Do your sleep dreams include mobile phones?

lettruthout@lemmy.world to Ask Lemmy@lemmy.world – 67 points –

If a mobile (cell, handy) phone is part of your life, do your dreams include reference to it?

The other night I dreamed that I left mine in someone's car. That struck me as odd because it may have been the first time one of my dreams included such a reference - even though I'm constantly on my phone during waking hours.

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Almost never. And neither do computers in general, now that I think about it. Which is weird considering how much time I spend using them.

I used to keep my phone under my pillow(no night table) with an alarm on it.

“Stressed” is not lightly used when I talk about how it felt for my phone to go off and not stop. Alarm off, power off, under a pillow, thrown away, even smashed and snapped in two it would always keep ringing because, of course, in the real world it was under my head and never changing. Once I woke up proper and turned it off the silence was painful and I felt so unrested I very nearly cried.

It’s not an “emotional” nightmare, i.e. it didn’t pull at anything heavy on my mind or anything, but it was torturous as a “physical” one.

It's like when you have to pee in a dream and you finally go and pee in your dream and you don't feel any better because you have to pee IRL

Thank god you didn’t feel better!

Several times I woke up thinking "did I just wet myself" when thankfully I did not

I've had this same dream but with an old clock radio I used as an alarm. Not even removing the 9v battery would shut it off in my dream.

Haha you get me. But man, just the battery? I would have eventually smashed it to pieces with my bare hands, blinked, and it’d still be there like nothing had happened at all.

I don't recall ever interacting with my phone in my dreams.

One time I knew I was dreaming and I dreamt something I wanted to remember when I was awake. So I whipped out my iPhone and opened up the notes tab. I was halfway through writing when I realized it wouldn't be on my waking life phone when I awoke.

I don't usually dream but I did have a dream recently where my phone got totally destroyed and it bummed me out since I wouldn't be eligible for the Google pixel 8a trade-in anymore

Usually not and I always found it weird. In the rare occasion a smartphone appears in a dream it's always impossible to use, like nothing works correctly. I actually had a dream today where I was lost and Google Maps was giving some very bad instructions.

Strangely enough I don't think I've ever dreamt of a computer even though most of my day is spent in front of one.

I've never dreamed of a computer either. I have dreamed of Minecraft though but that was being inside of it

Yes. But usually it doesn’t want to work (try to dial someone and I can’t dial properly or trying to find my car and Siri or maps won’t work).

This is usually a tell for me that I'm dreaming. I frequently try to check the time only to find that it doesn't make any sense.

I wonder how much your age has to do with it?

I'm in my mid 40s, and didn't have a mobile until I was about 19 or 20, and smart phones didn't become popular until I was probably in my mid 20s. They just weren't a part of my formative years.

Never, and I remember my dreams every night. Interesting question that I had never thought about.

Never thought about it till now but that's strange. I dream often and I spend at least 8 hours working on the computer each day. But I never came across one in my dream. I also never used a phone in my dreams.

Yes. In fact I've heard that being unable to dial a phone is something that is common in dreams. That's how I wake up in a lot of dreams. I'm trying to text someone or dial a phone number and can't do it.

Very rarely. Which is odd now you point it out!

Generally, no, but it did last night. We had moved into a new house, and we were trying to tell Uber Eats which train station we were closest to so our delivery person could get off at that station before driving to our house.

We do not love near a train station. It was weird as dreams tend to be.

Yes, but I can never type in the password correctly. So I don't get to use it when it does appear.

Yep. I struggle to use it in my sleep as your brain isn't very good at being consistent with things like text and such. In dreams I often find my phone malfunctioning or the world starting to fall apart when I try and use it for anything more than taking a photo

I dreamt last night that I used my phone but, likewise, it was for photography.

Had several dreams where I took pictures with famous people just to wake up and be sad that I didn't get to keep the pictures. It was a weird stage thing from "oh it wasn't real, but at least I got a picture" to "oh wait I cannot bring the pictures with me" and being really sad that I cannot.

Imagine what looking at a dream would be like though with an awake mind. In dreams you don't see weird stuff as the common sense part of your brain shuts off, but I am certain, at least in mine, that the dream reality would look like it's AI generated. Nearly there, but not quite. Funnily enough my dreams have had consistent shortcuts (like from two places in my life that are miles apart, but are around a street corner in the dream) and even dreams referencing events in older dreams that I only remember when I'm dreaming... Unless that memory is actually fake as well.

Oh also, I have a radio alarm which could mess with dreams. Once The Archers came on and I dreamed of Philip Moss getting arrested quite vividly, just to realise I could replay the entire audio. It was like replaying a dream. Spooky.

I'll dream that I check the time on my phone when I'm laying in bed in the morning and it'll say something an hour or two after I'm supposed to be up and working and I'll wake up without realizing I was asleep and start getting up before realizing what just happened

Yep. But it has an unusable interface. And I'll try the LLM, Call mom! and find that I can't get it to place a call.

Yes and no. You could technically say I would be on it in my dreams as a kind of interpretation, but I never see what I'm on if on anything, just that I'm browsing in the dream equivalent of fullscreen.

I've had at least one dream where I used my phone to message a friend something (which is something I do every day). I can't recall any other specific times, but I feel like I've seen it a few times.

Don't think I've seen my computer though.

I have had several nightmares where I lost my phone and embarked on progressively hellish journeys to get it back. The details of these nightmares are hazy in my memory now, I only really remember feeling lost and afraid, and enormously relieved when I woke up.

Just this morning, in a dream, my friends and I were recording a Sasquatch like creature on our phones

I only ever really noticed them when I was actively lucid dreaming and my subconscious was feeding them to me as lucidity hooks. Using technology in dreams doesn't really work and telling time is the most basic regular thing you could check if you're dreaming with.