only as much as I want to.
What I’m saying is all that stuff can be changed if you want it to.
But that’s okay today? At least in my social circles it is. Just talk about it to whichever friend you have that demands you answer immediately.
I mean my version of “a few minutes” is like an hour. Like it used to be you could respond to a text way later in the day or even the next, and that acceptable amount of time is getting shorter and shorter.
Or you just stood around waiting for a person for 2 hours with no way to learn if they were running late or blowing you off or dead.
Mobile phones were widespread well before smartphones were invented.
I mean it is a pretty brief time period to be nostalgic over. In USA, any cellphone ownership passed 80% in 2010. That is an overall number. Depending on who and where you are it might have been before or after. I think 80% is “widespread”. Smartphones passed 80% in 2019. So you are talking about 9 years.
Source: pew Mobile phone ownership over time
Tbh i do not know if relevant to making/breaking plans because my experience was that as soon as both parties have any kind of mobile device, plans started being more fragile. Not sure if smart/dumb has any impact. Maybe i misunderstood your point…
Honestly, people committed to plans in a way they don’t now. I rarely had last minute cancellations when I was younger. Time might have been cut short or something, but people showed up. Changes of plans happened well in advance. Occasionally, I got stood up, but it was rare.
Now, I’d say probably 20-30% of the time, plans get changed last minute or more rarely, somebody bails.
My family is like this and my wife still does not understand it. We make plans, they are the plans until they change.
“Did you call your mom and see if we’re still going?” Why would I do that? We made the plans. If we say we’re all meeting at the grand canyon at noon on September 1st 2037 then we’ll be there, those are the plans.
All the people who know will be there.
That’s what cigarettes and books are for. Or booze, drugs. Origami.
Plus you usually met up at someone’s house or work.
What you are talking about wasn’t a big problem.
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.
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.
I miss the internet before iphones existed - 2008 seems to be a delineation when suddenly any idiot could easily access the “internet”. Before that the net was a different place
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.
