Digital Dilemma

Rise of the Dumbphone

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Lately, I’ve been making a concerted effort to use my smartphone more mindfully. This doesn’t mean I’m not using it. Rather, it means that I’m making more conscious decisions about when I want to use and for which purpose. I do find myself partaking in mindless “doom scrolling” or spending too much time falling into “rabbit holes.” Since it doesn’t seem practical to not have a smartphone, I opted for plan B. Simply, I’m putting myself in control of the usage, rather than succumbing to the addictive, dependent lure of the device.

Given my new relationship with the smartphone, I felt intrigued to read this opinion piece the other week, “My Dumbphone Made My Life Better. It Made Everyone Else’s Worse.” In essence, the author gave up her smartphone for a variety of reasons. The phone and her children both competed for her attention. She felt she was spending too much time on the smartphone. It was causing too many distractions. She switched out the smartphone for a dumb one. Essentially a phone that does what phones were originally intended to do, make phone calls. I suppose dumb phones can also send text messages and a couple of other very basic things.

When I first started reading it, I instantly wondered, how does anybody survive with only a dumbphone? Everything these days is designed to work specifically with a smartphone. Even my IRS experience applying for the refund required me to toggle from a laptop to a smartphone to upload the necessary documents. QR codes are everywhere, a perfect complement for smartphones. Even a lot of restaurants use QR codes for customers to access menus… on their smartphones!

Anyway, a couple paragraphs in, I got my answer. The author relies on other people with smartphones to do things for her. Hence the second part of the opinion piece’s title. Now, instead of doing things for herself, she has to call and rely on others with smartphones. One example she used was calling an uber for a friend. She also discusses others doing the same experiment who have not been able to keep up socially, or like the author, had to relay disproportionately on the others to do basic things.

We’ve adapted so seamlessly to smartphones, in a short time they’ve become the default design. Can we ever dial this back?

Digital Dilemma

Too Much AI

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I know sometimes AI can be very helpful. For example, when sending an email, I don’t mind a prompt asking if I forgot to attach a document, or include a link. This is based on key words in my email message mentioning something about an attachment, link, or reference to a specific document. If Outlook doesn’t sense the attachment, or link, is there, I’ll get a popup message asking if I forgot it.

I also appreciate the generative AI tools, such as ChatGPT or CoPilot. These can both be useful for generating meeting minutes and action tasks, providing feedback, or creating custom images. All of these are magical and huge time savers. However, I find the automatically-applied AI fixes to be intrusive and frankly, kind of annoying.

In June I posted “Seeing isn’t Believing” to highlight how AI has been undermining the credibility and trustworthiness of images and videos. This blog was mainly about how others use AI to artificially generate new content or manipulate existing content. Mainly the changes happen because of a human hand taking part in the process. I had noticed some built-in AI features doing some minor enhancements to my photos automatically, but nothing really overt. At least not until I tried to photograph a nice looking sunset the other day.

One evening the sky looked quite pretty with a dappling of blues and oranges in the reddening sky. We ran outside to take a photo where the view was clearer. However, each time I tried to take the photo, some kind of AI something or other interfered. Instead of reflecting the actual scenery, it insisted on making the portion of sky closer to the sun a weird smudgy, fiery red that didn’t even match the other colors. It was horrid.

Weird AI-enhancements on an otherwise perfectly beautiful sunset.

Instead of the cool blue and organe-ish pattern continuing, as it was in real life, the camera altered the scene. No matter what I tried to adjust, the camera kept enhancing. I finally gave up. I decided to blog about it instead of missing the sunset trying to get a real picture of it. Previously I had tried to disable the automatic AI enhancements in the camera. After this experience, I searched again to see if there was more I could do in the settings.

I did find a few more things to disable. Let’s hope my camera won’t auto-enhance future pics.

Digital Dilemma, Social Media

Hooked on Tech

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After I wrote last week’s blog on “Social Media Addiction,” I started to pay more attention to devices more. This included my own tech habits as well as those around me. Everywhere I looked, people were constantly on their devices. This included three teenagers taking a break from work. I was sitting somewhere and noticed three teens all in the same uniform. Instead of chatting with each other, as I likely would have done on my work breaks at that age, each one remained firmly glued to their devices. I’m surprised I even noticed because I too, was also glued to my device.

This, alas, is what children and teenagers see. While it’s easy to point the finger at social media companies, that’s only part of the problem. Smartphones, by design, are meant to be addictive. Each app, or service on them, are all vying for our attention. Even more than that, the design of many apps and services will only work specifically with smartphones. Sometimes they will only work with smartphones. I recall this to be the case the other week when I had to verify my identity for the IRS refund. Even starting the interaction on a laptop, I had to switch to the smartphone to upload the IDs. This was by design.

Over the weekend I went to an Augmented Reality (AR) exhibit at the Royal Botanical Garden (RBG). Last time I went to an AR exhibit at RBG I brought my iPad to enjoy the AR on a bigger screen. This time, however, the QR codes would only work on a smartphone. Some of the exhibit pieces had QR codes to scan for an audio clip explaining something about the work. The AR pieces only had a sign with a QR code and instructions. But alas, I couldn’t get them to work on the iPad forcing me to squint and pinch at the tiny smartphone screen to get the AR effects.

Though the proposals from Meta are a start, albeit suggested from the source of the problem itself, there are other measures to take. Children learn from the world around them. Even though social media guardrails sound good in theory, the problem is more pervasive. It would also require adults adhere to some self-imposed restrictions and put down the devices once in a while. Are we going full circle?

Digital Dilemma, Social Media

Social Media Addiction

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Last week Meta settled a course case against it. Normally in these types of cases against social media companies, they rely on Section 230. Essentially, this is a US Federal Law that prevents social media companies being held liable for content. Or social media companies hide behind free speech. However, this case was different. Rather than going after content, this case focused on the platform itself, making claims about the addictive qualities of the underlying technology.

I don’t think it’s any big secret that social media companies prey on keeping our attention. It’s not uncommon to hear smartphones, and social media, compared to gambling. In fact, there are many similarities. They capture our attention and then keep it, by design. They lure us in to keep playing, doom scrolling, viewing, clicking, and giving up hours of our attention. This is all baked in as part of the design.

The settlement of the recent case with Meta, focused on a younger audience. Rather than fight the case, again citing Section 230 and free speech, Meta agreed to settle. They also agreed to implement a number of guard rails and controls to prevent teens and younger kids from getting sucked in. Some of the proposed controls include time limits, notifications shut off during school hours and between midnight to 6am, ending continuous scrolling and autoplays, and options to opt out of algorithmic-tailored feeds.

While this all sounds like a good start, in theory, Meta proposed all of the measures. Based on what I understand, there are no studies or evidence to support that these controls are the most effective, even if they sound convincing. Maybe we’re overlooking something even more beneficial behind Meta’s shield of benevolence. It would be a good idea to have some independent third-parties make recommendations about the controls.

I would also like to point out that limiting kids on devices is only part of the solution. The other part would be to provide them with some non-social media and non-personal device options. For example, when I was growing up, we had landlines, pay phones, and at some point, pagers. All of which provided us with ways to communicate with friends, family, and relatives. Without personal devices, how would today’s youth be able to communicate with others, unless they start borrowing somebody else’s.

Productivity, True Confessions

The Art of Planning

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When I feel overwhelmed with too much to do and not enough time, I always revert to lists. There’s something magical about writing everything down. Writing it down is even better when I can start grouping things, assessing priorities, and breaking things down into manageable chunks. Somehow the act of writing everything, brings me clarity. Otherwise I find myself kind of floating around trying to remember everything, deciding where to start, and not feeling super overloaded.

Part of the relief, I think, comes from part of David Allen’s “Getting Things Done” method. He asserts that writing things down is a way to capture it somewhere. This in turn frees up mental space to concentrate or focus on something else. In theory, this is because your brain is no longer burdened to remember things such as groceries to grab on the way home.

At work I use a “to do” app that captures everything. Flagged emails end up in the app. Tasks delegated to me by others end up in the app. Plus I can add things whenever I want to the growing list. Some things in the list have a date assigned to them. Other added tasks remain “captured” but undated. This is simply because I needed a place to note tasks that have lower priorities or less urgent time lines. However, they remain on the radar because they’re always available for me to scan and review. This helps me figure out when to plan them in.

I shared this method with one of my students once. While I felt calm and focused with my aggregated list of tasks, he had the opposite reaction. He remarked he felt stressed out looking at this enormous list, even with some things undated. I suppose seeing the scope of everything that needs doing can also make someone feel overwhelmed. But from my perspective, if I can’t assess the extent of the work, that makes me feel worse. Writing everything down also provides me with a way to start planning out how to get everything done. Sometimes this also means throwing a few things off the list, too. After all, we’re only human.

Digital Dilemma, Productivity

Hybrid Process Snags

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During tax season, my accountant erroneously estimated what I would owe to the US Government for filing. I ended up overpaying based on the estimate. Once filed, I owed nothing and was getting a refund. In previous years when this has happened, the IRS mails me a check for the overpaid amount. This year, however, they have a new process in place. I suppose it’s to help prevent fraud because most of it is about identify verification. While some parts of the process felt somewhat adapted for a digital environment, other parts felt really disjointed and unnecessarily clunky.

The process, as near as I can determine, went something like this.

  1. I received a letter in the mail (i.e., snail mail).
  2. The letter instructed me to log in to the IRS portal to verify my identify and refund amount.
  3. For communicating online, I needed the 2024 and 2025 filings, along with the letter.
  4. When I tried logging in, it redirected me to a different service called ID Me. I had to create a new login.
  5. This login allowed me to somehow access both the ID ME service and the IRS. It seems ID Me is a 3rd party service to verify identities on behalf of the IRS.
  6. I logged into ID ME to submit photos of documents to verify identify, all different from the ones indicated on the IRS letter. I needed government-issue photo ID, secondary ID to confirm my address (e.g., utility or phone bill), and my social security card. For any non-Americans reading this, my original social insurance card is a card-sized rectangle of thick paper.
  7. I logged in with my laptop. ID Me seamlessly sent a prompt to my phone to photo documents and upload them.
  8. Once uploaded, ID Me routed me back to my laptop to complete the verification process, i.e., waiting for a video call with an agent to physically view my ids.
  9. After verifying with the agent via video call, I then had to log back into IRS. Again through the ID Me login.
  10. Then I had to select some options to allow information sharing between IRS and ID Me.

Hopefully I did all that correctly. I won’t know right away because it will take several weeks to receive the refund check via snail mail. And yes, it was as confusing to navigate as it sounds.