My high school had a smoking lounge. But don't let the term "lounge" fool you. There were no comfy chairs, no billiard table, not even any walls. It was outside, behind the school, a weedy area where students would gather before, after, and I imagine, during class to get their nicotine fix.
This was in the late ’70s. And if today it seems wildly inappropriate that a public school would facilitate smoking among teenagers, remember, back then smoking was considered nearly a human right, and there was a problem they were trying to address: smoke-filled restrooms. At least the lounge got smokers outside where they wouldn't impose their vice upon others.
Memories of the smoking lounge wafted into mind while I was on medical leave, when Illinois joined 38 states allowing cellphones to be banned during school next year.
When Illinois first contemplated the ban, I was against it. Phones are part of our lives now, like auxiliary limbs. Schools would do better teaching kids restraint regarding their phones since they will be constant companions after graduation. The focus should be on harm reduction.
Then I thought about the situation some more, and through a superpower of mine called "changing my mind," decided that the ban is right. It helps that social media has degraded into an odious AI slop sink. Facebook imagines that my being Jewish means I want to view an endless loop of every antisemitic incident anywhere on earth, interspersed with agitprop about Israel, plus trite little tales about the Holocaust, which is being retrofitted into a feel-good story of heroism, resistance and survival.
Spoiler alert: It wasn't.
Meanwhile, Instagram served up so many snippets of "The West Wing" that I finally realized I could just watch "The West Wing" on Netflix and cut out the middleman. That's when I thought of smoking in school. We are biased toward the present, and it's hard to imagine things changing. But change they do, and today's necessity becomes tomorrow's puzzling affliction. Someday people gaping at their phones could be viewed with the same disapproval extended toward the miserable knot of co-workers puffing around the office entrance.
Social media is so harmful to teens, so toxic, schools are right to teach youth there is life outside their screens. And the smoking lounge made me wonder whether high schools might not only be right regarding phones, but a vanguard, pointing society toward where we should all be going, as they were with cigarettes.
In 1978, when I graduated from high school, the smoking rate among American adults was 36%. Today it is 10%, a triumph over damaging addiction, with countless years of life saved. (Though that might change now that the federal government is getting out of the "help people stay healthy" business.)
Illinois banned smoking in high schools in 1990. Eighteen years passed before the state got around to banning smoking in restaurants. At the time, it was unimaginable — to not light up after a meal? Calamity. The restaurant industry would die. We journalists were dead set against it — what would a newsroom be if you couldn't grind out your cigarette on the tile floor? (The Sun-Times had its own smoking lounge, a truly repulsive little room that did have chairs, plus an enormous air purifier. I would go there sometimes to smoke a cigar and listen to Art Petacque reminisce about the mob.)
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Yes, cell phones can be a distraction in class.
ReplyDeleteWowsa... I remember smoking on planes. Being smoked out in the back seat of our family car. My mom smoking with me in the grocery cart while she waited in the check out line, puffed out smoke rings in my face to delight me. Someone at work asked me not to smoke, it was affecting their voice. It was like being asked not to breathe. I am forever horrified by my behavior, wish I could go back in time and correct it. The phones are replacing books, movies, tv, killing our attention spans. I like to count how many drivers are staring down at their phones, walkers of dogs and strollers staring down...It is hard to resist. Perhaps an AA-type program for this addiction will help.
ReplyDeleteWow, Mister S. A whole case of cans of worms here. A veritable Wiggly Field. Where do I start? At the top is always best.
DeleteMy high school had a smoking line. You crossed the street and walked the length of an apartment building and you could smoke north of the alley behind it. Stay south of the alley, and you got a detention. Sixty-five years ago.
There was also a snack shop across from the main entrance that was the "greaser" hangout. Clouds of smoke whenever the door was opened. Went in there one morning, while chasing one of my slinky Italian crushes. Then I threw up on the sidewalk. Empty stomach, plus all that secondhand smoke, did me in.
Social media is now a hunting ground for scammers and overseas data miners, who employ chatbots and AI images to lure the gullible Midwestern sheeple. Fakebook bombards me with endless political rants and pontifications from far-left soapboxers, and now I'm also getting garbage from MAGA congresspeople, and even senators.
I'm Jewish, too, Mister S, but less so than you, so I don't get very much of the farkokte mishegoss that you're forced to see. The algorithms take you to even more of the places you already go. And I don't go there,. But i do get a lot of nostalgia stuff, because I am biased toward the past
Someday people gaping at their phones will be looked upon with sorrow and scorn and even pity. But I'm 13 years your senior, Mister S, and unfortunately for curmudgeons like me, I won't be here to see it. Social media is now so harmful, so addictive, and so toxic, that it affects all of us, regardless of age. Today's screens are yesterday's cancer sticks. Only it's our minds that are being polluted, instead of our lungs.
You say flip phones are back? Gonna break down and get me one. I liked them, back when i still carried one around occasionally.. Not surprising your sons rebuke and disdain social media. But that remark about old people using it to give them the illusion of significance about their empty lives? Child, you've cut me to the quick. That one hurt.
Not posting the birth of a grandchild — it's sad but necessary. And it makes more sense now. Too many charlatans and flim-flammers cashing in on newborns. Too many stolen identities, and the like. And thirtysomething parents don't use the platform so much anymore, or they would know that even "senior citizens" no longer post photos of lunches or update their "status" or say what they're doing "right now"...didn't all that Zuckery fade away when Obama was still in office, and using his Blackberry? It all sounds so 2010.
Big Tech thinks we are all going to be complaint sheeple, and that we're going to allow AI to turn us into complacent zombies who accept any text, any image, and who will give up on books and reading. But there is already a great deal of pushback and anger, including at the data centers..
Maybe we will succumb. But maybe we won’t. You'll probably still be here for the verdict, Mister S. Early Boomer cranks like me, from the Class of '65 (hence Grizz 65), will be forgotten dust.
and unfort. many fall for the fb AI images
DeleteConsiderable wisdom here, Grizz. Fears of insignificance, or impending invisibility are real for those of any age, especially for elders. I tell myself FB is like a diary, enabling us to stay in touch with people and a past we sometimes miss. It’s both crutch and reminder, and often sad too.
DeleteIt’s a place to have a say in certain “safe” places. We might even find ourselves prompted or provoked at times; contribute to some worthy cause, advance an idea, buy a certain book, or listen to a new song.
As long as we care to respond it is a sign of life and for a few I know, that alone means a lot.
I too am nostalgic and follow others who post of mid-century memories. I think that’s about revisiting the time of life when I was all “eyes and wonder,” and not trying to assimilate all that just makes no sense anymore.
Filtering is getting more difficult.
Total smoking bans in indoor public spaces took time to implement. I quit smoking 27 years ago, but I remember being in a restaurant in Madison in the mid1990's and being told it was a smoke-free restaurant -- no smoking section. I had never heard of that, but was assured that smoking was not allowed in any restaurant in Madison. At the time I thought the ban was a business killer. Boy, was I wrong. Now that I'm a non-smoker, I wouldn't think of eating in an establishment surrounded by smoke and dirty ashtrays.
ReplyDeleteI am a smoker yet still I appreciate that the air is clear in restaurants on airplanes and inside the place I live.
ReplyDeleteThank goodness people have become considerate about it.
The smoking rate has decreased amongst adults down to 10%, it's awesome.
But young people today are still strung out on nicotine have you ever heard of zins?
Not to be confused with a tobacco product it's simply nicotine in a pouch that you put between your cheek and gum it's completely out of hand I have no idea what the percentage of you sorry but man every single person it comes in my house is using it these are all between 25 and 30 year old men
I appreciate cell phone technology but it is difficult to rein in.
When I was a kid they wouldn't allow us to bring in calculators to class.
I bet if the teacher said to put them away, they'll ignore him/her or get cocky.
ReplyDeleteI worked in a high school for the last 32 years. I can tell you that most kids actually are in favor of the bans - they know how addictive and toxic they are. A few of them would carry a burner phone on test days, one to put in the caddy at the front of the classroom and one to use for cheating on the test. They are also not big fans of AI.
Deletewow about the burner phones- a relative of mine teaches college History and has to be playing detective to catch students papers using AI-she runs them through some program but it's more work for the teacher
DeleteFME, for goodness sake, get a nicotine patch or help from a doctor and stop that habit.
ReplyDeleteWell you aren't a good example to them, FME , if you are still smoking. Wonder who sells those things? Gas stations that sell bad energy drinks too?
ReplyDeleteI'm not a good example? You don't know me. I appreciate your concern but I'm a grown ass man are you in the habit of telling complete strangers how to live their lives?
DeleteI am, dude. Do it every day on Fightbook. Did at other large platforms, which eventually banned me. But Zuck doesn't give a damn anymore.
DeleteOne reason I reign it in here is out of courtesy to Mister S, who in turn lets me rave and rant and bellow every goddamn day. Plus, he strongly frowns upon rudeness and boorish behavior. His house, his rules.
And this is a very small page...a grain of sand on a vast beach. No teeming millions here .A small society, out of necessity, must remain a polite society.
don't get so bent out of shape, FME
DeleteObviously not grown ass enough, FME
DeleteSometimes even strangers need advice.
DeleteI used to think people who smoked and couldn't quit were cowards, weak-minded.
ReplyDeleteI feel lost without my phone. Like I'm detached from the world in a bad way. That news will break that requires my immediate attention and me not being there to answer will cause everything to fail.
Now I understand how hard it is to quit something you're addicted to.
I tell everyone who wants a phone to avoid it as long as possible.
Double B, you know people who don't have a phone? Even my brother, who resisted it for years, has a phone.
ReplyDeleteWe lived in Fort Wayne, IN, when they banned smoking in restaurants, this not long after a good many restaurants in the area had created smoking and non-smoking areas, separated by a wall or a partition. Oh, the outcry from smokers was vicious.
Today, I live in a 55 plus community and I don't ever see anyone smoking but everyone has a cellphone that they're seldom ever without.
I've always had neo-Luddite tendencies. I avoided computers until the university where I taught made the use of email essential, so I learned not only to cope with, but also to like the use of computers. My neo-Luddite tendencies re-surfaced when smart phones appeared. I refused to get one, insisting that my flip-phone met my needs.. I'm, therefore, pleased that your sons have started using flip-phones. Maybe, for the first time in a long time, I'm actually in the "vanguard" of a new trend!
ReplyDeleteWill probably have to finally obtain one soon, but, no...I don't have a phone. Have never had my own phone. Hate them. I'm like one of those Eastern dweebs in the Westerns, who wouldn't tote a gun.
ReplyDeleteWhen necessary, I use the smartphone my wife has become addicted to in the last few years. She now reads a lot less and watches a lot less TV. I can barely operate it. The three flip phones we shared over the previous two decades were so much better and easier.Yes, shared. That's the optimal word here. One phone for two people, for the past 25 years. That will probably change soon. Not thrilled with the prospect.
She also has a Fakebook page she hasn't touched in a decade. I took it over five years ago, when I finally surrendered and joined the world of the Motherzuckers, and put both our names on it.. It's a "shared" or "joint" or "hyphenated" account...which is neither rare nor illegal nor immoral. I figure that if I'm banned for bad behavior, I can then open another one in my own name.
But for some reason, the two names anger many people, who routinely mock me and scorn me and invariably ask: "Who cheated?" Nothing online infuriates me more. I rip them new posterior orifices, before reporting them for harassment, and then they're blocked.
Have no idea how many people I have blocked. Low four figures, at least. Farcebook is now mostly a combat zone...both political and generational...for Millenials, Gen Xers, and especially for Boomer geezers like me. It's also become a nauseatingly sentimental nostalgia page for seventyish Boomers. No wonder the thirtyish sons of Mister S have no more use for it. But I've become as addicted to Fightbook as I was to cigarettes.
Started smoking at 13. Cost a quarter a pack in 1960. Finally quit...cold turkey...at 45. Now smoke-free for 33 years. But I'm paying the price...lung damage...for starting so young. And yet, I occasionally miss cigarettes. Go figure. Old habits die hard.
Grizz, if you're wife didn't have a phone, you'd prob have to have gotten one. Now landlines are disappearing.
DeleteYou'd best learn how soon, Grizz. Get yourself one or practice on hers more.
DeleteGrizz, you are behind the times. It's X/ twitter that is the main problem now, not oldhat fb.
Delete1) in our flip-phone days (before 2020), I was the one who carried it around more. Our roles reversed when we got a smartphone. The fact that calls are now considered rude and everything is text? That appalls me. Prefer hearing live voices and talking to people. Texting is a royal pain in the ass. JFC, why do they even bother to call it a phone? And yes, my landline's days are numbered. One receiver, plugged into the desktop's modem. Used to have six extensions. Now down to just one. The landline's house wiring shorted out.
Delete2) Will probably get another flip-phone soon. The ones I had decades ago were just phones, and games. No online connection. That will not happen this time. Not if calling is rude. And being connected is now like being connected to life itself.
3) Birds tweet. I don't. Never have, never will. I hear X is where all the magats and fascists hang out. Sounds like a problem I can live without. Didn't join Face Place until 2021. My Sunbeam toaster is 73 years old. My father brought it home when I was six. Still makes good toast. When it dies, I have another one...a similar model from 1956. Have always been behind the times.
You might be surprised actually at how many people still have landlines. I absolutely refuse to give mine up as long as it is working. Almost all of the folks around here carry fancy smart phones yet they all have landlines. In fact so many people have land lines here that AT & T is now putting in new technology for them. It is some kind of copper free lines that are not subject to the squirrels chewing them up. Which is a big problem around here for the phone lines & for the electrical lines - only a few of the fancy new mega mansions in the subdivisions have underground electrical. They proposed putting underground wiring in our nice historic neighborhood back around 2004 & the people screamed NO!
DeleteThis here phone, on which I am poking out this message, does one thing that cigarettes used to provide: a cure for boredom. It's been 18 years since I quit, but I remember lighting up one more than once because there was nothing else to do. You could watch the smoke plume forming, tap the ash and fill the idle minutes while you slowly kill yourself. Phones fill the idle time in much the same way. But I think that kids, with their evolving minds, need boredom. In order to escape it, they have to think of something else to do. That feeds creativity. I think future history stories will look at this era as kind of a Dark Age where we let the silicon do all the thinking.
ReplyDeleteThere was (is?) a street corner near Evanston Township High School where the teenage smokers hang out, rain or shine, snow or sleet. When I occasionally drove a kid to school, I used to think of it as The Nicotine Club.
ReplyDeleteOne thing I have not seen pointed out recently is that we still call them "phones" even though we're spending progressively less time than before actually making telephone calls with them. (I recently read that it's considered rude now to phone someone unexpectedly, without clearing it first by texting in advance.)
ReplyDeleteI miss the old clamshell phones such as my Motorola KRZR, a beautifully designed successor to the larger RAZR. Ergonomically, using your typical flat smartphone to make a call is like holding a piece of bathroom tile up to your ear. (Granted, the speakerphone mode avoids that, at the expense of broadcasting your call to everyone within earshot.) But since we're now doing everything on these devices except calls, this might explain why bendable or foldable smartphones such as my years-old Samsung Z Flip3 have not caught on as much as I thought they would. It mimics the old clamshell function of hanging up the phone by slapping it shut and shoving it in your pocket, but like others, I spend 99% of the time with it open flat and doing everything other than making a call.
Thus you might as well ban smartphones in the classroom if you're already banning laptops. Time marches on and all that.
I'm a year older than Grizz. Didn't start smoking until I was 25. Still do. Like him, I've never owned a cell or smart phone (why they call them that is understandable). Still have a landline. After years spent owning a graphic design business, I finally caved in around 1993 and became proficient enough to use digital photography as an art medium. Since then, I've had over 25 solo exhibitions with my work in many collections, like UCMedicine and Purdue University. As much as time as I spend at my computer, I abhor having a smart phone. Friends are always fact checking each other, no matter what topic we are discussing. It drives me crazy.
ReplyDeleteI've always hated wearing hats. When I take one off, it feels like it's still there the next day. Same with watches, rings and jewelry. Hell, if it weren't for social intolerance, I probably would abstain from wearing clothing, except in winter. Ergo, the thought of having another appendage is inconceivable. Thus, no smart phone, which is supposed to be attached to you like another limb.
It bugs me that people with smart phones attached to them, never seem to answer them, although I know they are glued to them like leaches. When I tell people I don't have a smart phone, I get two reactions: 1) How do you live without it? 2) You are so lucky.
But that is all beside the point. What I wanted to share here with Neil is a favorite quote that I saw behind the desk at the United Nations many years ago...IT'S TOO LATE TO AGREE WITH ME, I'VE CHANGED MY MIND.
I forgot to add how exciting it was to see Mr. S back in this morning's Sun-Times. So glad to know you are on the job again.
ReplyDeleteindeed, welcome back Mr. S.
DeleteI read where one person said, why are you calling me, when you can text?
ReplyDeleteWell FME got the ass part right.
ReplyDeleteI've become interested in digital minimalism the past month or so, and I've seen increasing discussion about it online. I thought the increasing discussions being surfaced to me were just The Algorithm doing its job, but The Algorithm doesn't serve me Neil Steinberg. This is just in my bookmarks. Perhaps we're all reaching the point of digital saturation and having a collective experience for old times' sake.
ReplyDeleteOver the past few weeks:
- I stopped using Spotify in my car and returned to terrestrial radio and Sirius XM. The return of randomness has been pleasurable; I feel out of the bubble that Spotify curates for me.
- Same with Google Maps in the car. Do I really need to "navigate" to work every day? Some days it may save me 3 minutes by avoiding traffic. Who cares. Again, I embrace the randomness.
- I disabled location services all together. Google doesn't need to know where I am at all times. It's useful for tracking my bike rides and tagging photos with location. Fine, I'll turn it on when I do those things.
- I enjoy Instagram sometimes, but I uninstalled it from my phone. I check it every couple of days from my computer now.
- I changed my phone's notifications so almost nothing shows up on my lock screen. Emails and texts need to be pulled by me now, instead of being pushed in my face. I've found this greatly reduced the number of interactions I have with my phone.
- I stopped worrying about step tracking, because that was making me carry my phone or wear my watch 24 hours per day. I generally take 10,000 steps per day; good enough for me.
- For several hours per day, I TURN OFF my phone! The idea of powering down our electronics seems almost outlandish now, but it felt extremely liberating the first time.
Each day I'll find new ways to minimize my digital diet. Technology is extremely useful in all of our lives, but we need to take back control of our attention and thoughts.
Today's takeaway....Social Media is "something old people do to spritz the illusion of significance over their empty lives."
ReplyDelete