I resonate with that point, since I do a digital art/tech class, which uses Macs. I find app crashes and the inaccessibility of certain menus quite infuriating, i even somewhat rage internally for a while until i either quit what i was doing or search it up.

When my 8 year old Fedora laptop freezes, crashes, or sound drivers crash like what happened yesterday, I stay very calm and think of a solution, such as updating and restarting.

even if I haven’t built the OS myself or really customised it at all, i find it more calming that i have options to completely change the software compared to locked down OSes.

bro wrote the whole library of Alexandria

I definitely agree, though I’d also add the Australia/New Zealand region as well, since we are also reasonably heavy users of phones too. Also I’m from Victoria, Australia by the way, it’s pretty fascinating how diverse the internet is :)

I guess it lands differently in other parts of the world and is more nuanced than I previously anticipated, since, where I live we are quite agnostic between devices to message with, some use phones, some use tablets, some use laptops, and it goes on. As for my friend group, none of us communicated using phones until mid 2022, two years into our friendships.

Since we all moved to our senior campus, we are just now emphasising smartphones as a daily method of communication, compared to our previous default, laptops and desktops, but we normally use the same apps/sites we used to, specifically discord and Instagram.

Again, I believe it depends on the area, maybe in other parts they use phones much more often compared to us, or some may never use phones at all.

As a 17 year old who has 3 phones (somewhat strange story behind it), giving a child a phone should be either when they need it, such as when they go out more often or other events where they need a specific use, but if not, I believe 18 to 20 is not a bad age to receive one, since young adults are more likely to need to travel to schooling such as UNI more often and generally need more info about travel routes and to be able to message parents/siblings/etc.

As for my 3 phones, one is a galaxy S4 my dad gave me as a hand-me-down, pretty much used to text my parents exclusively, then I received an oppo Reno z from a friend who didn’t need it, which I currently use as a games and social media phone, then the third is one is a galaxy a20 my dad brought home and said I could take if I wanted, since there were a few of those unused at his workplace, so I now just use that as a flashlight.

Any bet the control panel is the only thing holding my dad back from switching to Linux for home use, because he absolutely hates the windows 10 and 11 settings apps.

Not excusing his actions but, as an Australian, I find child support a predatory system, the fact it basically cyphons people’s finances, hurts their potential for growth and rehab, and the fact that I’ve heard so many stories of the parent never using the funds on their kids, but on their own greed and self fulfilment, which is just horrific, although I don’t believe I know enough about this topic to have a truly well thought out opinion.

I pretty much got permabanned for ban evasion, even though I was on an alt that has no reference to the others other than being on the same IP, my other accounts got banned simultaneously.

If my younger self from like 3 years ago heard generating videos can be a prompt away and can make gigantic amounts of misinformation, he would shit himself and probably write a manifesto, but fuck me this is still insane today!

I doubt it’s too much of a stretch, since even here in australia, we’ve had multiple airlines, news stations, banks, supermarkets and many others, including the aluminium extrusion business my father works at, all go down, scale this do hundreds of countries with populations tenfold of ours, it puts it into perspective that there may even be more than a billion machines affected

I do understand that fact, but I used it as an example since you can utilise android apps with the same or similar user experience as a smartphone, I’m more using it as an example of form factor compared to chip architecture, as the latter wouldn’t be fitting at all. Apologies for the confusion.

I appreciate the help, I was asking as my school laptop runs horrendously slow on windows, but when I utilise a Linux live environment, it’s suddenly bearable.

im just giving an example that has the same software, im not saying its better or that you need it.

yeah I just realised that fact, currently I use chromium and it is quite fast on my system so I don’t think there will be issues there. aside from that, how fast are windows programs compared to ordinary windows?

no, I’m not confused at all, I am meaning that the smartphone is the most accessible way to utilise social media, meaning due to its formfactor, it is the most convenient way to access it.

are you more likely to use a desktop PC using android x86 (just an example) or use a smartphone? its almost like using a smartwatch to use Photoshop, its not the same as using a desktop, you know what I mean?

well since social media can affect attention spans negatively, as I’ve observed with myself recently, I don’t think the effects of such would translate positively into social or educational circumstances, arguably the most needed situations in a child’s life at that time, even if they are almost an adult.

sure, alcohol and drugs do still affect a child quite intensely, though I’m saying that, is social media and the endless dopamine harvesting NOT a drug? if you think about it, it extracts, makes a person want to come back for more, causing addiction, further extracting more, losing its effectiveness and making it almost impossible to quit from there.

people may say it isn’t addictive, but its just that it isn’t as noticeable since it is a society-wide phenomena which is seen as positive.

what specs do you have? im wondering since im planning to install it on my school laptop (lenovo thinkpad 11e 4th gen, 4gb ram, 128gb ssd, intel celeron, integrated graphics.) and in wondering if it would work somewhat fast, especially at web browsing.

I turned out perfectly fine without a phone until age 15, and I’m 17 now, I don’t really use social media other than reddit, Lemmy and YouTube on my phone and I barely use it, since I’m more likely to use my iPad at home exclusively.

I feel as though more parents need to do the same mine did, restrict access to smartphones until ages the kid is more likely to explore the world more, specifically for safety, but still teach them to concentrate on stops while on public transport, on where they walk, etc. and not use their phone on the go apart from when time is able to pass and be stationary.

I cringe at the fact kids a third or less my age are allowed phones, I shouldn’t even be allowed since my brain is still developing, i cant imagine the levels of braindead these children will be when they get to my age, since people my age are already horrific enough…