Ep. 24: Before Smartphones or After Smartphones… That is the Question

Written By Matti Shicker
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EPISODE DESCRIPTION

Technology has made our lives easier, faster, more connected, and infinitely more entertaining. But does that mean before smartphones we were just bored?

In this solo episode, Matti takes a look at what we gained when smartphones, social media, and big tech became part of everyday life, and what we may have lost along the way. From the simple rituals and shared experiences of the pre-smartphone era to the increasingly optimized world of modern social media, this is a conversation about convenience, nostalgia, boredom, and the strange things we sometimes miss once technology makes them obsolete.

And then there’s MySpace. Why are people who never even experienced the original version of it suddenly fascinated by the idea of bringing some of it back?

Maybe the answer isn’t choosing between the old world and the new one. Maybe it’s figuring out which parts of each actually make our lives better.

Referenced in this Episode

TRANSCRIPT

Was life actually better before smartphones? Or were we just bored, technologically deprived old farts who didn’t know any better? One Atlantic writer has some thoughts. And I have some thoughts about his thoughts. Here we go.

Hello and welcome to It’s Gonna Be Fine. I’m so glad you are with us. We have had so many guests recently—guest co-hosts, guest experts. The last eight episodes or so have had people join us, and I was feeling it was time to just be you and me. So we’re going to take today’s episode to reconnect. We’ve got some interesting topics to talk about, and I’m excited to just go back to the basics with you, the listener. We’ve got some good shows coming up next week. David will be back, and after that we’ve got some more guests as well. So there’s more to look forward to. But peppering in these solo episodes every now and then, where it’s just us, is kind of nice. So I’m excited to do that today.

And before we get into the show, just a couple of things. This is episode 24, which is incredible, and we’ve had some progress here on the show. So just as a reminder, we have an Instagram page. The profile is @itsgonnabefine_pod, so you can follow us there. And our email address has changed. We’re no longer using the Gmail. You can still email that one and I’ll still get it, but the new email for the show is hello@itsgonnabefine.fm. I would love to hear from you. Let me know what you think about the various episodes we’ve had, if you have any ideas for topics, or if you just want to check in. It’s always fun to connect. And also, don’t forget to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform. For a while there, we were just on Spotify and Apple, but now I can safely say we are on every platform wherever you get your podcasts. So you can subscribe or follow wherever you listen. And if you’re enjoying the show, give it a five-star rating. I would greatly appreciate it. It helps other people find the show, and that would be wonderful. So check out these new things, check out our website, and more to come potentially soon: YouTube and putting this out not just on audio, but video as well. That is all hopefully in the works, with more updates to come there. All right, let’s jump into today’s episode.

Were We Actually Bored Before Smartphones?

We’ve talked a bit on the show about technology, nostalgia, and the ‘90s. We’ve covered a lot of those topics over the last few months. And there’s actually been more chatter recently about life before smartphones, life before big tech, and life before all of that took over our lives. But this time, it’s not really so much from a nostalgic perspective, which we’ve discussed in the past. I know I’ve shared how nostalgic I am for some of that time period. Instead, the question is more along the lines of: Was it actually a more boring existence before smartphones, or have we just convinced ourselves that more technology automatically means we’re going to have a better or more exciting time? We’ll start with this article from The Atlantic that I mentioned in the opening. The title of it is What Did People Do Before Smartphones?, and it was written by Ian Bogost in July of 2023. Essentially, the author talks about how he can’t really remember how he spent his time before smartphones. He thinks about being on the train, eating lunch, or any other time when he was in between activities, and he sort of asks the question: What did we do? He couldn’t remember a time before smartphones and how he kept himself busy. In the article, he asks some of his friends—his middle-aged friends—to also think back to life in the “old days” and remember what it was that they did before smartphones. And the article says he finds a “spine-chilling revelation”: We couldn’t remember what we did because there was nothing to remember having done. When reading this article, I was even thinking, Is this satire? Some of the points were so out there to me that I thought, Maybe this is a big joke. Ultimately, I don’t think it was satire. I think he was making real points that he believed in. But it sounded so ridiculous at times that I thought, This could be satire. So let’s go over some excerpts from the article that I think are particularly interesting, and we can talk a little bit about them.

Really, the question that I was thinking about while reading the article was: Were we actually bored before smartphones, or did we just experience boredom differently? I completely agree that smartphones have undeniably given us an extraordinary amount of stimulation, information, entertainment, and connection. They’ve also delivered a lot of negative things, but I’m definitely on board with the idea that smartphones have given us all of those things. However, does more stimulation automatically equal a better or more exciting life? That I’m not so sure about. Back to the article. In the first excerpt, he writes: “I cannot overemphasize how little there was to do before we all had smartphones. A barren expanse of empty time would stretch out before you…” He describes waiting for the bus, waiting for someone to come home, or waiting for the next scheduled event to start. Someone might be late or take longer than expected, but no notice of that delay would arrive. So you’d stare out the window, hoping to see some sign of activity down the block. You’d pace or sulk or stew.

I kind of disagreed with most of the article. I think he made some interesting points. However, one thing I don’t agree with is the way he makes this pre-tech world sound so boring. Really, I think the flaw here is that the pre-tech world only sounds boring because we know now what a post-tech world can offer. If we’re comparing the two worlds, it’s not an apples-to-apples comparison. Someone in 1998 didn’t wake up thinking, You know, another day without TikTok, GPS, Uber, streaming TV, smartphones, DoorDash, AI. What a miserable experience. That just didn’t happen because they had their world. And within that world, they found whatever they found exciting, exciting.

I think there’s a mistake in looking backward and saying, Gosh, how did people live like that? I mean, it’s because that’s what life was. You don’t miss something that you didn’t know existed. Back then, we figured out how to have fun. We figured out how to connect. We figured out how to be entertained. We figured out how to fill a Saturday afternoon or a Sunday morning. And I’m pretty sure people weren’t walking around in a constant state of despair because they couldn’t check Instagram between appointments or while waiting for the bus. There is plenty of evidence that people did exciting things before big tech, before smartphones, and before social media. There’s tons of video documenting all of this, whether it’s through the news media or home videos. We were talking about nostalgia for the ’90s, and we talked about Love Story on Hulu a few episodes ago. There are tons of videos of people doing really cool things during that time period. And we all had home videos. The camcorder was a huge thing in the ‘90s and even before that. We didn’t just video ourselves doing nothing. We had things to do.

So many of my fondest memories are visits from out-of-town family. How exciting that was when they were coming. We’d go to amusement parks with my cousins. We still have long-lasting jokes and family inside jokes from those times. I loved playing baseball in Little League. We kept ourselves busy. We had things to do, and I remember them. It’s not like I’m sitting here thinking, What the hell did I do before a smartphone? I just think that’s a very small way to think about a time period before this one.

What Did We Do With All That “Empty” Time?

Here’s another short excerpt from the article. He says that before smartphones, people didn’t invest their in-between time into forging social bonds or doing self-improvement. They mostly suffered through constant, endless boredom. So, let us not lament or malign the time we waste on smartphones, at least not so much.

I think the point he’s trying to make is that we hear a lot about how terrible the post-smartphone and social media world is, and how it’s brought so many negative things. I’ve heard smartphones described as a “necessary evil,” which I think is an interesting way to describe it. I don’t love the word evil, but smartphones, technology, and social media can bring a lot of positive things, of course, while also coming with a lot of negative things, like most things. And I think it’s okay to recognize that smartphones have not only brought positive things. They’ve also introduced some issues into our society that we really have to deal with. We’ve talked a lot about these topics on the show.

But from that excerpt, he’s talking about what you do in between activities. And I was just thinking: I can think of a million things. If I’m waiting for the bus and I don’t have a smartphone, people read books. They carried books with them and would read them on the bus, while waiting for the bus, at the doctor’s office. Remember the magazines that would sit on the doctor’s table? Highlights. People. There were things to do. And you could argue that that’s today’s version of scrolling. You had content to engage with. When you weren’t doing something exciting—which you weren’t doing every second of the day—we still don’t do something exciting every second of the day. Maybe you were talking to your family. Maybe you were using your imagination or coming up with creative projects. I just don’t buy this idea that we didn’t know how to spend our time between activities, between work and school and those moments in our day when we had nothing to do. That’s fine. You found things to do.

And honestly, there’s also nothing wrong with doing nothing. If you’re waiting for the bus and you just want to sit there and daydream a little bit, take in the fresh air, look at the sun and the clouds—I think that’s incredibly healthy. And we don’t do enough of that these days because of smartphones. So the article really took a different approach. That’s why, when I was reading it, I thought, Maybe it’s satire. I don’t know. It just was a little bit out there for me.

Remember When Going to Blockbuster Was an Event?

That leads me to another post I saw, which is very much related to this. This one was on Instagram, and it was about all the nostalgic things we used to do before smartphones, before big tech, and before the world completely changed. I was looking for the post for the episode, but I couldn’t find it. I don’t know why. I don’t know if it got deleted or whatever, but I did remember a few things from it. I also found a similar post from BuzzFeed that had, I don’t know, like 19 different things. We’re not going to talk about all 19, but I have my top four or five that I remember from that Instagram post and from the BuzzFeed article. There were some that overlapped between the two.

A couple really jumped out at me. Again, these are things that we used to do before smartphones. So, yeah, we had things to do back then, and we enjoyed them. The first one: if you can think back, for those who remember, imagine a weekend night. It’s early evening, and you’re like, You know what? Tonight we’re going to rent a movie. And we’re going to go to Blockbuster and pick out that movie, and we’re going to have a movie night with our friends or family. Just talking about this now, I don’t know if you can hear it in my voice, but it was so exciting to me going there. Maybe it was because my parents didn’t let us watch movies that often, so it was a particularly exciting experience. But I think even people who did it weekly still talk about those times as exciting. My heart pumped a little harder every time we drove up to Blockbuster.

I remember the smell of the store. You know how you walk into a library and it has a smell? For me, Blockbuster had a scent that you knew meant you were there. And there was that excitement of: What movies would we find? What’s out there that I don’t know about? What looks funny? What looks cool? That laminated membership card that we had, and the beep of the membership card when they were renting you the movie and scanning it—all of that was super exciting for me. So that’s one of the things we used to do. And we had a great time doing it before smartphones.

Another thing these posts brought up was playing outside with your friends until the streetlights came on. That was your sign: Hey, it’s curfew time. It told you it was time to go home because it was getting dark. You were kind of lost in this world of play and sports and hanging out on steps and selling lemonade, whatever it was, just having a good time with the neighborhood kids. Then it’s getting dark. It’s time to go home. No one had to call you or text you. Your parents didn’t send you a DM to say, Hey, it’s time to come home.

Another thing we did, which I think was both healthy and exciting: remember burning CDs? I mean, I love Spotify. We’ve talked about Spotify too, and I don’t want to go back to burning CDs. But at the time, that was a fun project. These things took time. We couldn’t do it as fast as we can add a Spotify song to our playlist these days. But it’s all we knew. And, in fact, it was exciting because it was a step up from cassette tapes. Now we could create our own, quote-unquote, cassette tapes through these CDs—our own playlists by burning CDs. And we enjoyed doing it because, again, it’s all we knew. We wanted the music. And this was technology for us back then. Yeah, it took more time. It kept us busy, and that’s fine. It was a project. We wrote on them with our Sharpie pens and maybe designed them a bit. And we got those CD-RW CDs. I just remember those letters on there. Learning how that technology worked was interesting to me.

Another thing that brought me back there: Do you also remember looking up movie times in newspapers? Or even better, calling AOL Moviephone and that guy: “Hello and welcome to AOL Moviephone…” I loved that guy. I loved his voice. Going to the movies was an experience. And it still is, in a way. I think you can say that. But back then it was completely on another level because it was the only way to see whatever new film everyone was talking about. You couldn’t get it streaming right away. And it was a social event.

Lastly, this isn’t maybe something exciting per se that we did, but I think it kind of proves that we still did things and had exciting moments. I mentioned family traveling from out of town. We went on road trips all the time. But do you remember printing out MapQuest directions and bringing them on your trip and following them step by step? This was, of course, in between actual maps and GPS. But we had those MapQuest directions. And we did that because we had places to be. We had things to do. Whether we were going to a museum or on a family road trip, things still happened before smartphones and before big technology and social media.

People had fun lives because they didn’t know an alternative. No one knew about TikTok in the ’80s and ‘90s. And you can think back to any time period. I don’t think they sat there thinking, Gosh, this is boring, and I bet the future is more interesting. No. They made the best of what they had. And from the videos and content we have from those time periods, the articles and stories and pictures, it looks like they were having a phenomenal time.

I really like the 1920s and that era with speakeasies and newsies and all that stuff and the music of the time. Even the ‘50s and ‘60s looked really fun, with the sock hops that kids did in high school. I mean, we don’t have anything like that. And they looked to me like they were having a super fun time. So I think it’s very shortsighted to say that we had nothing to do back then. And also, it’s okay to have a little bit of downtime and engage with someone on a human level during that time. Or not. Sit on your own. Have your own thoughts. We don’t have to spend our time doing something all the time.

Why Is MySpace Suddenly Having a Moment?

And that leads me to my last piece of evidence that we did things back in the day—and not only did things, but even craved them and thought about them and maybe even want to do them again. And that is: Have you seen all this stuff about MySpace making a comeback?

If you remember MySpace, I’m sure many of you do. But for those who don’t, it was kind of like pre-Facebook social media, but it was very, very different. I saw a particular article on LinkedIn that talked about MySpace, but I’ve seen other things about MySpace on different platforms as well. And Gen Z in particular seems all about it. I find it so ironic because they’re making TikTok videos about MySpace and how amazing MySpace looks and could be. They’re saying how refreshing it would be to have social media without the ads.

Think about what Facebook became. When Facebook started, it was kind of like a social network and started with colleges only. Then it expanded to adults outside of college. And then it became this advertising machine where it was all sponsored content and ways to insert ads. Even today, if you watch Reels on Facebook, you’ve got the ads at the bottom. They’re constantly coming up. People are annoyed with that at this point. They’re a little bit burned out.

So this idea of something like MySpace—which never had that level of marketing and advertising and clicking and optimization—is interesting. There’s this pressure today to turn everything into optimized content. That pressure exists today, along with the pressure to keep up with the latest trends. I’ve mentioned that I’m trying to do some more social media for the show. And I’ve mentioned moving into hopefully YouTube soon. It’s a lot. It’s really hard to keep up with the latest and greatest. It’s constantly changing: what’s the best practice, what’s best in class, what’s the best way to engage people? It’s exhausting.

But on something like MySpace, you were able to just be playful with it. You had fun. It removes the competition. You’re not always thinking, What’s this creator doing? What’s that creator doing? How do I match them? How do I get more followers? This constant competition.

Now, I should say, I never used MySpace myself. I don’t recall ever signing up for an account. But I’ve seen it. I have friends who had it. I remember when it was around. And I do know that one of the things people really appreciated about it is that your online identity on MySpace felt more like your space than a standardized feed inside somebody else’s algorithm.

Today on Instagram, we all exist within Instagram. Instagram is telling us what we’re going to see, and the algorithm is controlling it all. With MySpace, you could decorate your page. You could put backgrounds and wallpaper and music, and you could really express yourself. It wasn’t like you were existing inside MySpace’s container. You made your MySpace page your own. And I don’t think that experience exists in today’s social media.

So I think it’s pretty clear, at least from this article that I saw and from others—and again, these TikTok videos that people are putting out about their excitement for something like MySpace—that creators and social media users are fatigued. And it’s so interesting how people are voluntarily creating limitations that technology had previously eliminated. The idea of going back to something like MySpace—which Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok got rid of—and now we’re like, No, please bring it back.

The article specifically mentioned that audiences are gravitating “towards spaces that feel personal, participatory, and low pressure.” And I think there’s something really important about that. So there you go. Not only did we do things before big tech and smartphones, but we are actually craving that vibe again.

Maybe We Don’t Have to Choose

So ultimately, I think all of this is healthy. I think it’s great to push back when something doesn’t work for you anymore. Cindy and I talked about this a few episodes ago when we talked about AI advancements. It’s not working for everyone, and that’s okay. You can, quote-unquote, fight back and do what works for you. If you feel like something’s moving too quickly or getting out of hand, try to change it. That’s totally fine. Totally legitimate.

And when I think about it for myself, like I mentioned in the beginning, I see the value in smartphones. I see the good part of social media, and I do see the evil part of social media. So there is a balance for me. There are elements of technology that I love. I use my smartphone every single day. In certain ways, it plays a very important role in my day-to-day life. And I think that’s the case for a lot of people. But I also recognize that it doesn’t have to be all or nothing. You could appreciate your smartphone and use it in a way that works for you while also appreciating and loving those simpler moments when the noise is turned off.

I will say I’m young enough to remember that we still had fun and exciting lives before these things lived in our pockets. So I think, ultimately, you do you. If you’re loving big tech, smartphones, and the ever-changing social media trends and content, more power to you. Just stop looksmaxing. That’s my only ask. Do it. Just let’s stop with the looksmaxing.

But if you’re nostalgic for the simpler days, or you miss them, or you feel like they were better when there was less technology, that’s great too. You get to set up your life in whatever way works for you. Ultimately, you can love your iPhone and still put it away for dinner. You can use Instagram and still think Instagram is occasionally terrible—or more than occasionally. Whatever. You can love YouTube and still enjoy sitting around with your friends doing absolutely nothing. Maybe talking about YouTube videos, but not watching them. And you can still appreciate the incredible conveniences of modern technology while recognizing that some things we lost were worth keeping.

So if we can do that—find that balance and focus on what works for us—I’m pretty sure… it’s gonna be fine.

See you next time.

This transcript has been lightly edited for readability.

Matti Shicker
Next

Ep. 23: Continuing the AI Conversation - Part 2 (w. Cindy)