What is the difference between a person reading a magazine or a book, and a person looking at their phone?

As long as they’re quiet and not driving, I don’t care what they do.

I honestly don’t care what other people are doing in a waiting room. I imagine it’s generational. I’m a millennial and I’m an introvert, so if other people want to stare at a phone or read a book, that’s fine. They’re leaving me alone, and that’s all I care about.

That said, phones can make noise, which is more annoying than silently reading a book. Additionally your brain is more engaged when reading a book than staring at a phone (I guess, unless you’re reading an eBook on your phone).

Either one can cause you to become distracted while driving though. Phone’s just easier to focus on in a car than a book. I’m at the point where if someone doesn’t immediately go at a green light, I give them very little time before I honk at them, because I know they’re staring at their fucking phones. lol

What floors me is if you invited someone to visit they don’t seem to have a problem with playing on their phone most of the time….but I don’t think they’d dream of picking up a book and reading it, to the exclusion of everyone else. This thing about phones is really quite insane at times.

Cellphone is less healthy, though the risk is still controversial.

For myself, I feel that cellphone provide more up-to-date variety of information, whereas magazine is limited to the amount of pages and the date it is issued. I know this since everytime I visit my regular salon I can always see the same outdated ol’ magazines laying on the bookshelf and I have read them all.

My nephew had a sleep over at our house once. He had like 6 friends come over. All male, around 15ish years old. Whenever I walked by them, they were all on separate devices. I wondered why even bother to come over…

Worse, is having to tolerate them, if they don’t have their devices. They have no imagination, or ability to entertain themselves, without electronics…

That is a huge loss. Huge @MrGrimm888.

Mobile phone has become addiction for many. I don’t think we can say that for books.

Do they use a different part of the brain I wonder? Or is it because whatever is on their phone is all about them, them, them, and it’s not that way with books?

You can’t text or send Email or make calls with a book or magazine.

So it’s all about the instant interaction with others?

I read books on my phone.

Books end.

Book, phone, same difference. You can read a book on your phone, you can play sudoku in a book.

Depending on the situation, I prefer to have the opportunity to meet people rather then everyone just having their heads in a book or a phone.

The goof level. A person staring into a little electronic device looks stupid to me. A person reading a book doesn’t and would know if the ceiling caved in.

Mobile phones and social media have altered the way our brains work. There are 4 top factors that impact attention spans: media consumption, social media usage, technology adoption rate, and multi-screen behavior.

Wow, so judgy about people using their devices for whatever purposes. And really, if I look stupid to someone for reading a book on my phone instead of reading the exact same words on paper, then I am grateful you won’t try to talk to me.

I too read books on my phone. I do so exclusively on my lunch hour. So judgmental people who feel like sheeple just do idle shit on their phone all day can suck it. It’s so much easier to just take one device than lug around a book everywhere.

That was very interesting @Stache. Thanks for sharing. Our attention span has been getting shorter for decades. In the 70s my next door neighbor had a collection of Reader’s Digests going back to the 40s and 50s. I noticed right away that the articles from earlier decades were much, much longer that they were in the magazines I got monthly at the house in the 70’s I imagine it was TV that shortened our attention span back then. And it’s just gotten shorter and shorter.

Yes, I love how I can pull up virtually any book on my phone, although I don’t do it often. I wonder if reading a book on the phone is any different than reading a physical book? I wonder if it works on different parts of the brain?

@canidmajor I love your responses :D

Hardly no one does the first one any more, and second I never remember seeing,before phones, people going out to dinner and sitting across family or friends reading their books or magazine. I remember as kids seeing people read a paper before a meal as they sat at the table but not during eating. Only saw that on tv shows.

^^^^ Exactly.

I saw the saddest thing yesterday. We were at a cafe for breakfast. There was a very elderly man, easily in his 80s, maybe 90s, sitting across from someone who may have been his grandson, or even great grandson. The kid was in his late late teens or early, early 20s. Grammpa was talking to the kid….and the kid never once looked up from his phone. Never once acknowledged the old man. Not once.