What do normal people look at on their phones?
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?
I replaced it with Lemmy, so that's what an abnormal person does.
It's a breath of fresh air in an otherwise chaotic Internet user interface.
🏅
Oh that's fantastic, thanks for sharing!
Hey, nice. Thanks.
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Noice
Thank you!!!
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
How the hell would any of us know?
Some of us have millennial and zoomer kids.
Mazel tov
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.
I have a concerning number of Doctor Who audio dramas on my phone
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
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The screen 👉😏👉
Fingerprints
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...
Heh, look at you, asking this in Lemmy, as if we're all normal.
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?
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?
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
Pleased to meet you, fellow wallwatcher.
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)
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
Wikipedia rabbit holes
My wife scrolls through Instagram & plays mobile games. She’s pretty normal.
If I ever find a normal person I’ll ask them for you.
Please define "normal people". ;)
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.
What big checkmark???
I tried Instagram but it's like scrolling through Facebook videos.. all garbage.
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 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.
I have Feedly app and a bunch of RSS feeds about tech, world news, board games, video games, robotics, space, and pop culture. It’s great! Sure I get a few duplicate articles from multiple sites covering the same thing but it’s nice little digital newspaper. And if one site keeps publishing stupid shit I can unsubscribe from it and it’s gone from my feed.
Probably social media like Facebook, Instagram, ... Or video sharing sites like TikTok (yuck!) and YouTube.
You object to only one of those four?
I couldn't care less about the others. I have extremely strong opinions about TikTok though.
+1 for YouTube and TikTok
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"
Titties
And this is why you're not allowed to pick up the kids from school anymore.
We don't look at porn when kids are about.
I do look at cat pics and cute animals and will show those around, even to kids. My ten year old grandson doesn't care. He Robloxes.
Holup
From my observations: Normal people don't look at their phone; they listen to it.
If you're expecting normal people to answer: Do you even know where you are right now? :p
That's something I never even thought of, but damn that's accurate. Living in a big ol city, sometimes use public transit - yeah this is totally the case
I look at lemmy or mastodon but I am very much less than normal.
i read random wikipedia articles
Probably* TikTok or some other stupid shit.
I'll second the idea that more than a few minutes of tiktok, YouTube shorts or Instagram reels is debilitating.
I like reading webcomics
Pixel Dungeon is a great pickup/putdown game. Highly recommend.
TikTok, unfortunately.
I do a lot of podcasts and play pokemon on my phone. Emulators are amazing
I'm not qualified to answer that
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.
A duck!
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 am certainly not normal, but I either go on Lemmy through Voyager, or play geometry dash. I also sometimes read books with Librera.
I like to look at different cooking techniques and recipes. You have to eat everyday, why not make it fun and delicious!
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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
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