Although if "cost of living" continues to rise, cancelling mobile contracts may be next.
Many less well off folk have annual or multiyear deals (which include handsets) so the cancellations would come at end of term for most.
I suspect the issue at hand is that a fast growing number of people simply can't afford non-essentials, and in the process of deciding what's absolutely necessary and optional, access to the Internet may not be a necessity when rent, food and energy (including fuel) consume every penny you earn (or, more than you earn, there's a increasing trend of short term loans being taken out to pay bills, which will come home to roost).
As counterintuitive as it might be, I think the cellphone and mobile contract come last (thought switching to a lower plan or a MVNO is an option).
There is a saying that if you don't have money you need connections, so as it gets tougher, communication becomes critical.
In particular missing a message from your bank alerting you of a operation that could get rejected, getting mail from social service of paperwork you need to get in order, alerts for tax deadlines etc. are essential.
On the other end of the spectrum, keeping in touch with your buddy's friend who's a garagist and can fix you in a pinch, keeping an eye on your elderly in case they fall short of something, answering the call when your neighbour needs you to see their kids for an hour or two as they have an emergency is also critical.
Those things don't need contracts, just a phone with prepaid service. Top up £5 and be careful to make it last a couple of months, or potentially a lot longer (6+ months) if you can use WiFi and mostly receive calls and texts.
I don't know for the UK, I was expecting contracts to be better value and cheaper than prepaid. Let's say you're phoning 20 min every month and burning through 3G or data, having even a minimal contract is probably worth it.
Spoke to Gitlab rep today about our renewal price (prices going up by 50%+, 25% with "existing customer discount) and the rep used reliability as a key differentiator against GitHub.
I quickly pointed about a major outage affecting Gitlabs shared runners which prevented us from deploying a hot fix (we worked around it, but was a ton of stress and extra work).
> I feel that they do need some freedom in tech land to follow their curiosities
I wish that was how it was used, however my own experience (and that of parents I speak to) is that the firehose is determined by the algorithm, not the individual which subsequently drives the habits and interests.
For example, my son will want to look up how to do something in Minecraft. Ace, he's using the resources available to him to research and learn how to do something.
Then he's effectively spammed with highly addictive content (relating to Minecraft), with sound effects, music, editing visual effects and voice over from some "creator" whose only goal is to monetise.
Now he sits watching endless (if I don't stop him) clips, and if I ask him what he's watched, he doesn't remember (and he's also highly irritated that I've stopped him consuming).
This stuff is, at least, just as addictive to a young mind as pleasure drugs, and worse, it's available without any barriers and pushed towards the consumer at great speed and volume.
At least with TV, someone somewhere made a decision about what to air. With the current technology, anyone chooses what they publish and the algorithm chooses what you'll consume (based on what will increase your addiction).
It honestly sounds like you're circling around the idea that the internet just isn't a good place for children (or adults for that matter). Wouldn't an attempt to ban a specific problem of the internet just be dodging the real problem?
If the internet as we've made it over the last 20 years is a breeding ground for addictive content and advertising, why not just stop using it? If we're going to ban anything because of this problem it should be situations that effectively force us to use the internet or be left behind.
Kids shouldn't have to be online for school. Adults shouldn't have to be online to get a job. Banning those kinds of situations would at least leave the door open for individuals to decide if using the internet regularly is really worth it to them.
The time limits take pretty good care of that, here. I really don't mind them watching braindead stuff for a limited time. Especially so if that's the price for watching something interesting too.
It's also slightly curated, with age limits on videos provided by YouTube, but I mostly care about that to weed out shock videos and extreme violence.
YT Kids (the app at least) has a setting where only videos and channels are allowed that are whitelisted by the parent. We used to limit it to stuff from BBC Cbeebies, Numberblocks & Alphablocks, Sesame Street, Disney, and similar stuff in their own language and in English.
I think nowadays we just limit it to the age restrictions (<=4, 5-8, 9-12), so they don't see stuff that gives them nightmares. Everything else can be taken care of with the time limit.
With a book at least a parent knows what their child is consuming. I wouldn't mind if my child was consuming books (as long he stayed healthy with activity and social connection).
With the firehose of social media its whatever the providers algorithm decides it wants the user to consume.
My 11 year old son is limited to 30 mins of YouTube per day, 15 mins of Snapchat. TikTok is banned. Overall phone usage is limited to 3 hours per day, and PS5 is the same. And it's still not enough for him.
And yes, he uses these in conflict with the provider terms.
Without any exposure he lacks any commonality with his peers (who, as far as I can tell, have unfettered access to devices, apps and video games) however he will forego food, water, bathroom, hygiene if not forcibly limited.
And he agrees with statements like "I just can't stop myself" and "I feel like I've got to have it" and "I don't know what to do unless I have it". Which makes me very sad. When he goes to play with friends, he makes a bee line for those same devices and apps that he's limited from accessing at home.
He cannot self-limit his consumption and billion dollar companies are using his mind as a disposable fuel to make money for no better purpose than profit. I honestly don't know how the folk at those firms live with themselves (other than luxuriously).
I honestly wish these platforms did not exist at all, for the arguments they cause.
It's not only that. Books are not ads. There can be bad books filled with stupid ideas and garbage stories but the purpose of literature is not to advertise something.
Modern social media is just advertisement in disguise of entertainment. I am an adult, hopefully a rational one, and my buying habits (and desires!) have been heavily influenced by the social media, I can only imagine what it does to children's minds.
The social aspect of social media, ironically, is often barely present. Services like Youtube are parasocial at best.
> FWIW, macs are high quality and last a long time.
My own experience (4 MacBooks Pros) and that of providing MacBook Air and Pros to a dozen or so staff (with 50 or so on non-Mac kit) leads me to conclude this statement is not true.
They are great as long as they work but no better in terms of longevity to equivalent kit from other manufacturers, at least in my limited, non-scientific, IMHO experience.
Last year I asked the numbers to our IT department for a similar discussion.
On about 2000 macbooks, 2000 thinkbooks and 6000 hp elitebooks, all of various generations, the macbooks scored best on reliability and best on 'how many tickets do these users create for our service desk'.
The cost savings are there. But obviously there was still a significant amount of issues with these laptops. They are not perfect, but they performed better than the other two families.
The big issue with macbooks is usually that if they fail after 3 years, they are an immediate write off. The others get repaired. Oh and those butterfly keyboard years were horrible and nearly stopped us from allowing macbooks apparently.
I moved into the 100k bracket 3 years ago, and have just hit 125k this Jan. I am the sole earner in our house, wife can't work and have a 12 year old boy.
And I've been trying (and failing) to work out why it seems like more than 40% of my earnings are taken as tax.
And why I need to do tax returns as I've always been PAYE with no other income sources.
I joined the workforce the year after final salary pensions were shutdown. My slightly older peers are all on track for early retirement. I will never be able to retire.
I considered contracting just as IR35 was introduced. My slightly older peers who - literally - got rich and paid no taxes enjoy much better lifestyle than me.
So this makes sense, that as I claw my way to higher income, it's taken away by the system.
All the while having record house prices, plummeted pension performance and now cost of living/inflation.
Many less well off folk have annual or multiyear deals (which include handsets) so the cancellations would come at end of term for most.
I suspect the issue at hand is that a fast growing number of people simply can't afford non-essentials, and in the process of deciding what's absolutely necessary and optional, access to the Internet may not be a necessity when rent, food and energy (including fuel) consume every penny you earn (or, more than you earn, there's a increasing trend of short term loans being taken out to pay bills, which will come home to roost).