PLEASE stop sims from autonomously using their phone

😉 My pleasure!

I would LOVE if the Sims 4 team would get rid of all the autonomous cell phone fiddling in game. It's an unnecessary detail. It's fine if you instruct a sim to use the phone to call someone or using it for something else. However all the cell phones, clay blobs and future cubes don't enhance game play at all. Ok thanks 

I think it is there in an attempt to normalize cell phone addiction, because, I would guess, the same people who make this game probably spend a lot of time on their phones (techno-philes) and want to present it as something that is funny/normal, rather than gross and disturbing. Unfortunately, they have decided for us that we all are going to have sims that are cell phone addicts and we have no say in this. IMO, this is sad and troubling, to be sure.

Not to mention the disconnect between how long an action should actually take a Sim and how long the animation actually takes is just made 10 times worse by pausing that animation constantly so they can play with their phone. I wouldn’t mind so much if it was an actual IDLE animation, but they keep using it when they really should be in a hurry, or at least purposeful.

Agreed. If the game gave an option to use "real time" then the cellphone addiction would be less awful since the sims wouldn't be on their phone for a virtual half an hour in just a few seconds. Their lives are already lived at about 50 times reality, so wasting time on their phone is like fifty times worse. On top of that, the cell phone use doesn't do anything other than waste time. Maybe if it counted towards some kind of skill or knowledge it could be forgiven, but as it is, this is just an effort to pad a basically empty game with something only a cell phone addict would think funny.

I would like control of Sim Phone usage too, but bear in mind some autonomous behavior /heavily/ depends on Cell Phones (e.g. the "Phone Addict" Fame Trait) to balance the game. I still say I would rather have control, but am not so naïve as to think it would fix every occurrence. I do agree that technophobe is poorly labelled, as it seems to be more of a "I hate computers" than what it's advertised as, which is strange considering the phone icon. 

As an aside, have you considered passing the NAP "Back to the olden days" in your sim's neighborhood? It's a hassle when you want to do something on the computer but it may have better results than the technophobe trait (hypothizing - not actual data)

I was thinking the sniffing animation from bust the dust was worse before they fixed it but the idle animation with the phone is 100% worser. At least I could turn dust off and stop this sniffing idle but the phone? Its not possible, still if you mute it, they will still be jogging with phone, werewolf will still take it out in rampage, sims will take it out in water, sims will take it out if they go hiking, sims will take it out if they chat. Each sim has now a phone addiction and the only possibly way to remove this is to use mods.

The phone addiction was always a topic in sims 4 and instead to say, hey let’s give the player a choice you take this choice away and force it on all player via idle animation. This is just frustrating for all player which don’t want a sim which has a phone addiction.

I use solar panels and usually have music playing too, so not getting rid of tech. I just wish you could turn off the sims pulling out the phone unless prompted to, like in the middle of cooking, or a conversation, etc.

Yes this, thank you.

I don´t know which update caused this, but all of my sims are constantly whipping out their phone, no matter what they are doing. It´s so annoying! They can´t have a normal conversation without doing that dang animation. And I don´t think it´s realistic for my sims to have a flirty conversation resulting in them being engaged, while having their eyes glued to the screen. At least let them fall flat on their face if they use their phone while jogging.

I really would appreciate a possibility to toggle autonomous phone use on and off.

Adding my coins to the pile because YES! This is one of my biggest pet peeves with the game, honestly (enough that I sought out a mod to suppress this idle). I understand the realism they're allegedly going for, but only in some cases. This behavior does not suit every personality build, and the fact that every sim is addicted to their phone even when it doesn't remotely fit certain sims is immersion breaking (and considering it's a life simulator, it's a little insulting to suggest every person in the world is like this). I still love this game in spite of all its flaws, I truly do, but the devs really need to start giving greater priority to fine-tuning autonomy (in soooo many ways) rather than merely producing new content.