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Gen Z moving to Flip Phones

Yeah, this is not actually going to happen. As others have alluded to, it will be a quick fad amongst a few 'influencers' who think they're being so trendy to be on the wave of using old tech. Then they'll realize their Nokia 6085 can't load Instagram or TikTok and abandon it altogether. Quick fad for quick attention spans. I swear this same article came up a year or two back and nothing substantive ever came of it.

Edit: Yup, here we go: https://mashable.com/article/gen-z-flip-phones-trend from 11/10/2021.
 
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I watched the video report that went with the article, and one young person described how social media was controlling her life and how depressed she would get if she lost followers. Anyway, at one point, she mentioned "buying likes" on Instagram (I gather from the context of what she is saying). Does she mean this figuratively or literally? I never use Instagram or other SM, so I was unsure what exactly she meant.
 
Gen Z just wants to do whatever they can to be different, no matter how much of a step backward it is.
Wired headphones, flip phones, bad fashion from the 90s, the list goes on...
 
Mainsail said:
I watched the video report that went with the article, and one young person described how social media was controlling her life and how depressed she would get if she lost followers. Anyway, at one point, she mentioned "buying likes" on Instagram (I gather from the context of what she is saying). Does she mean this figuratively or literally? I never use Instagram or other SM, so I was unsure what exactly she meant.
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She meant it literally, a fake followers/likes 'industry' exists.
 
I don't have any personal experience with such services but if you google 'buy followers instagram' lots of results will come up. You basically place an order, get an estimated time for delivery of the accounts to which you are then given access to. You can use the accounts to boost the followers count of your main account, like posts etc.

At least some of them are legit because at some point I studied twitter bot detection and there are academic research groups that made use of fake follower services - for research, to build datasets etc.
 
bouras said:
I don't have personal experience but if you google 'buy followers instagram' lots of results will come up. You basically place an order, get an estimated time for delivery of the accounts to which you are then given access to. You can use the accounts to boost the followers count of your main account, like posts etc.
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Thanks. Interesting. It's sad that a young person would feel compelled to buy likes.
 
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Guess I'm ahead of the times as I'm still rocking a flip phone...

Battery life is amazing... Can go 2 weeks on 1 charge.
 
entropyfl said:
go out to any restaurant, no one is really talking to each other and this includes families. I've seen families of 4 all sat round the table on devices and occasionally they might mutter to one another.
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100% agree

It reminds me of the ST TNG episode “The Game”


MV5BNWJkM2M5MTMtM2RhMS00ZWI0LThkNTgtYjc1ODg0NGUyMjBlXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMjQ3MjU3NTU@._V1_.jpg
 
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In other news…

“The Hottest Gen Z Gadget Is a 20-Year-Old Digital Camera​

Young people are opting for point-and-shoots and blurry photos.”​

www.nytimes.com

The Hottest Gen Z Gadget Is a 20-Year-Old Digital Camera (Published 2023)

Young people are opting for point-and-shoots and blurry photos.
www.nytimes.com www.nytimes.com

Pretty funny, although the headline made me cringe. Lots of those old cameras produced quite decent photos, especially in daylight.

Furthermore, many of those from 10-15 years ago were excellent, with superb color rendition, full manual controls, along with automatic modes, and good optical zooms that put even current iPhones to shame.

You simply can't capture distant wildlife well — for example, a bird sitting in a tree — in an iPhone, but can easily do so with old pocket zoom digicams.
 
I don't buy the getting off SM reasoning, anyone can delete apps and accounts as to not use them, buying a flip phone to get off SM is like buying a slower car to have fewer speeding tickets.

It's just a fad for vintage stuff the gen Z didn't experience first hand, next up they'll have a floppy disk comeback.
 
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It’s not just Gen Z. In 2019 we had one professor that rather than replace his smartphone, went back to his clunky old ancient flip-phone, and entertained everyone us with his list of reasons. Here we are going into 2023 and about half the Millenial professors and about a third of GenX professors are all sporting their old flipjobs.

Enough people are learning about the “attention economy”’s designed effects on brain chemistry, and facing the exorbitant costs of feeding the continual hardware addiction, are trying out not being tethered to it. For the cost of a new phone that promises to stroke your serotonin & dopamine levels even harder than the last one, you can buy a decent mountain bike that takes you a thousand beautiful places with excellent resolution, or take a couple pretty good vacations to interesting places and have an experience worth more than an insta post. Not a big surprise people ultimately find it preferable to not have their hormone levels hijacked by tech company bro’s every 7.6 seconds to feed an image addiction.
 
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turbineseaplane said:
It reminds me of the ST TNG episode “The Game”
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Yes, and the Orville episode “Majority Rule” especially, where society judges everyone and everything with like and dislike votes.

“On a television in Lysella's coffee shop, a news anchor points out that the South Madaka resevoir is contaminated by industrial waste but his guest responds that 74 percent of the population has voted that assessment as false, and therefore cannot be true.”
 
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Mainsail said:
I saw this article on CNN.


I understand the desire to get off social media, but I am not sure I get buying another phone as the solution. Isn't it easier to just log off of social media and delete all of those apps from your phone? Then you still have the other useful features: navigation, sharing location for safety, better camera, email, wiki and reference apps, contacts, calendars, reminders, news, stocks, weather, etc...
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I saw an article, it must be representative of reality! Certainly not from an opinion news website. Oh wait...
 
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sdwaltz said:
Gen Z just wants to do whatever they can to be different, no matter how much of a step backward it is.
Wired headphones, flip phones, bad fashion from the 90s, the list goes on...
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Every generation has these kinds of people of course. I don’t get why you’d put wired headphones in the list though. Wireless isn’t better, it’s just different
 
Heindijs said:
Every generation has these kinds of people of course. I don’t get why you’d put wired headphones in the list though. Wireless isn’t better, it’s just different
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What I've seen most recently is that the kids are back to using Earpods instead of Airpods, because "their parents use Airpods and they don't want to look like their parents"

They don't know how good they have it.
 
sdwaltz said:
What I've seen most recently is that the kids are back to using Earpods instead of Airpods, because "their parents use Airpods and they don't want to look like their parents"

They don't know how good they have it.
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I assume that it’s either a really American thing, something you made up or just the fact that Airpods are like the price of a phone while regular Apple earbuds are actually affordable for kids.
 
entropyfl said:
I hate to say but I think the smart phone is massively damaging to our overall mental health. go out to any restaurant, no one is really talking to each other and this includes families. I've seen families of 4 all sat round the table on devices and occasionally they might mutter to one another.

its incredibly sad and something I too am guilty of with my family, although we are conscious of it we do try to leave them in the car.

They have the big mental health campaign in the UK of men need to talk! well they don't because they are just on their phones living with their heads in the sand.
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This! It’s why I leave my phone upstairs in my office when we have family dinner or company. If I’m needed, my watch will give me texts or calls.

Also don’t understand why people take it to the bathroom. Micro tech breaks are good too.
 
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trusso said:
News flash: just because a news site publishes an article with a huge over-generalization doesn't actually make it true. Seriously, I don't know anyone in the real world who is actually doing this. Not that doing so is bad for the reasons stated in the article.

I'm an older millennial, and I'm really sick and tired of seeing Boomer-owned corporate America make boogeyman out of Millennials and Gen-Z. Articles like this are trivial, but others (and en masse) are more nefarious.

If you're past middle-age and your primary conception of the younger generations is via "news" like this... well, you really ought to question who's getting played here.
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Well said. …Walks out with cane.
 
sdwaltz said:
Gen Z just wants to do whatever they can to be different,
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They are no different then any other generation. They are free to pick their own path, and if they want a flip phone they can. Who cares if its a step back, they're not hurting anyone ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I've seen some of the samsung foldable screen flip phones, and they look amazing. They're not a step back, but something very different and if that catches on, good for them.
 
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Devnul0 said:
Yes, and the Orville episode “Majority Rule” especially, where society judges everyone and everything with like and dislike votes.

“On a television in Lysella's coffee shop, a news anchor points out that the South Madaka resevoir is contaminated by industrial waste but his guest responds that 74 percent of the population has voted that assessment as false, and therefore cannot be true.”
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Black Mirror has a pretty fantastic episode of one happy-go-lucky office workers slow, steady descent one dislike at a time into a padded cell screaming obscenities across the hall back and forth to the other inmates.
 
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Mainsail said:
I saw this article on CNN.


I understand the desire to get off social media, but I am not sure I get buying another phone as the solution. Isn't it easier to just log off of social media and delete all of those apps from your phone? Then you still have the other useful features: navigation, sharing location for safety, better camera, email, wiki and reference apps, contacts, calendars, reminders, news, stocks, weather, etc...
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Agreed - it’s easy to get off social media, just don’t install the apps ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Of all the things I use my iPhone for - which isn’t really a lot compared to some people - using it as “A phone” is pretty far down the list. So I don’t see a flip phone in my future.
 
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