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.
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.
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.
So what if some town somewhere were to ban cellphones?