Public service announcement (phone down day)

Due to apocalypse, we exist in a moment of capacity collapse, where we have consciously chosen for it to be “hard” to hang out for more than 90 calendar minutes a quarter, where it is discouraged to look up from our phones, where we have no idea how to trust or take care of each other.

At the same time, I love my phone. I love devices. Devices are how I am able to ping my friends, do my job, and write to you. You probably love devices, too, despite everything. But they also pull us out of the present. I’m writing this in a café that has someone who seems cool, who in another world I would chat up. They are glued to their phone, as I often am. And it’s funny, if they just looked up they might see someone whom (I hope) they thought was cool, start talking to me, come to one of my group meals, become friends. I live in a big dense city! Social media is terrible! I am not alone in doing & believing these things!

It is also true that we overuse our phones, and the act of doing so is diminishing our capacity for basic human connection. I don’t even think this is debatable. No less a figure than Brené Brown & Esther Perel agree with me. If this sounds resonant with you at all, then you probably need to mediate your screen time.

And so I am making a habit of leaving my phone in my pocket and just… looking around. Looking people in the eye when I can, which is rare, because they are all looking at their phones. I try to do this as much as humanly possible on one day out of the week, usually a Friday.