>
This is such a straw man.Perhaps, but I don't agree with you. It's an expression of frustration about my own personal experiences.
> At least where I leave, local libraries provide a ton of support for people who need help using a computer
That's a good point. I haven't (yet) looked at my local libraries to see how functional they are. I'll do that within the next month though.
> You still haven't given any evidence on why you need a smartphone.
I shouldn't need evidence for why you need a smartphone when I am arguing that you shouldn't need a smartphone. But ok: try signing up for any service with SMS-based 2FA required; banks come to mind, many other online services. Guess you "need" a smartphone unless you don't want to do online banking. It's further crazy that SMS-based 2FA actually decreases security.
> Yes, society changes, and as part of those changes you need access to new tools. When I was a kid in the 80s in the US, you needed to have a car and you needed to have a phone.
Changes in society should not require you to follow those changes yourself.
The requirement for a car is strictly a negative aspect of society, and very much a USA-based problem induced by not fostering public transit while also fostering sprawling urban/suburban environments. And that requirement is also a self-reinforcing lock-in: if you don't have a car then you can't afford to get a good job and without a good job you can't afford to move somewhere that a car is not required. Today it's very much still that way, with the exception of remote work which is very much in danger of being destroyed by oligarchs.
And for phone; well I distinctly recall many homes had phones shared by the whole family. You didn't need a phone per-se, you could easily borrow your own, or your neighbor's/friend's phone number and they'd take messages for you. Still can today, except that there's a lot more assumption about one-phone-to-one-real-person today.
> I'm not saying that change is easy, but this idea that people are helpless and there aren't avenues to get access to the tools they need is BS in my opinion.
I'm not saying people are helpless and there aren't avenues to get access to the tools they need. I'm saying the tools they need have been perverted beyond belief so that someone who has different morals no longer feels safe using the tools they need.
You can't say the same about cars in the 80s. Yes you might have actually needed a car, but the car was yours and didn't spy on you. Yes you might have actually needed a personal phone number and you could count on it being monitored by the government or with a warrant, but your conversations weren't data mined by and sold to third parties who you've never even heard of let alone done business with.