kzuich on the MelonLand Forum had the following to say in The case for/against mobile layouts from an indie web perspective last December:
I was having a thought on this- Mobile-first design is pretty much the standard in webdev (it was my philosophy, too, when I began working on my site), but I’m curious to hear anyone’s rationale on why they might not do this. I’m debating how accessible to mobile I want to make some of my future, more artsy, projects, and I’d like to explain why.
In 2024, I 100% gave up Internet browsing on my smartphone, because I found it was super destructive to me. I was spending an unholy amount of time scrolling on my phone, and I don’t even wanna think about how much time I wasted doing that. Without using the browser on my phone at all anymore, I was forced to more intentionally browse the web. I had to go get my laptop, or go get on my desktop. I couldn’t just browse mindlessly in public anymore, or while riding in the car, etc. It has been an amazing change for me, and I have a much healthier relationship with the web in general when I can’t just access it all the time.
It got me wondering, though- do I want to be part of 'the problem'? I don’t know if I necessarily want to encourage people to find my work and mindlessly stare at it on their phone while out in public...I’m not sure if that makes sense, but when Internet browsing becomes a distraction from real life, like it had become for me, it doesn’t feel like I’m using it healthily- it feels like an unhealthy escape from my surrounding. I’m not saying all mobile browsing is that way, but I think a lot of it is.
I don’t offer an 'essential' service like banking or email, so I don’t really know if I feel as obligated to make sure phone users can access it at any point with their phones.
Thoughts?
Since they asked for other people’s thoughts, here’s what I think:
The older I’ve gotten the more minimalist (and possibly brutalist) my approach to design on my personal website has become. I don’t do mobile first, but terminal first. My view is that if somebody can’t read my website in lynx on some ancient computer that can’t handle Firefox or Chrome, then that’s a failure on my part.
I hold this view because I hold what might be called a libertarian view of web design: it’s not my job or my place to tell other people how to access the internet, or my website. (Corporations and AIs aren’t people, so I reserve the right to tell them what to do.)
So, if somebody wants to access my website on a smartphone, or has no other option but to use a phone (or lynx on a VT-100 terminal), that’s their business. My business is to make sure they can. And if somebody has a real computer, then I’ll use progressive enhancement to make the experience a little nicer.
But web pages are responsive and accessible by default. My job, when designing my website, is to not break functionality that I get for free. In my opinion, any device capable of displaying Unicode text should be able to display my website. Even if it’s a smartphone, and even if smartphones are an inherently toxic technology.
The above was my original reply to kzuich’s post, but I’d to expand a bit on the alleged toxicity of smartphones and parasocial media. I don’t particularly care for either.
I think that having a supercomputer in my pocket by which anybody can demand my attention anywhere at any time is a threat to my liberty, especially since such devices can be used to track an individual’s movements and the courts have been lenient about law enforcement obtaining such data without due process. Privacy-wise, it is safer to write a letter than to send a text message; Johnny Law still needs a warrant if he wants to read your mail.
There are reasons I refer to social media as parasocial media. The people you follow are not necessarily your friends. The people who follow you are not necessarily your friends, either. At most, they might be cordial acquaintances. They won’t help you move. They won’t be there for you in your darkest moments. You probably won’t ever meet them in person, let alone share a meal, an embrace, or even a handshake with them. And the feed is not a community, but merely a cacophony.
I think that parasocial media is the reason that Karl Voit wrote back in 2020 that you should never contribute anything “relevant” to Web 2.0 platforms like Reddit, Facebook, Hacker News, etc. Such platforms treat everybody who uses them as a digital sharecropper. Every time you post, like or share somebody else’s post, or reply to a post on these platforms, you are contributing unpaid labor that when aggregated can be worth millions, or even billions of dollars. If you’re going to write for free, then for your sake, get your own website. Then, if you must, copy material from your website to other platforms with links back to your website.
tangent on Nick Carr
Nonetheless, I’m not convinced by the research claiming that smartphones or even parasocial media are bad for the reasons that pop psychologists like Jonathan Haidt are claiming. To start with, psychology has a massive replication crisis. What that means is that many psychological experiments don’t yield the same results when run again. If an experiment can’t be successfully replicated, any conclusions drawn from the initial experiment’s results are suspect.
Second, psychological research done on people in WEIRD countries. If people in Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic nations do in fact think differently, psychological experiments on such people won’t yield the same results if replicated on subjects from non-WEIRD countries. The same experiment that yields one set of results in the USA, the UK, France, and Germany might yield different results in India, Saudi Arabia, China, or Nigeria because of cultural differences.
Most importantly, it should be mentioned far more often that Jonathan Haidt took money from the John Templeton Foundation, which gives large (as in 1.1 million pounds sterling) grants to scientists whose research can be used to justify religion. As such, he should be viewed as an intellectual ally of right-wing authoritaians, who are happily using his work to justify censorship and keeping young people from finding online spaces where they can explore and speak freely beyond the reach of adult supervision. Jonathan Haidt has also appeared on a podcast hosted by alt reich propaganda outlet Quillette, and has also gotten glowing write-ups in that publication by the likes of Andy Ngo.
By all means consider the possibility that excessive smartphone and parasocial media usage might have ill effects. But don’t parrot psychological research without first considering the researchers, who funds them, and the motives of both the researchers and their backers. It isn’t enough to follow the money; you must consider the provenence of ideas as well, lest you find yourself aiding fascists instead of opposing them.