14 Comments

Love this ! I did research in 2018 on technology and the family. After that I seriously limited my screen time.

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author

Thank you so much April! Wow, sounds like you were ahead of your time… have you found it makes a difference in your life to limit screen time?

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Aug 1Liked by I Read This Over Shabbos

Oh yes!!! So much!!!

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Jul 30Liked by Arty Cweiber

For nostalgia (not kashrus) reasons, my dream is someday to get a landline phone, one of those old AT&T devices you never see these days except in old movies.

I see, inter alia, two important advantages to that:

1. I can honestly tell people that I didn't answer their call because I wasn't home to receive it.

2. When I say I'm dialing a number, that will actually make some literal sense.

(Yes, I admit it: I'm not only a hopeless nostalgic, but slavishly pedantic as well. ;)

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Haha love this, and honestly having a landline is something that should be brought back. It’s good to have a working phone that kids can use, that doesn’t run out of battery, that can always be found… so nostalgia might be onto something here. And yes, it’s so funny when my kids see a toy rotary phone (you know the ones) and they have no idea why I’m calling it a phone when it looks nothing like a phone they’ve ever seen!

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Yeah, kids.

Gotta love 'em.

Good luck expecting them to know anything about rotary phones.

So far as they're concerned, the wheels of the bus are the only things that go round and round. ;)

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Just got a Kosher phone, and feeling great about the change. Wrote a piece about some of what I've experienced so far, which has been...non-trivial, to say the least.

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Wow Alex! That’s amazing! I’m heading over to read it 😇

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I fullheartedly agree with your analysis and am also seriously considering getting a kosher phone myself

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Thank you! It’s such a hard decision and once you’ve made the decision it’s hard to follow through (I’m writing this on my smartphone) but I think ultimately it’s the best thing… but hard.

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Arty, if you get a kosher phone I want to know everything about how it goes!!! My friend Dia has fully removed substack from her phone because she didn’t like how it became another app she scrolled through. I’m tempted but I also love the ease of access. I guess that’s our perpetual problem…

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I definitely will Caroline. I’m teetering at the edge of doing it and I need a push to take the final plunge… but I’ve said I’m going to do it, and in public too, so now it’s got to be done.

I definitely hear your friend Dia’s decision… and it makes sense. I think if you’re posting a lot of notes it does become something of a dopamine drip, as I found the week that I posted a few notes, but otherwise I think it’s way more substantive and deep content than any other social media out there. And it’s actually one of the reasons I’m hesitant to get rid of my smartphone, because I love Substack and I love having access to intelligent, meaningful reading material wherever I am. That and Waze.

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Jul 30Liked by Arty Cweiber

I would consider giving up my phone.

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author

I always knew you were smart! 😇

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