Is "smartphone usage" merely a proxy for "social media usage"?

When I got my first smartphone almost two decades ago as a 16yo, I used it mostly to play with the system, write my own UIs, debug system daemon issues, tinker with bootloaders and ended up contributing to a community distro for it. It was a fun computer in my pocket that taught me a lot and a massive upgrade over earlier phones where I had to use Opera Mini and Bombus via J2ME.

The vast majority of smartphones of today are toys with very little potential to tinker, and even when it's there, the entry barriers are enormous. Compiling Android is a huge undertaking, while as a teenager, I could already launch vim on my phone screen in a tram and hack on a SMS daemon written in Python. It's incomparable, and even if you do start, you quickly encounter hard barriers like device attestation.

These days I'm not immune to social media either, as evidenced by me writing this on my phone right now - but wouldn't these "worse mental health outcomes" be rather connected with social media usage, media consumption in general, intrusive notifications etc. that are commonly associated with but aren't inherently necessary part of smartphone usage? At the same time, my mental health isn't becoming immune to social media damage when I doomscroll on a PC just because I used a bigger screen with a physical keyboard.

I keep debating trying to go full-dumbphone, but I'm confident what would happen is that it would work great until I need a specific thing for whatever reason, and I'd have to buy an Android or iPhone, and then I'd be forced to carry around two devices and potentially have two separate cell phone plans. This seems like a pain in the ass.

But I don't dispute that waking up in the morning to a bunch of things competing for my stimulated attention probably isn't healthy.

Fortunately, I use my smartphone about 20 minutes a day for work authentication, and for its camera while traveling. And audiobooks.

Unfortunately, my iPad Pro gets way, way, way more use. Much too addictive as a media consumption device.

> Whatever the safe level of smartphone usage is, most of us are above it.

I think I'm immunized from it because I hate using smartphones, especially when I'm at home and could be doing the task on a PC with a big screen and keyboard. I have a few but just use them for practical tasks when away from home (occasional text, deliveries on porch, looking something up in the store, listening to podcasts, to do list for the day). Viewing content on a tiny screen with a minefield of things to accidentally tap? No thanks. They are great multi-function devices to replace others on the go.

This isn't entirely true, the prefrontal cortex doesn't finish forming until age 25-26.

Also, The brain from age 4-12 is highly impressionable and quite different from 13-26.

Eerie parallels to tobacco smoking just a few decades ago. It's a public health problem but those in charge of the bureaucracy at the highest levels choose to obsess over rare vaccine side effects and the use of tylenol during circumcission? It's a mad mad mad mad world (great film, which is overdue for a cyber age remake)

This may actually be false! Owning a smartphone is so normal, even required, nowadays that people who don't even own one are often "edge cases". For example people who believe in fringe conspiracy theories, people with severe health problems, elderly people, etc. Even if resigning from phone helps by itself, "average people" rarely do.

Similar statistical effect happens with alcohol usage: from raw data it often looks like people who drink almost nothing - let's say one drink a month - are healthier than people who drink absolutely nothing.

I think that is warning enough.

My first question would be: or is it that cat owners are schizophrenic are more likely to get a cat?

I'm not answering that question, but I do want to quote your article. From the bottom:

> Results were inconsistent across studies, but those of higher quality suggested that associations in unadjusted models might have been due to factors that could have influenced the results.

> One study found no significant association between owning a cat before age 13 and later developing schizophrenia, but it did identify a significant link when narrowing down cat ownership to a specific period (ages 9 to 12). This inconsistency suggests that the critical window for cat exposure is not well defined.

> A study in the US, which involved 354 psychology students, didn't find a connection between owning a cat and schizotypy scores. However, those who had received a cat bite had higher scores when compared to those who had not.

> Another study, which included people with and without mental disorders, discovered a connection between cat bites and higher scores on tests measuring particular psychological experiences. But they suggested other pathogens, such as Pasteurella multocida, may be responsible instead.

> Before we can make any firm interpretations, the researchers reiterate that we need better and broader research.

That article is junk. The leading cause of Toxoplasma gondii infection in humans is under cooked meat. Cat ownership is not actually linked to higher prevalence of T. gondii infection[1].

[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3497129/

Schizophrenia is a subset of "doing worse mentally". For a proper comparison you need to check overall mental health, not just schizophrenia, which is a rare condition.

Obviously, because people like cats, they are good, and because people don’t like phones, they are bad.

the culprit is toxoplasma. A third or so of US citizens have it in their brains.

well since internet usage increases the purrrcent chance of cat ownership I’d say it’s at least a hair more dangerous and not without whisk(ers)

There's a popular saying about correlation and causation

My 13 year old has a phone. Most of the apps are blocked. Messages is open, and we tweak based on expectations how much he has access per day, and when. Right now it's 8:30pm to 9pm (so after sports and homework).

He can call and text me and my wife anytime of the day. Thankfully the school bans phone usage, so it's not a lot.

A handful of his friends have no phone. Most have, and all apps are accessible (not sure how parents configure age restricted content/apps).

It's a lot of work to limit and tweak and even his 1 minute a day on Safari (because I couldn't find a way to cut to 0) allowed him to create a TikTok and Instagram account (on web). I am a technologist... and gee my 13 year is a genius when trying to find ways to circumvent the restrictions. Every other week I have to change some minor thing in Settings. But my point is that it's a LOT of work... I can see why some people either completely ban or allow. But to me it's worth. Messages is open because I believe he needs to talk with his friends, but fuck Tiktok and Instagram and Youtube.

To me, "The Internet" and "The Internet without short-form videos" are two different things.

There was a very short span of time when the mobile bandwidth was good enough for browsing, messaging, and corporate email, but not really good enough (or prohibitively expensive) for streaming. Feels like that was the sweet spot.

There's also a decade plus of various "Net Children Go Mobile" annual surveys across major tecnological countries that plot the diffusion of phone use and ownership by age and country.

Leading to a large ANOVA table of years, countries, ages, mental health statitics, etc.

Yes, Denmark measures these things is ways different to the UK and both differ from the US.

All the same, each being reasonably internally consisent across time means trends can be picked after normalising.

The case for whether encroaching phone use does correlate with increased early onset mental issue diagnoses becomes a consideration of thresholds and variances.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/283320908_Net_Child...

My anecdotal observations suggest it's pretty different. One thing is you can (and do, if you're a kid) carry it everywhere with you and stare at it all the time. I think the phone UI where each app takes over the whole screen also increases the impact of the worst sorts of apps (like TikTok).

Personally I'd think its different, smartphone apps usually have tons of dark patterns and are designed to always be with you versus a desktop or even a laptop.

It probably makes a difference that the internet of ~15 years ago was healthier to use than the half-dozen websites that encompass the entire internet for most people today. Attention-optimizing algorithms and infinite scrolling are some of the worst inventions that have come to the internet since the pop-up ad.

>In the US, we restrict ... alcohol consumption to 18

isn't it 21 all over the US? it was changed to cut drunk driving in the late 70s at the federal level, tied to highway funds, so the states needed to cave

Banning smartphones in general would be more akin to banning kids from riding in cars (not driving them) or being around alcohol (even in their own home)

To say nothing of the inconsistency of those bans. You can vote, enlist in the army, and take on life-altering student loans... but smoke a cigarette? No way!

Also, isn't it the sale and purchase of alcohol that is banned for underage persons, not the consumption? That is, if parents want to give their kids alcohol, that's not illegal.

It sucks because they could be pocket-sized bicycles for the mind rather than addicting ad-driven bullshit surveillance slot machines that maximize attention. Humanity had a choice and chose poorly.

Driving is restricted because of responsibility (same way marriage and contracts in general require someone legally responsible)

Porn, alcohol, tobacco and gambling is cultural/religious, the same way The Prohibition happened in the US, or all alcohol and gambling is banned in hard Islamic countries and adult women are mandatory veiled.

It's pretty interesting to see where a smartphone ban would fit as a category.

Kids can / often use other family members' smartphones / tablets (I assume it's the majority of cases). How can the law prevent this if parents do nothing about this?

Real talk, if I had kids they wouldn't get a smartphone until they turned 18. Kids have no business having smartphones.

Because it's id?

I mean slug is not important - id - is. https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Family/eating-carrots-make-childr...