Transcript of AE 1136 - The Goss: Aussie Kids Ditch Smartphones for 'Dumbphones'

G'day, you mob. Pete here, and this is another episode of Aussie English, the number one place for anyone and everyone wanting to learn Australian English. So, today I have a Goss episode for you where I sit down with my old man, my father, Ian Smissen, and we talk about the week's news, whether locally down under here in Australia or non-locally overseas in other parts of the world.

And we sometimes also talk about whatever comes to mind, right? If we can think of something interesting to share with you guys related to us or Australia, we also talk about that in The Goss. So, these episodes are specifically designed to try and give you content about many different topics where we're obviously speaking in English and there are multiple people having a natural and spontaneous conversation in English.

So, it is particularly good to improve your listening skills. In order to complement that, though, I really recommend that you join the podcast membership or the Academy membership at AussieEnglish.com.au, where you will get access to the full transcripts of these episodes, the PDFs, the downloads, and you can also use the online PDF reader to read and listen at the same time.

Okay, so if you really, really want to improve your listening skills fast, get the transcript, listen and read at the same time, keep practising and that is the quickest way to level up your English. Anyway, I've been rabbiting on a bit, I've been talking a bit. Let's just get into this episode, guys. Smack the bird and let's get into it.

So, the return of dumbphones, dad.

Yeah, about time.

So, what have we got here? This is BBCNews.com.

Yeah.

...Close it. So, not smart, but clever. The return of dumb phones. 17-year-old Robin West is an anomaly among her peers. She doesn't have a smartphone. Instead of scrolling through apps like Tik Tok and Instagram all day, she uses a so-called dumbphone. These are basic handsets or feature phones with very limited functionality compared to, say, an iPhone. You can typically only make and receive calls, SMS text messages and play snake.

I guess, they got the game snake on these, right?

Yeah. And some of them had email that you could- They had an email function so you could pick up email. But that's before we got to smart phones. But yeah.

Yeah. So, these are devices similar to the first handsets that people started buying in the late 1990s.

So, like the ones that you got- Your first phone, which was mine.

Yeah. Nokia 3310.

Nokia 3310...

The blue one.

...Phone ever made.

Is it from Finland? Cos, Nokia is Finnish, isn't it?

Nokia, I think is Finnish, yes.

Yeah. Thanks, Finland. So, yeah, I was looking into this and I'm like first portable cell phone was 1973.

Yeah, portable as long as you had a wheelbarrow.

Well, this was two- Apparently it was two kilos and a Motorola, at the time at least. So, this is the first device ever created that was a mobile one.

Yeah.

I'm like, fuck me, that's 49 years.

First, they started off as car phones...

Yeah, well, that was...

And they were built into the car and then they were the, you know, people used to nickname them bricks and that was that two kilogram thing that, you know, you really, you know, you might have carried it in a briefcase, but you wouldn't have carried it around in your hand and you couldn't put it in your pocket without your pants falling down or.

Well, yeah. So, I had this looked up too. Australia's first mobile phone system began in Melbourne in August eight, 1981, with the first call being made between telecom executives, which became Telstra, right?

Yes.

Telecom became Telstra?

Yes. Telecom Australia became Telstra when it got privatised.

But the system was limited to a $5,000 car phone that weighed 14 kilos and could store only 16 numbers and alerted owners of an incoming call by honking the horn or flashing its lights. The first 1G phone was introduced in Australia by Telecom, as Telstra is now known today, in 1987. So, the year I was born. Retailing at a massive $4,250. That's probably- Adjusted for inflation that'd be like, what, 10 grand? 15 grand?

+$20,000.

$20,000. Jesus. So yeah. Anyway, I remember, yeah, my first mobile phone was the Nokia 3310, but I remember you had phones before that that were even bigger, right?

Yeah, bigger.

They were almost the size of the ones that you would have now around the house, right? The cordless phones that you can pick up and carry around.

...A little bit smaller. You could put fit them in a pocket, but you couldn't slide them into your back pocket, in your jeans, that sort of stuff.

Well, not easily.

You'd put them in a jacket pocket or a handbag, or if you're carrying a bag around with you and so on so. They were that sort of size. And in fact, I remember about that time where I think I handed off the 3310 to you...

And I still have the same number, ironically.

I know, which was- It was my phone number.

And that was when you got to choose it.

Yeah. Well, no they offered it to me, you know, and I took it, but.

Yeah.

Because the- Your phone number and I don't want to give the number away. But your phone number is a series of doubles except for the last two digits...

Yeah.

...And the double on the last two digits was already taken, so you know, we got the two other numbers because your mum and I got them- I got them together and we had, you know, one digit apart, but. But yeah, I remember about that time standing in my cousin's kitchen and, you know, comparing our new mobile phones because we'd both just got phones recently.

This is Rob?

Yeah. And his wife at the time, no longer, but his wife, Deb, turned to me and just sort of interrupted us and said, this is the first time I've ever seen two men boasting about who's got the smallest something.

So, you were arguing over who had the smaller phone?

Yeah, because then it- Because they were still dumb phones.

Yeah.

And so...

Still? They were dumb phones. They aren't now...

No, no, no. But back and then they were still dumb phones. So, they hadn't- We hadn't got to the BlackBerry, which was the first sort of pseudo-smart phone.

With a keyboard.

Yeah, exactly. So, we hadn't quite got to that stage yet. But the idea was the smaller the better because they would have portability and so on.

It's funny that that kind of...

But, now we've gone bigger.

...Has come full circle.

Because people want to use the smartphone, they want the full screen. And if you want to be able to look at your news via the ABC News app, you want to be able to read it. And so, you can't read it on a tiny little screen and, you know, you want to be able to watch YouTube videos or Tik Tok or, you know, see full screen Instagram posts and so on. So, people want bigger screens.

So, it's that sort of ironic thing of, we went small for a while and then things stayed small for a long time and now we've started to get bigger and bigger again.

What's your earliest memory of a telephone?

It was- I was just after the era of wall phones...

As in those wooden ones where you hold it in front of your mouth and up to your ear or whatever?

So, I was- that was a generation before me. But no, ours was a- It was Bakelite, which is a sort of ceramic, pre-plastic- It's a ceramic phone with a handset that had a rotary...

That sort of thing? I'm showing dad an image...

Yeah, that's the one.

So, one of those old school...

A little bit older than that. A little bit older than that. The one we had, the first one looked a bit older. That's almost plastic.

Yeah.

Then we upgraded to a plastic version which didn't increase any functionality, it was just the same thing. So, it had that the rotary dial, so you'd start with the one with the short dial... (both talking)

What do you do? You had to put your finger in the hole corresponding to a number... (both talking)

...Like spinning it around like on a clock face...

Yeah.

...Effectively.

I think, I remember at least using those when I was younger.

Yeah. And that's what all phones were until they became electronic. So, those phones worked without electricity.

Yeah.

There was enough current running through the telephone wires in order to transmit the message, to actually- People worked out to turn those phones into push button. So, the idea of the dial was that it would send a signal that was based on the time it took to send each number. And so, that was the pulse that went, you know, so a nine was a much longer pulse than a one. And so, you know, that was the thing.

And then people worked out that you could actually send the same thing through a digital, as in, you know, pressing numbers, so they were push button phones, they came in. But that was much later. We never actually had one of those when I was a kid. When I left home in- When was it? 1978? At the age of 21, my parents still had that second-generation phone that had- Was still- It was now plastic body.

It wasn't the old Bakelite one that we had when I was a kid, but they still hadn't gone to the push button thing. My mother ended up with one of those a few years later, but.

It's so funny because I can't imagine showing one of these to Noah, let alone just a kid...

And say, work out how to use it.

...Let alone Noah in a few years and be like, what is this?

Ironically...

What the fuck is this thing?!

Ironically, the universal icon for telephone...

Yeah.

...Is still one of those.

At least the handset...

The handset part. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, and I've seen, there are sort of like little trinkets or like gadgets you can buy where you can get like a- One of those handset things you hold up and speak into but that you can plug it into your like iPhone and use it. And it's sort of trendy.

And you can always get the ringtone on your phone that is the same as those old, you know, "brrrrring, brrrrring". Because they actually had a, physically had a bell in it that was triggered by the little, tiny electrical signal that came down the line.

Yeah, that's crazy. So...

...Great fun.

I can't imagine having to deal with that though, today, because we're in an age now where I don't remember anyone's number, but my own, at least personally. I can remember like our old phone number for our house because I just was so- I got drilled in to just repeating it all the time and telling people that number and having to remember to type it in...

I can remember four phone numbers...

Four?

...From that time.

Well, you'll be able to remember mine obviously, because it used to be yours.

No, no, no. Four phone numbers from that time, you know, where when I was a kid.

One.

I can remember our phone- Yeah, number one. Other than 000, I can remember- Which ironically -- it is a little aside to that. -- Ironically, 000 was the hardest number to ring on the old dial phones...

Because the zero...

...Because the zero was the furthest away, so it took the longest to call. You'd reckon they would have gone 111, but. But anyway, no, I can remember our phone number. I can remember my first sort of- I suppose I'd call her a girlfriend. This is the girlfriend that I hope would become a girlfriend when I was about 13 years old. I can still remember her phone number.

I can remember the high school girlfriend that I had for about four years, and I probably dialled her number a million times, so I can remember her phone number. And I can remember, ironically, the phone number of the Goss family, hence The Goss, the Goss family, who were close friends of mine when I was a teenager. And they're the only four numbers I can remember from that time...

Yeah.

...And it's sort of bizarre. Now, I'd be lucky- Other than those four numbers, I can remember your number because it was mine for a long time. I- There is no chance that I could tell you what your sister's phone number is.

Yeah.

And...

Well, because they're random numbers...

I know, and the joke used to be- As soon as I got a mobile phone the- Actually, no, the first ones I don't think had a memory in them that you could actually press and you had to actually press the number. But the second one's, those Nokia 3310s had the ability to use a speed dial, so you could apply, you know, this phone number to number one, and so on. And so, they would say, what's Anika's phone number? And I'd say, three.

So, I just pressed number three. I got no idea what the actual number is.

Yeah, it's just nuts, isn't it? What were you thinking as these changes happened? Did they happen quickly? Like- I feel like- What's the curve called for technology?

I can't remember, but yeah, basically, it's every five years that technology doubles in capacity, speed and...

Moore's Law.

Yeah, but it's no longer five years. I reckon it's five months now.

But yeah, effectively it was- Did you notice that? Especially, it must have been something you would notice I guess once you started with your first mobile phone and then they would just iterate, right? Like new cars, every single year there was a new phone coming out.

...I've been using and, you know, I've been an Apple fan for a long time. I bought the first Apple Macintosh computer that came out, not the actual first computer, but the first model.

You still got it?

No.

Threw it out?

I wish I did have it.

Got the bag, right?

Yeah, I think you've got the bag. Yeah.

Yeah. Collector's item.

And yeah, that costs $4,000.

Just the bag.

Yeah, just the bag. Yeah, exactly. The computer was, you know, cheap but the bag was- No, so- But- So, I've used Apple all the time, so I've had Apple iPhones for ever since I bought my first one, which is obviously ironic, but there's a meaning to that in that I had Blackberries for a while when the company I worked for and only gave you Blackberries in terms of first smart phones.

When I was working for a university 15 plus years ago and I first got a company, a university phone, smart phones hadn't come, so they just provided me with whatever they could get. I think it was an Ericsson phone, the first one I had from them, but.

That sounds Scandinavian.

I think it is. I think it's Swedish.

Yeah.

The- But you know, post BlackBerry I- as soon as I could get an iPhone, I got an iPhone. I actually don't think, since I got my first iPhone, I don't think the functionality of it, the underlying functionality of it has improved at all. It's got faster, it's got more apps, it's got a better camera, but you can't do any more things on it. So, and that must be 10 years? 12 years?

The first one I got was an iPhone 3, and I think I've been iPhone since then, and that would have been in university. That would have been like 2009-2010.

So, we're talking about 12 plus years.

Yeah, which feels so long...

I know...

But it's not.

...But in 12 years in terms of getting to that point of when the first iPhone came out, this was a brave new world. This was, you know, the world is going to completely change, and not much has changed since.

No. Well, I think it's funny how the technology kind of converges on a sort of a maximum, right? It gets to a sort of peak...

There will be another- There'll be another generation. You know, you get to these sort of watershed moments of you know, completely new technologies and things. But now we're in that sort of probably in the middle of that period of development where things are just faster now...

Well, and that's what it's all about, right?

...5G networks and you know, 6G networks will be out in two- or three-years' time where nobody will have a home Internet connection anymore...

Yeah.

...Despite the fact that there will be, you know, I don't use the major telecommunications provider as my home Internet provider, I use another provider. But they're effectively buying Internet from those people. But that's just going to disappear, you know, home connectivity will all be done through mobile devices. That'll be 6G...

Yeah.

...Whether it's two years or ten years, that's the next generation of that. But it's not going to change the functionality of the device. It's just going to be faster.

Well, I imagine the next big step- So, that first step was, how do we get all these different devices into a single device, right? You wanted the camera in there, you wanted the fax machine, you wanted to be able to call someone and be able to get on the Internet, be able to get to apps.

I was one of probably a million people, but I invented that in a conference presentation. I effectively invented the iPhone, and you know, I'm not taking responsibility for it.

You heard it here first, guys.

Yeah, I forgot to tell Steve Jobs because I could have made a lot of money. But this would be- Trying to think now. It was more than 20 years ago, and I was at a conference, it was a librarians' conference, and we were talking about communications. And I was working in the university, and I was managing e-learning technologies, which is very early stage of e-learning technologies then.

And I was talking about how mobile devices will become ubiquitous as soon as somebody comes up with the ability to incorporate a camera in a phone...

Yeah.

...Because then people will- It will just become everybody will have one because then they won't need to carry cameras around with them. And if you can record- And I said it at the time, I remember, in this presentation, I said, if you can talk to someone, text somebody, get your email -- because by then, you know, Blackberries had just come around and you could sort of do that level of stuff.

Yeah.

-- But you can also record audio, video and images on it. That's the next generation. And it was, a few years later the iPhone came out. And so, I take no credit for it, but I'm sure there was a million other people who predicted that as well. But that was that next generation. I don't know what the next generation is. I don't know what the next bit of functionality that a handheld device is going to need, because now...

Well, it may not be a handheld device... (both talking)

But that next jump is not changing functionality. All it is doing is changing the physical medium in which you deliver it. It could be a chip that you have implanted in your wrist.

Or your brain.

Or your brain or whatever. But well, I think the brain is going to be different because the brain implies that there's a neural connection. But you know, a chip in your wrist, that means that the thing knows where you are and you just- I can do it now. I don't need to even get my phone out. I can simply say- But this could be dangerous because...

Yeah, don't do it now. But you can say, S-I-R-I.

Yeah, the S-I-R-I word. "Hey, S-I-R-I, remind me to pick up milk and bread on the way home in half an hour", and it'll do it. "Call Pete", and it'll do it. You know so, and I use that all the time in the car, I send text messages in the car completely hands free.

Simply you know, "hey, (that word), send a text message to Pete" and it'll say, okay, what do you want to say? And I'll say, "I'll be there at 3:00." And it says, I'm going to send "I'll be there at 3:00." Is that okay? Yes, send. And it's gone.

Yeah.

And so, that sort of functionality is already there. I don't know what the next thing is going to be, so. Which is exciting in some ways.

I think it's just it's convenience. You have to think about how do you- How are people's lives currently held up or slowed down by inconvenience. So, something like actually having to pick up the phone, actually having to type into it, actually having to, I don't know. Yeah, I think those main things of distance from your brain effectively, right. So, you need to, how do we speed that up?

And so, it eventually, I think in Noah's lifetime it'll be you'll just have to think about what you're wanting to type and...

But you see your thinking... (both talking) ...Devices to do what you are currently doing.

Yeah.

So, what I was talking about was in the idea of the, you know, what became the iPhone, was a device to do something that nobody had ever thought of before.

Yeah.

And I think we- We're almost beyond that now because of- The Internet is for most people, in most places in the world, ubiquitous because we have universal access to it.

...Though, right? Where the phone disappears because everything around you at all times is the phone.

Yeah.

So, that you get into your car and it's there, you just speak. Or walk into a room and it's there, you just speak.

Yeah, I don't- Well, either the phone or some other technology will be involved of having a level of security over that. Because the fact that I can walk around the street and access a bank, I should only be able to access the bank if I've got an account there and it can securely log me in and do those sort of things.

So, I think that will happen. So, there may, and it might just be a little chip that I have sewn into my jeans or embedded in my body somewhere.

Yeah.

You know that sort of thing is going to happen. But I think now that sort of functionality thing is- I don't think we're going to come up with any new functionality because all of that functionality is effectively just going to be digitally controlled.

So, you know, you and I don't have it, but I know plenty of people who do where they can walk in the house and say, "turn the kitchen lights on" and the kitchen lights go on. "Turn the TV on, Channel seven News now" or "replay me the Channel nine News from last night". So, that that sort of technology is available now because it's all Internet based and I could do that from anywhere, so.

I think coming back to the story here about this young 17-year-old who went to a dumbphone. Right. Effectively a brick, went back to the brick, it is interesting to see that more and more people now are doing this. I think, what does it say here? Excuse me. Sale figures are hard to come by, but one report said that global purchases of dumbphones were due to hit 1 billion units last year, up from 400 million in 2019.

This compares to worldwide sales of 1.4 billion smartphones last year, following a 12.5% decrease in 2020. So, it is interesting seeing that despite technology improving rapidly, we have more and more people shying away from it and not wanting the convenience anymore. Because it is almost like we miss the ritual of having to do a lot of activities that were required more energy.

But once you get to a point where you can just lie in your bed and think and everything's done for you, your kind of like, well, what the fuck is the point of living, right? Like, that's where it ends up getting you. You end up in a virtual reality where you don't even have to move, and everything's done...

I agree. And obviously, the- I mean, the young woman they're talking about here is obviously an example of someone who just says, I don't need to be checking social media. That's 99% of what people are using, particularly younger people I expect are using smart phones for these days is they're not checking their app to work out where the nearest public toilet is.

No.

They're checking Tik Tok or they're talking to each other via WhatsApp or whatever.

Well, a stat here that I was looking into cause I did- I wanted to talk about the social media issues, too, and here is that people between the ages of 16 and 24 spend on average 3 hours a day on their phone. So, what's that? Is that an eighth of their day on their phone?

Well, it's a quarter of their day because they...

Waking.

...They're gonna be eating and sleeping for some of that time or doing things where it's physically impossible.

I might crossover with going to the toilet though and...

Or eating. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

But yeah. So, it is interesting how it- And I think that's probably what people are rebelling against. She was saying that, that she was like, I'm sick of constantly being urged to check my social media and I want to just detach from that. And I feel free, liberated from those sorts of things because I don't have access to them on my phone, I can check them on a computer.

So, it is interesting how- It will be interesting to see how human beings shy away from certain technologies that may be convenient. But like with all the social media stuff, there's a level of convenience to them. But there's also a very, very, very real downside in that their whole business model is, get you on as long as possible so you can watch ads. And that isn't in line with what is necessarily best for you as a human being.

And so, those two conflicts are coming about, and it'll be interesting to see how what sort of percentage of the population will no longer be willing to give up that kind of time to those kinds of things. And we already see, you know, Facebook and Instagram and YouTube, I think, declining with the younger generation, although whether that's just them wanting their own unique version.

Tik Tok is going through the roof at the same time, so...

It is funny, I feel old because I get on there and I'm like, I can't handle how fast this is.

Yeah, I know. Well, but I am going to be- In fact, I used to say I no longer will because I don't think it is relevant anymore, because I think it is actually going out of style. I used to say that I was going to be the last person on earth to get a Twitter account, but Twitter will be gone...

Yeah.

...In five years' time because...

I keep getting so irritated. I get on Reddit, someone posts something about Twitter and I click on it and it's like, you have to make an account. And I'm like, ah, go fuck yourself.

Yeah, no, I don't.

Just show me the tweet for fucks sake.

Yeah, exactly. Just screen grab it...

But...

...Link to it.

Were you conscious at all of when, I think the first thing to come out would have been MSN, right? The messaging service that I used to use when I was in high school to talk to other friends. And were you conscious of the...

BlackBerry had one before that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Were you paying attention to it at that point and worried about...?

I was using it at that time...

...Those sorts of things and their effect on teenagers...?

No, you didn't think about it at that time. But, and its sort of hindsight as always 2020 that young kids, teenage kids, girls in particular, unfortunately and I'm not picking on women specifically here, but girls are social bullies. And so, that's always been the case...

To explain a bit more about that, women compete hierarchically, using their words effectively, right...?

And not just words, but shunning people and ganging up on...

Controlling their reputation and social interactions as opposed to using violence like males do.

And so, in hindsight, enhancing communication was always going to be a way of enhancing your ability to bully somebody. So, online bullying has become a thing. Bullying didn't become a thing, it already existed. All it did was enhance the ability for people to do that.

But to pause you there quickly. I remember being at high school as an anecdote for you guys that...

This was 100 years ago now.

This would have been, so I was at high school from 2000 to 2005. And I remember, I think it would have been like 2004-2005, year 11, year 12 when one of my friends was getting bullied outside of school via email and he saved the emails and brought them into school, and the kid who was bullying him got in trouble. I think he got suspended or, you know, his parents found out.

And it was this watershed moment of like, oh, shit. Like I didn't realise, I didn't think that bullying would be on the Internet or would be using MSN or would be using email, and that you can't- Now, as a student, the bullying follows you home, even if you're not friends with that person, they can reach you effectively via the Internet.

And so, that was this this moment for me at least, where I was like, oh, wow. But now it must be 10 times, 100 times worse with social media and the level of social media and... (inaudible) ...out there now.

...Not just the level of it, but as you suggested earlier, the seductiveness of it and the deliberate seductiveness of it by the providers. You know, social media is seductive in itself. Forget the advertising and the way it is structured by the providers in order to keep you there.

It's seductive in itself because if you're engaged in any form of social interaction and it's instantaneous and ubiquitous in the sense of it is always available, then you're going to keep looking, you're going to keep checking. You post something, you want to know if somebodies replied, you want to know that you've got 100 likes or 1,000 likes, or you've got 10,000 followers or all of those sort of things. And...

And you're measuring yourself against what other people are doing...

Yeah, exactly. How many followers have you got? How many likes did you get on this post?

And people aren't showing their real-life selves. They're showing the best. They're putting their front foot forward and showing their best side only, right? Like, you don't get to see me...

Not even their best side, their most publicly accessible side...

Yeah.

...In a sense of, I'm going to potentially show my worst side because I'm going to get more likes. If I show myself, I'm a teenage girl- You know, it's highly unlikely, I'm a 64-year-old male. But I'm a teenage girl and I've got a video that my friend took on my phone of me vomiting in a bucket at a party. I'm going to get a million hits on that, despite the fact that you never want to know that that's actually going on.

You're going to go, oh, that's cool. You know, I instantly get this reward of, and it's an intrinsic reward of being able to do it. Then you put that layer of the social media providers continuing to push the things that you are going to be interested in seeing so that you stay there longer, and you get more sucked into seeing more advertising and they can sell more and so on and so on.

There are so many layers to it that are kind of...

It is.

...Revolting to some extent, but we're all sort of complicit.

Yeah, we are. Because, I mean, I'm on old school shit like Facebook...

MySpace.

...YouTube and Instagram. Yeah, I still have a MySpace account. I don't think it still exists.

Myspace.

MySpace.com.

Myspace is still there.

I'm sure a bunch of indie musicians still use it, which it ironically got- And this is one of those ones where you go, how did MySpace turn into an indie music distribution mechanism? And Facebook, which came after MySpace turned into a worldwide social media phenomenon?

It was a weird thing, I remember getting on MySpace, that was my first sort of introduction to social media and following my favourite bands on there, but also...

See what you did?

...The toxic thing of it was having your, I think it was like eight best friends...

Yeah.

...Or 16 best friends, whatever the number, might have been nine because it was a nice little square on the side of your front page and you used to always be wondering, has someone got me in their top nine? Because you could put each other in there and order it. And so, you would...

No. I never got- I think I got an account for 5 minutes to see what it was about and then went; I don't see any point in this.

I just love the guy who owned it. He just sold it and was like, tap out and just started travelling the world. Sold it for like 200 million bucks.

...Gone. Yeah.

But yeah, it is interesting, like how much social media is harming in particular young girls. Like I've got a- For you guys interested in social media and its effect, check out obviously the "Social Dilemma" on Netflix and any interviews done with its maker, Tristan Harris, who used to work for Facebook in the sort of ethics department. And I think that's why he used to work for Facebook.

And Jonathan Haidt, so his surname there is spelt H-A-I-D-T*. He is an academic who studies these sorts of things, right, and has been the one sort of pushing the way for the effects on young girls of social media. And so, he had this- There's a graph here that you can see- If you look it up, there's an article that he wrote called "The Dangerous Experiment on Teen Girls" in the Atlantic.

And there's a graph here effectively of 12- to 17-year-old girls who had at least one major depressive episode in the past year. And since 2005, it's effectively skyrocketed compared to boys. And what does it say here? Some have argued that the increases reflect on nothing more than Gen Z's increased willingness to disclose their mental health problems.

But researchers have found corresponding increases in measurable behaviours such as suicide for both sexes and emergency department admissions for self-harm for girls only. From 2010 to 2014, rates of hospital admission for self-harm did not increase at all for women in their early twenties or boys or young men but doubled for girls 10 to 14.

And so, his big thing is that social media and the way in which it gets girls to compare themselves to one another, interact with one another, the bullying that happens is really affecting young teenagers. Yeah, from 10 to 14, which, as now the father of a young girl is fucking horrifying.

Yeah. And that's what I said when you first sent this article to me a few days ago. I said, as a parent and grandparent, I think this is the best thing ever...

What? Dumbphones?

Dumbphones. Because you can now give your ten-year-old child a phone that they can use for perp- and you can even turn off text messaging. So, they can use it for the communication they need to do, so the emergency communication. Hey, Dad, I've got sport after school. Can you pick me up at 4:00? Not 3:00. Done.

Yeah.

You know, I can ring my friends if I need to, and I have to talk to them. I don't need to be on social media, I don't need to have people text messaging me all the time, even though it's a function in there. But hopefully you can turn it off, you used to be able to.

And so, that ability as a parent to be able to say, it's important for me in the world we live in now that my child has a way of communicating with me because they don't have access to- You know, it used to be when I was a kid, I used to always make sure I had change in my pocket.

Yeah.

So, and when I was a little kid, it was $0.05 and then it went up to $0.10 so I could use a public phone. There was a public phone every 400 or 500 metres up most major roads. And so, you could always find a public phone no matter where you were assuming you were in the suburbs or the city.

And ironically, they're free now in Australia from Telstra, right?

Telstra are now putting them in...

Yeah.

...They're actually putting them in there as a public service to say that, you know, there are plenty of people now who don't have access to mobile phone technology.

The only ironic thing is that to use one, I'd need to have my phone.

Yeah, to find out what the number is.

Yeah. Unless I were to write down all the numbers that I needed to call and have it there in my wallet or something, but I'd need my actual phone. Where am I going to go without my phone? But yeah, I understand, for people who don't have them.

Yeah so, that ability to give your kids a communication device, to be able to communicate with you and a few other people, I think is a brilliant idea.

The thing I worry about is the whole, well, everyone else has got an iPhone.

Yeah.

And the effect that that can potentially have on children. Because I remember growing up and -- more recently than you -- and that pressure of everyone else now got this thing and I don't, and I feel like I'm outside of it and a loser.

(both talking) ...You also came from a relatively modest middle-class family going to a high-end private school...

Yes.

...With people who would be dropped off in the Rolls-Royce and the Ferrari in the morning.

Yeah.

And I was dropping you off in the university's Falcon, Ford Falcon, so.

It's all right. No one knew it was the universities.

No, I know, but I couldn't have afforded it.

My reputation remained intact.

I couldn't have afforded it. So, you know, that was a little bit different for you, I suspect, than from certainly for me when I was at school. But there was always that envy of what other kids had.

But, I think if I put myself into that position now, not that I am, but if I were a parent now of a ten-year-old girl or a 12-year-old girl who was saying, you've given me this shitty little phone that all I can do is call you. And you know, all my friends have got iPhones, or you know...

I'll give you a job and you can work to the equivalent of $2,000 and I'll give you the phone.

There's that side of it. But your answer to that was always, oh, well, you can afford it, but which we couldn't. But that was beside the point.

Yeah.

But for me that's, you can use mine.

Yeah.

You want to use the apps, you want to do what you like, use mine...

I have control.

...But I'm not giving you one.

Well, the problem I think we saw with -- we had Joanna's birthday, my daughter's birthday, first birthday recently...

And she wanted an iPhone.

No, we had- So, we had some Brazilian friends come over and their children had iPhones. And I was like, wait, what? How old are your kids?

16 and 12 or something.

Yeah, but even then, I was kind of like, wow. And not as a judgement, but just like, oh shit, it's even that young that they're getting them. And...

I say, I wouldn't buy a $2,000 present for anybody...

No, but I think, the thing is, the problem is -- and this is why it probably gets easy -- every two or three years, you pay off phone and then you just give it to them. Like at the moment, Kel...

...Funnily enough that's how you got your first mobile phone.

Kels got my old phone. I've got a new one. In another year I'll pay it off and I'll be like, oh, here you go, Kel. And then we'll have her old one, assuming it still works...

Yeah.

...That's just sitting there. And it's going to be that, well, do I just give it to the kids, or do you just say, nah, it goes in the bin? Or, you know, you recycle it or sell it and then give them the dumb phone. I think I'm going to go down that road of, yeah, you can have the Nokia 3310.

Yeah.

Do your worst. You can send sex messages, that's about as bad as it could get, you know.

Without pictures.

Exactly. Unless you can draw them.

Unless you can do really good... (inaudible)

That's it. But yeah. Are you worried about Noah's generation, Johanna's generation and what they're going to face or are you sort of at that point like me where you're like, I have no idea what it'll be like?

Well, yeah, I'm worried about not knowing. "Worried"'s probably a bit strong. Concerned about not knowing, given that I've lived through multiple generations of, well, I was a high school teacher, I was a parent, I'm now a grandparent. So, I've seen...

WW1, WW2, the Depression.

Yeah. In terms of generational things of what kids go through, kids go through the same things. There's nothing new, it's just different medium, media by which they are exposed to them.

But it's the potential of that media and everything to do damage too, right?

Of course. Oh, yeah, yeah, exactly. And you know, I've- Talking about ironically, I was talking to a friend who you know but I won't mention her name, who's 39 years old and...

Oh.

...And...

Is it- Is this guess who?

No.

Does she wear glasses? Does she have blonde hair?

I'm not answering any of those. I know. And I was complimenting her on the fact that- And she's not particularly into social media. She has social media accounts, and we actually communicate through them occasionally. But I was complimenting her on the fact that she's really hard to contact. And you sit there...

A compliment you never thought you'd give someone.

I know.

But it's great that I can never actually talk to you.

But that's the sort of first step. You know that the seductiveness of smartphones became social media for kids. But pre that the seductiveness of mobile phones is that you're instantly contactable.

Well, and that's the negative side as you say, you get so fucking annoyed when someone- You send a message to someone and you get that "seen" and you're like, well, fucking respond.

...Respond. I know.

And you're like...

And I've had people, again who you know, who will then call you and abuse you for not responding to their text message.

And that's the problem, your kind of like, the annoying thing is that you're reachable anywhere and you almost never have at least a real reason for not being able to reply, right? Unless you're in the middle of work or someone just died in front of you or you're driving.

Unfortunately, most of the time people have the ability to reply.

Yeah...

But as a result...

...To and rightly so.

No. But yeah. And the majority of us do, which has set up that sort of cultural expectation that people reply, especially after you've seen it.

Right, although I catch myself all the time being like, I don't know what they're currently doing. They could be in the middle- Their wife could be yelling at them; their cat could have just died. Anything could have happened. They'll get back to me eventually.

It's only when they don't reply for an hour that I get ang- No. For a few days that I get annoyed and I'm like, checking in.

Well, I was joking with this unnamed woman when I was on the phone with her, eventually, she called me back a week- She called me back a week after I had called her.

Yeah.

And she was on holidays and out of contact. And so, I left her a voice message and she rang me back, but. And I joked with her and said, I don't know, I can't remember. -- I've known her for more than ten years. -- I can't remember when you have ever answered the phone.

And so, I'm going one day- And I said, I'm going to apologise in advance because one day you're going to answer the phone and I'm going to go, oh shit, what did I want to say? Because I've already got the voice message prepped in my head.

Yeah. I was just trying to signal you to call me in a week.

Yeah, exactly.

Well, probably long enough on this episode. Thanks for hanging out, guys, and we'll chat next time.

Bye.

Peace!