'Smart' phones: the new security blankets
 

from 'The Potential of Object-Relations Theory for Improving Engagement With Health Apps' in today's JAMA https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...rticle/2755742

The effect has been noted before.

I always thought smartphones were pretty childish!

It's not smartphones that are childish. It's the persons how use them.

I'm no fan of smartphones but thanks to folks right here on LQN the Librem 5 may change my views largely because the only reasons I'm not a fan are rapidly disappearing. My main concerns have been security and privacy but Librem 5, with a real Linux OpSys (not android), looks like that may already be solved. Now that there are really good docks available that allow connection to external drives, any monitor (including 4K resolution), keyboards, mice, and basically any peripheral device one can imagine, the only differences from a tower or laptop are essentially gone. Oh wait, some smartphones have 10-16MP cameras built in, FM radio, 8 core CPUs up to 3GHz, 8-16GB RAM, 32bit stereo audio capable of 82db sound with just the built in stereo speakers and can connect to external speakers and powered speakers, ... and more.

I don't love them yet, but they are far from childish. I wouldn't be at all surprised if some modern smartphones are more powerful and more extensible than PCs owned by many LQN members. Oh wait! Some are already more powerful in most ways than my own Main!... and they are mobile! DOH!

Scientists then: The monkey is soothed by embracing the fur dressed wire mesh of the faux monkey mother.
Scientists now: The monkey is dead because the intern forgot to feed it, playing "Super Take care of a Monkey 3D" on his smartphone, instead.

... and the project is out of funding for a new monkey because, the intern spent all the money on micro-transactions to buy 3D bananas to feed the 3D monkey.

I really hate touchscreens.

With that said, I'm sure there will be a viable free software smartphone with one before there is a viable free software flip-phone without one.

If I can plug in a mouse and keyboard, even better.

I don't "hate" smartphones per se (or any defining features), but I require something around the phone to be able to hold it in my hands. And to protect it from the elements (that might find their way into my pockets, too, esp. sand).
This sort of invalidates all those enthusiast remarks about being thinner and having narrower bezels...
Including the protective cover I need to have on my phone, its size is closer to a book than a slab of glass.

I truly do hate the hype around mobile technology, and the way young people (adults too) don't even realise that they're in its clutches. Nobody even questions that it's a "must have" and must be renewed every other year at the very least.

Add to that the observed psycho-socio-emotional impact - yep, the hate accumulates to a point that I could almost say "I hate smartphones".

Haha, ain't it the truth.
But it seems the PC is still king there.
Apparently someone spent 1.4 million on a virtual character, foolishly let a friend maintain it for a while, who then planned on selling it back to him for about 55k, but then put a much lower number on the marketplace, where it got snapped up for something like 500.

(I don't know which 'journalism outlets' are good these days so I picked this one at random and archieved it. The story is covered by several.)
https://archive.md/PjnZ1

What's the procedure to determine the I.Q. of a Smart Phone?

Don Norman described something he called 'The Teddy' in the early 1990s. I remember thinking later that he'd uncannily described the mobile phone. He said something along the lines that there might be a problem if people preferred to talk to their 'Teddy' rather than to each other...

Oddly enough, at work, if I plug the new Dell docking station (USB-C) into my Android phone, I can use the keyboard and mouse straight away. I only found out because I was just using the cable to charge the phone and noticed when I moved the mouse there was a little mouse pointer on the screen, then I started typing messages on the keyboard.

That's why I very much enjoyed the concept of the "Dixie Dead Zone" diners, for which they found places that were "dead zones" for all cell networks and set up diners at those locations.