This phone obsession I hate!!

It is an addiction that many of us succumb to. From a practical viewpoint, I’ve found that limiting the times I go on social media is helpful. So tell yourself that you can go on it in the early morning and then again at lunchtime, late afternoon and late evening for example. Put your phone out of sight(but where you can hear it if need be) for the rest of the time. You will find that you are more conscious of the hours in between and may review how you are spending them. Try to do other or new things for the rest of the day and know that social media is probably one of the greatest time wasters we have invented to date. It does help with emotional regulation sometimes but we have to find other ways to do this. You aren’t alone. Good luck.

No siri or Alexa for me. Big brother is already all around us. I stopped facebook after covid, I just do WhatsApp for family and a couple of close friends. I share Wordle results on the family WhatsApp wordle group. It's very competitive! I read emails do banking texts and phone calls. And it's my camera and photo album. The most frightening thing happened on my son in law's phone. He had been ordering a Christmas present for his mother to give to his brother, on her own phone. The next thing he knew was an advertisement for the thing he had ordered popped up on HIS phone.

It’s possible to reset it but you might need to find a child to do it first you 😂

I feel exactly the same but I need it for some work related groups and we have a motorhome so follow some very useful MH groups as well. I am currently trying to gradually switch over to instagram although most of the motorhome stuff is all fb so stuck with those for the foreseeable.

Blondiekins - No it isnt. I’m a technical dinosaur, but find I’m very unsure as to whether I could ‘chuck’ the habit.
You’ve got lots of friends who want to keep in touch. Great!!!

An addict here too I'm afraid !

You don't have to scroll through. Just see if there are new posts on the forums you follow. If not, switch off.

Blondiekins

Every morning I wake up and switch on my phone. Firstly I go to my whattsapp messages then emails then perhaps the news or the weather all thats fine but then I click on Facebook. Half an hour or more later Im so annoyed at myself for the time Ive just wasted watching reels and being sucked in by click bait articles and Ai generated stuff. I HATE it! Facebook was great when all you saw was your friends and could share photos etc but its not the same now is it. I probably speak for most of us that we have become addicted to this hand held device in our lives. But for the forums I follow Id gladly delete Facebook on my phone. Trouble is the forums I follow are diet and drug tapering advice ones so very important to me. I know there are ways to stop getting things but you have to click not interested in each individual topic which takes the time I dont want to spend but then annoyingly something else just turns up in its place. What can we do? I feel trapped and not IT literate enough to stop the cycle. Facebook of course is great for forums & advice so I dont want to delete it. That said my phone via goggle is also great for answering questions but Im starting to HATE my phone because its listening all the time and it seems like theres no escape. Can anyone relate.

blondiekins please don’t worry, you’re not alone, but I use my iPad, my old iPhone is too small and old to do that on. I’m 80 next year btw. I think all this started when the energy costs became too much so I would stay in bed doing all I would do on the ipad downstairs and keep warm, until hunger drives me to get up! I don’t sleep well at night anyway and I usually sleep late, so this is an extension of that! I still work, VERY flexible hours from home, doing what I love, so the very first thing in the morning I check through and read my emails …some need a reply, so I do all that. Then comes the news… read all that, in particular my obsession with the goings on in the US and Trump! I don’t often get stuck down a rabbit hole with that, but sometimes I find myself on X mentally or otherwise ‘shouting’ at the injustices! That I know I should stay out of …but occasionally I get mad enough at all the stupid Anti Vaxxers, Trump eulogisers, etc! I don’t get sucked in by click bait now, got wise to that years ago, but I do often find myself on all sorts of shopping sites etc, as and when I think I might need something… then I can end up ‘browsing’ … I also run a small group on FB messenger, and have to respond to DMs from friends and family there, etc, rather like What’s App I suppose. A lot goes on there as both my sons live away and one with his family, my grandchildren in Japan… so messaging with a time difference usually means the morning…in bed! You are not alone… at my age I sometimes feel guilty for spending so much time on the net, but also WHY NOT, I mostly enjoy it! And it’s warm and comfy. If downstairs there are always so many things to do I do feel guilty, but up here tucked away is my haven. I live alone of course!

Blondiekins I could have written this. I’m exactly the same. I wake up and reach for my phone which is usually on my bed at my side because not only do I reach for it first thing in the morning I’m on it every time I wake up during the night.
It’s bad I know I really must try and resist it because it’s taking over my mornings.
The same as you I’m there doom scrolling the hours away when I should be getting up and doing stuff. I’m 68 and retired last year due to illness and of course lying there in bed recovering it’s the only thing I had to do except watch tv or reading. I haven’t read for years can’t concentrate.
It’s a habit I’ve got into that I can’t seem to get out of so you’re not on your own.

I don’t spend much time on traditional social media sites (and more on Instagram than Facebook). My downfall is mostly emails from news outlets, podcasts and Substack. I can be lost for hours down these rabbit holes! WhatsApp groups can be very time-consuming too - I’m involved in a couple of organisations as a volunteer committee member, and get tracked into all kinds of online discussions that can end up taking hours over the course of a day.

I know we call them phones, but they do loads more, don’t they? Mine replaces newspapers and magazines. It’s my camera, my alarm clock, my radio and music centre.

Like how I don’t like to see people ‘glued’ to their phones - I noticed it recently on a long train journey when the scenery was stunning, but few people seem to notice. And yes, I resent it when friends constantly pick up their phones to check who is messaging them. I’m not sure we’ve quite developed the new protocols and manners to go alongside for these devices.

So many services are digital these days, that I think portable devices are here to stay. But I wonder whether, like a lot of things, our use of them will peak? Especially as the experiences increasingly spoiled by all the advertising and spam?

I have a smartphone and every night it stays on and charging. I'm on FB, Instagram, Blipfoto and also Snapchat but only for the filters and I don't send or look at stuff. I can access my emails and use WhatsApp for messaging. Oh, and I follow Gransnet. Obsessed? Me? Never.

I feel your pain, Blondiekins. I get driven crazy by the amount of posts not by friends. I'd like to see a tab where I can just see the posts my friends have written rather than every group I don't belong to or Adverts that really aren't relevant to me. I am afraid I watch far too many reels about cats, dogs and sewing but my biggest frustration is that my finger twitches and I find I have moved onto the next reel without finishing the one I was watching. As you can't fast forward or rewind, it means going back and watching it all again if it was interesting or informative. Ah well, a first world problem!

62Granny

I had a dream the other night that I had gone to my old church, ( not a regular attendee these days) it was very full but I kept picking my phone up to look at different things, I remember thinking shut your phone down or the priest will tell you off😂😐

😂 I love it! Do I recognise a fellow partially lapsed Catholic?

My dear hubby who is the least IT/Device user has now become totally addicted and spends hours scrolling market place etc. I hate it - I don’t even like my own usage much and I do everything on my phone … seems a lot of us are finding this difficult.

Perhaps purchase a dumb phone? Cheap as chips.

We've one in husband's office, I use when I must use a mobile.

Shades of that meme that's going the rounds of someone telling a joke and the person talked to laughed - and Alexa laughed and Siri laughed and the tv laughed (or was it the fridge).

No chance of me getting smart appliances in this house.....

Daddima

CariadAgain

Maybe get an easy "smartphone". eg Chattie seems to be the easiest by far (I'm not able to use smartphones myself). That seems to have only what one actually wants - so I have bought one...but confess to not having tried it yet.

I don't know whether it "spies" on you - like other ones do - or no. I should think there's a reasonable chance your privacy will be respected on one like that.

Now, I’m sure it’s coincidence, but yesterday my friend and I were chatting, and this morning posts about two of the ( quite obscure) things we’d been talking about appeared on TikTok! It is coincidence, isn’t it……..?

( Incidentally, I started looking at TikTok to see recipes from the excellent Cheryl Bakes Cakes, and now find twenty seconds or so is just about my attention span.)

Alexa? Siri? We’re definitely in Big Brother land now aren’t we?

CariadAgain

Maybe get an easy "smartphone". eg Chattie seems to be the easiest by far (I'm not able to use smartphones myself). That seems to have only what one actually wants - so I have bought one...but confess to not having tried it yet.

I don't know whether it "spies" on you - like other ones do - or no. I should think there's a reasonable chance your privacy will be respected on one like that.

Now, I’m sure it’s coincidence, but yesterday my friend and I were chatting, and this morning posts about two of the ( quite obscure) things we’d been talking about appeared on TikTok! It is coincidence, isn’t it……..?

( Incidentally, I started looking at TikTok to see recipes from the excellent Cheryl Bakes Cakes, and now find twenty seconds or so is just about my attention span.)

I can never find my phone, even though it is the only phone i have access to at the moment. It is at the bottom of my handbag, or I left it in the kitchen.

My dyspraxia makes using a fiddly mobile phone difficult. It is a mind as well as fingers problem. My only social media is GN, and occasional use of Facebook to find local workmen. I do everything on a computer, mainly by email.

I have sites I use and subjects I am interested in but they and social media go in different directions and rarely do the twain meet.

i would think the answer to the OPs problem is to give her smart phone to someone she trusts for a month and buy a 'dumb phone' and use that for necessary phone calls. When she reclaims it, after a month of cold turkey. She sets limits. keep the dumb phone and keep it in the bedroom, ban the smart phone. That way she will need to be out of bed and downstairs before she can use it in the morning and will not be able to use it once she goes up to bed.

I have to admit to using my phone too much when alone .
But when I'm with a friend and they are glued to their phone instead of talking I feel really annoyed .

MayBee70

nanna8

The only way I keep in touch with a couple of cousins is via Facebook. Not often but at least I know they’re still alive ! I like some of the historical threads with old photos of places I knew. I have never and would never post anything remotely ‘political’ - how on earth do you get banned ? Not trying to be rude, just wondering.

By forgetting my password and stupidly doing it several times because I was tired and I panicked.It happens with one’s mobile phone, too, if you type in the wrong password ( my partner got locked out of his phone recently).And then a friend had a friend request from me even though we were already Facebook friends. So she told Facebook my account had been hacked which it hadn’t been. She was trying to be helpful. From what I’ve been told Meta is all AI so you can’t explain yourself to a real person. And yet I’ve complained to Facebook about people that send you friend requests pretending to be someone they’re not or make vile racist comments or report a sales ad that is pretending to be a well known company
and they do nothing about it.

Thanks for your reply. That is scary, isn’t it? I quite often forget passwords. I know what you mean about friend requests,too. It is sad but I only accept people I definitely know and even then you get people pretending to be people they are not !

I love the new AI function when you want to know all kinds of useful bits and bobs. For example, I get itchy in wool, but wanted a little boxy navy cardigan with just 8% wall. so I googled, "how can I make wool clothes less itchy? and there was the answer. I use it for stuff like that all the time. I love google maps to go exploring when people say they are going to such and such a place. Facebook is to keep up with people, say about 20, who I rarely if ever see but it's lovely for that. I'm on two boards like Gransnet, and I am now seeing people who I've met. whats not to like" I never have been tempted by dark corners or spend time on things not worth it.

nanna8

The only way I keep in touch with a couple of cousins is via Facebook. Not often but at least I know they’re still alive ! I like some of the historical threads with old photos of places I knew. I have never and would never post anything remotely ‘political’ - how on earth do you get banned ? Not trying to be rude, just wondering.

By forgetting my password and stupidly doing it several times because I was tired and I panicked.It happens with one’s mobile phone, too, if you type in the wrong password ( my partner got locked out of his phone recently).And then a friend had a friend request from me even though we were already Facebook friends. So she told Facebook my account had been hacked which it hadn’t been. She was trying to be helpful. From what I’ve been told Meta is all AI so you can’t explain yourself to a real person. And yet I’ve complained to Facebook about people that send you friend requests pretending to be someone they’re not or make vile racist comments or report a sales ad that is pretending to be a well known company
and they do nothing about it.

The only way I keep in touch with a couple of cousins is via Facebook. Not often but at least I know they’re still alive ! I like some of the historical threads with old photos of places I knew. I have never and would never post anything remotely ‘political’ - how on earth do you get banned ? Not trying to be rude, just wondering.

the corrugated iron appreciation group etc.
Is that a real thing? 😲