Especially teens and college students
Source: i’m a college student
Kids are like that. Most adults don’t care.
Bullshit. Adults absolutely care. It’s human nature to try to project your status in the social hierarchy. That takes different forms and may instead be projecting status with a Stanley flask or Canada Goose jacket, or whatever.
Most adults don’t use their iphones as status symbols. Look at 10 random adults iphones and over 9 of them will be damaged.
I’ve managed iphones for hundreds of people and only encountered a few that care at all.
BlackBerry holdovers would be a different discussion though.
Those aren’t adults. Those are geriatric children.
Soooo, adults?
Don’t pretend we’ve ever been better than that as a species. The exact form it takes changes (who does ermine fur anymore?) but the idea stays the same.
Don’t pretend we’ve ever been better than that as a species.
Will you make the argument that people who refuse to follow such fashion trends are somehow inhuman?
If you are unwilling to make such an argument, I will not accept your premise that this is a trait of the “species”.
What you (and the parent comment) are describing is a characteristic of certain childish behaviors, philosophies and cultures.
The sophomoric behavior of these geriatric children is not an indictment of humanity in general.
More like, most common allele within the species.
What’s the culture where people don’t covet meaningless status symbols? Even hunter gatherer cultures have generated examples, and they can’t own much more than they can carry.
What’s the culture where people don’t covet meaningless status symbols?
While there are numerous examples of such philosophies and cultures around the globe, I don’t actually need to identify such a culture to demonstrate my point.
If one can remain human without engaging in this behavior, this behavior is not a characteristic of the human condition.
The question before you is whether the members of such a hypothetical culture are inhuman specifically because they do not engage in that covetous behavior.
The abhorrent behaviors being described are conditions of ideas held by certain members of the species. The species is not lessened by the rejection of such ideas. The “certain members” are lessened by their adherence to those ideas.
That’s an interesting way of looking at it. Don’t you think there’s a human nature that’s not strictly learned? It seems to me that history repeats way more than it should if we were that good at changing.
Like, obviously, there’s variance at the individual level, but it seems like the population as a whole has striking similarities, regardless of where you travel or what era in history you’re reading about.
While there are numerous examples of such philosophies and cultures around the globe
Dovetailing into that, a philosophy is not a culture. Philosophies at best sightly influence cultures, as actually practiced, and even that is overblown. Since this is Lemmy, I’ll use the example of how well Western Christians follow teachings about not being greedy or whatever. Other cultures have similar facets.
“Adults”.
I may consider “many adults”… I still get grief about it from older adults (I’m talking people in their 40’s and older). Though either of us could be correct.
These are people who can’t be bothered with how things work, but… are amazing at what they do. So it’s an interesting circumstance to observe, and I haven’t come to any strong conclusions.
Those adults might still be children.
Ah, no true
scottsmanadult, then.
It is still cliqueish even if they don’t do it intentionally when you have things like they assume you have apple things like the iPhone charger( deprecated now) or airdrop.
I disagree, kids are taught by adults, so whatever they are learning its from their teachers and families. In my experience I have seen more adults give a status symbols to Apple products than children.
Only poor people think a phone is a sign of wealth
As a person with a nice income, an iPhone is a device that‘ll get security updates for 5-6 years. Meaning that I can just put away 30 bucks a month and get the replacement immediately. On Android I had to get a new one every 2-3 years to get consistent security updates. I switched to an iPhone X when it came out, now I have a 14 Pro and don’t to plan to get a new one anytime soon.
What? Samsung guarantees 7 years of security updates for most phones. Google does the same.
That’s relatively new, they probably haven’t looked in a while.
Since when do they do this? I switched in 2017 and back then 3 years was a luxury.
I think this comment highlights just why people still think iPhones are a status symbol. They don’t know any better or even anything of the market but they are sure confident about it.
IPhone will get 5-6 years of updates, but Android phones from Google, Samsung, and some others will get 7 6 years. Somehow that means the iPhone is better?
What next, they will claim that iPhone is private and Apple doesn’t spy on everything they do to sell them ads? Something that if they read Apple’s privacy policy quickly would find out is also wrong. Or then claim it is somehow more private that Android which can actually block most of the adware spying with apps like DuckDuckGo which are officially on the Play Store?
The user had outdated information regarding the security updates. That was true around 2015, but in 2025 its not the case anymore, they just never got updated on the new info because they already jumped ship to Apple.
Wont mean the phone will make it tell then with the original battery :(
I recently got a Pixel 9, really hoping it will last the full 7 years
Samsung gives 7 years. Google gives 7 years as well. Your information is outdated.
It certainly is. The fold 2 released in late 2020 and that was when I stopped caring about tech and more about people not fucking up ther phone by sheer dumbness.
… is there ever any logic to what people think are status symbols?
My labubu bandolier says there is.
labubu
What the hell is that? Are beanie babies popular again?
Pretty much, yeah.
They’re like cutesyfied Monchichi
It’s expensive
Cuz they’re overpriced? More money = More “exclusive.”
Nobody will actually mind if you brag about how you bought a new phone. Also if you are not a rich person you having an expensive phone means you did something smart to “cheat the system.”
As an example I had an old coworker when I used to work at a warehouse and he would combo things like service provider sales to buy an iphone.
He did sound smart when explaining the roundabout way he got the phone despite making same money as us. And I don’t mind what other people chose to spend money on.
What I do mind is college students thinking macbooks are some “programmers’ laptops.”
I had to constantly hand-hold group members that think they can get away with not learning how to code and using AI for all the homeworks because they bought a mac and that makes them a good programmer anyway.
“But I thought the program should automatically wait for the threads on this line since it’s POSIX.”
Yes I love troubleshooting professor’s makefile for an OS I don’t have because you never learned your own laptop has a symlink from gcc to clang.
That is how they market their products.
And those demographics are very susceptible to marketing and peer pressure. The chat bubble colors are designed to make you think of alternative phone users as outcasts. Used to be the same with photos and videos in MMS.
By your late 20s most people don’t give a shit about being labeled outcast, but by then you’re locked into their ecosystem.
This is definitely one reason for their design, and Apple is shit for that, but the primary reason and the one that many iphone haters miss or trivialize is that SMS/MMS are absolutely fucking trash. There has to be a distinction because if you’re using imessage and relying on all your messages being e2e encrypted and your photos/videos not being compressed to shit, it’s important to get a blatant visual indicator when that’s not actually the case.
I’m not trying to downplay apple’s bullshit social engineering about this, that really is fucked up, but this gets misconstrued all the time as irrational users being upset by green bubbles when to (many of) those users it’s actually a huge downgrade in security and functionality that they’re reacting to.
Behold: a blatant visual indicator
Yeah exactly what I mean, any good UI will have to distinguish between things that are actually different in relevant ways. I’m less of a fan of this UI personally, cuz if both are using sms for a bit you probably lose your visual reminder of the difference, but people focusing on the visual indicator existing at all are missing the point imo.
I remember a friend of mine whining about how my text bubble was a different color and it “made it weird” to text because of that.
By then I was already super over the whole tribalistic iphone/android bs from people I know when it wasn’t being meme’d on, so I just told her “you can either get over it, or we can stop talking and being friends”
Wouldn’t you know it, the color of a text bubble isn’t enough to end a friendship over.
Some people need to justify their choice to overspend on something…
Tribalism didn’t end when civilization started. Anyone not in the tribe is lesser, because the alternative would mean your tribe is lesser.
More specific to an iPhone, if you have one, you can do all the social iPhone things like FaceTime. Don’t have one? You can’t FaceTime, so there is a social friction or impediment to socializing. Then there is the “othering” of the green bubble and blue bubble thing. You can’t share photos or videos the same if you don’t have an iPhone. Since we are in a digital age and less physically present, not being able to digitally socialize the same way also inhibits socialization.
All of this is by design. Apple intentionally creates an ecosystem that will excert social pressure on people to buy their products so they can be part of the group like their friends.
They don’t. You do.
It’s just a phone? I’d have an android or fairphone if my job didn’t have apple devices and apps I use all the time. Just makes sense to not need two sets of a lot of things.
explain how the people who always have the newest iPhone and show it off to all their friends DONT think it’s a status symbol
better yet explain how, I, the person with a several year old android phone consider an iphone more important than they do
I don’t. I just use the phone because it works well with my laptop. My previous one was all banged up and scratched, so I wouldn’t really call it a status symbol.
I don’t really care about status though. My friends are a bunch of misfits. If it bothers you that people are using something as a status symbol, perhaps you’re more concerned about status than you realize. I’d love to just advise you to stop caring about that but it’s not that easy. Status seeking is a pretty common, normal behaviour.
Wait people really give a shit? Never seen or heard about that
Source: I’m also a college student
It used to be much worse. I remember being excluded from group chats in high school because of the color of the chat bubble for android was different or some shit lol
Nope - no one gives a shit what phone you have. Maybe I’m just old but I haven’t heard this from literally anyone or anywhere.
Because they’re teens
Uh, I don’t. It’s just a phone I use. That’s it.
Teenagers and students are just that; teenagers and students. Very often they care about ‘status symbol’ but also sometimes they don’t care.
I would recommend to stop generalizing.
