#volunteering — Public Fediverse posts on home.social

richard @[email protected] · 2026-09-14 · 11:23 UTC

On Desktops, Smartphones and Volunteering

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Yet another article has been written about how smartphones are a trap we built for ourselves by VOX. The article is paywalled so I didn’t read it but it’s worth commenting on the headline.

This weekend I was in Divonne volunteering at the Triathlon de Divonne and during this time I was surprised by a single thing. I was surprised by how many people I knew through cycling, after-work drinks and one or two from running. Divonne isn’t a place that I go to very often. I usually go on the last Saturday of the month, to ride with friends.

One of those friends deals with the Triathlon de Divonne, so that’s why I volunteered. In so doing I found that my ties to Divonne are stronger than I expected. When I ran at the Wake Up and Run event I was surprised by how few people I knew were there, whereas with the Triathlon the opposite is true.

It is also worth noting that by volunteering at this event I spent the entire day with people, whether it was children transitioning at the bike park from, swimming to cycling, to running, or adults placing their bikes, to cars waiting to be able to pass due to us blocking the roads for cyclist safety.

We often blame smart phones for isolating us but recently I heard a comment about how much homework children get, and how as it increases children stop playing outside. With time that isolation increases, and increases. If you have homework groups then theoretically you undercut that isolation, but in practice it’s easier, logistically to go home.

As we become adults, in the world of work, we are desk bound to computer based jobs and if we get up for a little chat we are immediately told off for slacking off. The irony is that if you’re a smoker that slacking off is accepted, but if you’re a non-smoker, chatting with a smoker then you’re a slacker. Remember Rachel Green in Friends for a 90s example.

We love to blame smartphones for being a trap but we don’t consider our computer based jobs in high pressure environments that require us to be focused and unsociable.

Before smartphones, and data plans Blackberry and some Nokia phones had data but it required a special plan. Before that you needed your laptop and either a network port and cable, or a wifi card. With smartphones you get convenience.

For the last two days, people with their bibs and bike stickers should recover their bikes. If they didn’t have their smartphones, with the confirmation e-mail bike recovery was complicated. Those that did not have their phones had to leave their bikes, get their bib or some other form of identification before being allowed to depart.

Smartphones are seen as an addiction centre by many, but that’s because plenty of people don’t remember why smartphones make life more convenient. Would you want to go to a triathlon with your laptop, left in a bag, in a locker?

The article wrote about mindless scrolling on a smartphone, despite being a new parent and my comment to that is simple. Until 2007 social networks were small communities of like minded people in the middle of conversation. From 2007 onwards, with hashtags, and zynga farming games we shifted from conversations with friends to spamming with friends, with various requests.

With Instagram, Twitter and Facebook, when we had conversations within tight knit communities, with our sharing of photos, we weren’t mindlessly scrolling. We were socialising.

When Twitter shifted to hashtags the social aspect was lost, and when Instagram was sold to Facebook it went from community to influencers. It went from being a social investment to being a waste of time, for advertisers and influencers to spam us.

Remember, social media, via smart phones was made ubiquitous and convenient, but with the wrong moral compass being used, apps that connected us disconnected us. Today if we use FB and Twitter, and Instagram we’re being antisocial to those we are with. Before social media was the glue that bound us together as a community. Seesmeetups, and Tweetups, and uni friend events.

Photos of ID cards helped people who didn’t have their ID cards with them prove that they were who they said they were via photos of their ID cards, and other people could get their bibs sooner, because they had the confirmation e-mail, without printing out, saving plenty of paper. In theory it saved 1100 pieces of paper from being printed.

In the post social media age it makes sense to volunteer to events where you’re surrounded by people, to join running groups and to join cycling groups, because, in so doing, you leave your phone in your pocket and live in the moment.

Dark design patterns encourage us to waste time on devices. If, instead of blaming the technology, we held app designers to account, then apps would provide real value instead of wasting our time, especially reels.

I hate that we can spend hours watching pointless reels, with no engagement, no value, and no reward. We’re not social, we’re not learning, we’re not getting value, and yet we’re wasting hours.

Remember, pre-Facebok Instagram was a social network based on friends we knew in person. We don’t need to give up smartphones to revert to healthier habits, just the toxic apps.

#computers #deskJobs #digital #humanContact #volunteering

#computers #deskjobs #digital #humancontact #volunteering