When you’re waiting in line at the grocery store, what do you see? How about when you’re sitting in the waiting room of a doctor’s office, or walking on the treadmill at the gym? What do you see sometimes when you glance over at the vehicle next to yours at a stoplight?

Yep, that’s right. Heads bowed toward smartphones.

I read this in a book a few years ago and it’s stayed with me ever since:

 

“What with your phone and the Xbox and the taxi TV and that music player you wear on your arm and the headphones that look like donuts on your ears, doesn’t it make life so much smaller? If absolutely everything important is only happening on such a small screen, isn’t that a shame? Especially when the world is so overwhelmingly large and surprising? Are you missing too much?”[1]

 

When I’m idle, for instance, waiting in line somewhere, I catch myself looking down at my phone way too much. I’d like to be able to say that in those instances, I’m always reading on my Kindle or Bible app, but we both know that isn’t the case. Au contraire. Too often I’m checking my email, watching a YouTube video, scrolling through Pinterest, ordering something off Amazon, (don’t tell my husband that!) or texting. Before I deleted my Twitter and Facebook accounts and stopped posting and interacting on Instagram, I was constantly zoning out on those not-so-social social networking platforms, too. It’s hard to remember what I did before I had a smartphone to while away the minutes with whenever I was waiting or otherwise bored.

I want to be more like “2003 Diana,” 2003 being the year I got my first cellphone, a pink and gray Nokia that literally only made calls. (Those were the days!) I’m not saying smartphones, with all their convenient, high-tech features are bad, I just think we (or at least, I…) use them too much. The more we’re consuming ideas and information via apps and text messages and emails and videos, the less we’re producing them within the marvelously intricate and complex gray matter between our ears.

 

The human brain has 100 billion neurons, each neuron connected to 10 thousand other neurons. Sitting on your shoulders is the most complicated object in the known universe. – Michio Kaku

 

Spending time plugged in, as it were, to a screen, stops us from connecting to the people around us, people we are hardwired to interact with, even if that interaction is comprised of only a nod, a smile, or a wave. When our heads are lowered and eyes fixed to our devices, we can’t communicate with anyone, not with words, gestures, or simple facial expressions. We cannot act, but only re-act to whatever meme, video, text, or post has snagged our attention. We become spectators sitting passively within the confines of a dark theater when we should be protagonists, productive, dynamic, characters making the most of the movie, so to speak, of our lives.

Not only do I desire to be more like my pre-cellphone self, but I also want my son, who is currently two, to value real-world experiences and relationships far more than digital ones.

A Forbes article from 2017 reported that social media is addictive, triggers sadness more than well-being, promotes unhealthy comparison, can lead to jealousy and a vicious cycle of one-upping, and, ironically, can create feelings of loneliness. “Virtual friend time,” the article says, “doesn’t have the therapeutic effect as time with real friends.”[2]

When I reflect on my childhood, I think of swimming, riding horses, playing in the creek behind our house, playing make-believe, playing tennis with my dad, jumping along rows of round bales in our hay meadow, throwing the football with my dad, riding bikes, watching “Wheel of Fortune” every weekday night with my family, playing Nintendo 64 with my friends, in person!

Looking at that list, I see many mentions of the word “play.” I think it’s no coincidence that that’s currently one of my son’s favorite words to say, as he is always wanting to go outside and play with his toy lawnmower and tractor, or water his grandparents’ plants, or go to a park or indoor playground where he can run and climb and build and jump. It’s my and Ben’s aim to help him maintain this love for play, discovery, and exploration as long as possible. I know it’s not realistic to think he’ll never use a smartphone or social media, nor do we want him to view them as inherently “bad” or off-limits, but we do want him to consider them tools to be used occasionally, not toys, escapes from reality, or virtual hangouts that are turned to regularly.

According to clinical psychologist Danielle Moreggi, “people have become codependent of their phones. They say things like ‘I don’t know what to do because I don’t have my phone,’ or ‘I wasn’t reminded because I didn’t have my phone.’ Having the technology in the palm of our hand has taken away even the thought process of trying another route because we’re so used to having it.”[3]

I love this famous quote from Mahatma Gandi: “Be the change you wish to see in the world.” If I wish to see fewer people on their phones when I’m waiting in line for coffee… If I hope to see more adolescents riding their bikes than posting on TikTok, then I need to get serious about being a positive example, and that means exchanging screen time for clouds/grass/trees/books/faces time, social media for social gatherings, looking things up for…well, looking up at things.

 

“You can’t imagine it now, but you’ll look like me one day, even though you’ll feel just the same as you do now. You’ll catch a glimpse of yourself in the mirror and think how quickly it’s all gone, and I wonder if all the time you used watching those families whose lives are filmed for the television, and making those cartoons of yourselves with panting dog tongues, and chasing after that terrible Pokémon fellow…well, will it feel like time well spent?” – Lauren Graham, Talking As Fast As I Can: From Gilmore Girls to Gilmore Girls and Everything in Between

[1] from Talking As Fast As I Can by Lauren Graham

[2][2] www.forbes.com/sites/alicegwalton/2017/06/30/a-run-down-of-social-medias-effects-on-our-mental-health/?sh=5aa728d02e5a

[3] www.reviewjournal.com/life/smartphones-social-media-often-act-as-a-crutch/amp/