What do normal people look at on their phones?

FenrirIII@lemmy.world to Ask Lemmy@lemmy.world – 190 points –

I've been on Reddit for over a decade. But I'm done with that site and want to do something else. What do normal people look at on their phones? Is it all social media? Streaming?

119

I replaced it with Lemmy, so that's what an abnormal person does.

https://text.npr.org/

It's a breath of fresh air in an otherwise chaotic Internet user interface.

If by normal people you mean the general public, my guess is just Tiktok and social media.

My amazing wife is normie/10, she watches usually TikTok cooking recipes or makeup videos. I'm trash man husbae, so I'm on Lemmy here with you

Why do you have to replace it?

Maybe use it as a way to cut down on screen time.

I have no socials on my phone. I mainly use it to listen to audiobooks/podcasts instead.

Around me I see people watching the videos that just keep coming. Next video before you even had time to form a thought about the last one. I don’t think you should follow their example.

It's weird! I sometimes look at teenagers browsing their phones on the grocery line and they're doing a ton of stuff while not actually doing anything. It's like they simply cant stand there alone with their thoughts for two minutes but need to just start opening random apps, scroll few times, switch to another app, like something, move again...

If I don't distract, the demons rise up out of my subconscious and start chewing on my psyche. melancholy, ennui and existential dread follow leading to depression and suicidal ideation. Radical behavior, poor life choices are followed by death and a big mess reported on national news.

So...harm reduction!

This was what people said about channel hopping back in the day.

This time the content is just made for people to channel hop at a faster rate.

Tiktok has completely destroyed the attention span of people.

It's absolutely terrifying how much content is pushed into their eyeballs so quickly. I think about how overwhelmed I was with Reddit, and even here sometimes, and this is a pretty slow feed that I get to control. Control. Having constant video shoved into my eyes- I just don't think that can be healthy

I ride the public bus every day, and I can tell you its basically all social media, messaging, YouTube and phone/video calls.

But you don't have to do the same thing everyone else does. You can play digital card games, chess, read a book, or put your phone in your pocket and listen to podcasts or music. And if you're not commuting, you can plug your phone in and do actual stuff.

I feel like any time anyone is using their phones in public they're scrolling Instagram.

If you want to give an appearance of normalcy while maintaining a living soul, just get a Pixelfed account, follow a bunch of photographers, and scroll endlessly.

there's nothing normal about mindlessly scrolling your phone in public...

Normal? Very much so.

Commonplace, absolutely.

A result of supernormal stimuli? Assuredly.

Unhealthy? Maybe, but you'd need some good science to indicate so. (More than anecdotal examples) We have a lot of people who will make a moral panic over anything they don't like, and we've grown skeptical.

I mean, the main place i observe this is people commuting on the metro. If they didn't have phones they'd be reading tabloid newspapers.

I don't really see anything wrong with using your phone on the metro. Some will look up art and crafts, some bird photography, others makeup tutorials or video game content. If they can explore their interests rather than just waste their time completely that's fine by me.

Of course it's also a dopamine trap, and Instagram use trends to get a bit out of hand. Still, it seems to me some Lemmy users are a bit too quick to write off "normal" people as broken down zombies.

My experience on public transit is seeing people texting or chatting with their loved ones. The frequency with which someone smiles over a text exchange (whether it's from funny exchanges or affirming sentiments) showed me that we're still social on the bus, only now with those we associate with rather than strangers on the same transit line.

I'd say it's a win, though yes, the degree to which mobile games have microtransactions and revenue enhancers, and with which the end-user contract destabilizes with updates is problematic. My susceptability to motion sickness served in allowing me to dodge that bullet on public transit, only to discover it later in waiting rooms.

Mobile applications are meticulously engineered to capture user attention and foster engagement [3]. Features like real-time notifications, endless scrolling, and gamification elements are quintessential in ensuring sustained user interaction [4]. Renowned platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and mobile games like Candy Crush have been discerned to instigate addictive behaviors [5, 6]. For instance, the incessant checking of social media apps or the relentless pursuit of advancing game levels transpires despite the apparent adverse repercussions on users’ sleep, productivity, or even mental health [7]. The propensity for these behaviors underpins the ubiquitous nature of mobile app addiction. Owing to the omnipresence of mobile devices, the line between moderate and excessive use has become increasingly blurred, thereby escalating the necessity to delve into the factors contributing to such addiction. The ubiquitous nature of mobile app addiction is underscored by emerging research, which delineates the cognitive and behavioral tendencies driving this phenomenon [8, 9]. As the ramifications of mobile app addiction seep into various facets of daily life, the exigency of investigating the underlying factors and promoting healthier digital consumption patterns is accentuated.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10662456/ (peer reviewed article)

A majority of the public is addicted to scrolling their phones or other "apps". This is beyond all doubt an unhealthy addiction, both on an individual and society wide scale.

Our government is not interested in curbing the common need to cope. I submit that scrolling is safer than alcohol, tobacco and white supremacy activist meetings, or any frisbee park in Los Angeles.

Were going to cope somehow, and so it's a matter of harm caused on contrast to other means that are accepted and expected by society.

Considering the same government asserted tabletop RPGs, rock and roll, and video games are dangerous, I question the veracity of the source.

I'm old as fuck as it is and this statement instantly conjured the voices of my long-dead grandparents

Idk but wtf are people always doing on their phone in the car. Am I the weird one where I can’t even think of anything I’d like to do on my phone while driving? I can change media and text my wife all via voice control if I need to.

I used to try to use voice control for changing media when driving, but found it hilariously unreliable since it had to try to parse the voice command through the music. Is there a trick to that besides having a better mic I'm missing?

Idk what system you’re using but I use CarPlay and android auto. Both of them are able to mute when I press the chat button or if I yell β€œhey whatever”

Older vehicle, so it's basically just the phone and either an aux cable or bluetooth receiver, so that probably explains some of it πŸ˜…

I dunno about everything, but my car has a talk button on the steering wheel, I think you press it to answer the phone or whatever, but when Android Auto is active, that button works the same as saying "OK Google". I would imagine it does something similar with CarPlay. Maybe you have a similar button?

In my car (2016), Bluetooth supports phone calls and that's it, so I have a separate Bluetooth receiver always plugged into my aux port. So I have to cycle music manually.

Similar to the other person that replied to ya, I'm in an older vehicle so I don't have anything like that in mine, instead relying on either aux cable or bluetooth receiver to connect the phone to the audio system. It got to the point that I got a bluetooth media remote to get around the unreliability of voice commands.

Lots of people are on TikTok and Instagram.

I on the other hand stare at the nearest wall.

I get the busy train to work every day and can confirm this statement. Everyone on Thier phones is either scrolling an app with pics/vids or messaging someone.

The few left look at a wall, no other category

Normal people? Probably mostly Facebook, Instagram and candy crush. You can just take a look at the top free apps in your app store but I'll give you a spoiler: it's 99% junk.

Okay so I actually checked. The top 3 are Temu (a ripoff shopping app), WhatsApp and Tiktok in my region

Just checked too

Temu (sHoP LikE a biLLiONaIRe lol)

Shein (Shiet)

WhatsApp

Clearly the french like shit quality and chatting

Temu, TikTok, WhatsApp from my anon Aurora Store (access Google store without login

The majority are on TikTok, instagram, Facebook, YouTube and X. Probably Tinder and Hinge after those.

Yup. The people I work with are mostly 20 to 30 years old and they are predominantly on TikTok, Insta and YouTube

My wife scrolls through Instagram & plays mobile games. She’s pretty normal.

You know how you scroll through your Instagram feed and then stop when you get to the big checkmark?

Yeah, normal people keep scrolling. For literally an hour or two at a time.

I tried Instagram but it's like scrolling through Facebook videos.. all garbage.

Please define "normal people". ;)

If I ever find a normal person I’ll ask them for you.

After quitting Facebook and Instagram, I spend a lot more time reading books on my phone. I have found two apps to read and listen to free books through my library.

I can't claim to represent anyone other than myself. I use an RSS feeder for news, articles, and webcomics. I have some ebooks from the library downloaded. I have been playing an MMO phone game for the last ~year and check on that a couple times a day. Discord. Lemmy has replaced reddit for me but I don't spend as much time on it as I used to on reddit.

What RSS reader do you use?

Feedly. I've looked around for alts, especially when Feedly started embedding sponsored articles amongst my subscriptions, but haven't found anything I like better.

I check the weather, use my calendar, listen to podcasts, take notes, use the camera and occasionally browse lemmy while on a toilet like now

Normal people seem to look at a lot of social media, yes. Instagram, tiktok, whatever. Some people also have a lot of group chats.

Some people read. Your library probably offers free ebooks. Comics, too, when I want something even simpler.

Dunno about normal, per se. I have adhd and when I'm not forgetting what I was about to do in the time between having the thought and picking up my phone, I am often diving down some rabbit hole. This might be a quick Google search in a definition, or to figure out where I heard a word. For example, a friend recently mentioned acid reflux. So my brain thought "GERD?", "GERDY??", "THE HERDY GERDY?!?" which led me to Wikipedia, then to a handful of rather cool videos on Youtube of people playing the instrument.

Er...

My point being: Use it as a helpful miscellaneous tool. Like a physical widget that can go along with near any activity.

Porn. Lots and lots of porn.

And a news app queued up in the app switcher that you can quickly adjust when someone walks in. Gotta stay up on current events!

"oh this? this is just my news boner. I really love the news"

Pixel Dungeon is a great pickup/putdown game. Highly recommend.

I'll second the idea that more than a few minutes of tiktok, YouTube shorts or Instagram reels is debilitating.

I like to look at different cooking techniques and recipes. You have to eat everyday, why not make it fun and delicious!

I am certainly not normal, but I either go on Lemmy through Voyager, or play geometry dash. I also sometimes read books with Librera.

If you really want to detox, then put the phone down. Order some magazines, read some books, talk to some people. I did that for 6 months when I was completely overwhelmed and my entire psyche changed. But I eventually craved the interaction, so here I am.

I'm one of those psychos who flash custom roms just because I can, so that is a big time consuming activity I have with my phone, other than that I usually use Sync for Lemmy, Sync for Reddit, Pocket Casts, Spotify, Feeder/Feedly and Firefox Beta, among other apps.

I do a lot of podcasts and play pokemon on my phone. Emulators are amazing

Lemmy. Or Google news... Or like.. Snapchat I guess.. Snapchat maps is cool to see what people post all over the world. One night I spent like a few hours over Hawaii and Japan snaps.

People in Saudi Arabia mostly post themselves driving with loud music.

I read the news. Feedly rss reader which opens the articles directly into Firefox with no script, ublock and bypass paywalls add-ons. Very easy to concentrate on the article content when there are no nags or ads on the screen.

My phone has an FM tuner, so I usually listen to local radio stations. Sometimes I watch TV shows or movies I downloaded on the SD card, but I prefer watching videos on a larger screen when possible. Cell service is crap around here, so streaming is not very practical.

Libby. If I am sitting for awhile, then I'll make progress in whatever book I'm reading. I keep my library card churning with novels, science fiction, cookbooks and whatever book a friend has recently recommended. I mix in audio books while I'm driving. Average about two books a month or so.

Occasionally I'll browse recipes and silly cat videos on Instagram if I'm just killing 30 seconds in line at the grocery. And then lemmy about once a day just for current events.

I practice chess on lichess and look up sports scores. Or else I go on Lemmy. I look at my phone a lot less now. Finishing games I never got to finish. Talk to my family more. Stuff like that

I am the wrong person to ask about this, but I read ebooks, play games, go on fora.

My wife cruises Facebook marketplace and other similar sites and buys furniture which she then resells at a profit. But I doubt that's very common either.

Transitioned to Lemmy and manga reading during lunchbreak.
During commut it's podcast.

Hacker news

I'm reading ebooks with ReadEra (adfree and unrestricted in the free version, bought it during some 50% sale to support the dev).

Else I'm reading news (news.google.com with a highly curated blocklist of >150 sites) and play a bunch of word games like Wordle, Dordle, Quordle, Octordle, crosswordle, fibble, symble, thirdle, warmle and whatever else.

I don't know about your ereader, but Librera has been working great for me, it's very customisable, is FOSS, and is on F-Droid.

Sounds great! Really not looking for a change since I've been happy with it for a solid decade, but it's great to know there are alternatives.