Hanging Up: phone culture and how it gets in the way of connection
Being human means striving for belonging. Yet, very few of us have a personality where belonging feels easy. It’s hard to feel at home everywhere we go. It’s even harder to feel at ease connecting with everyone out in the world. Many of us try our best, but we still struggle with a sense of connection and belonging. I know how hard it can be to try to get outside your comfort zone despite having all of the right intentions. I’ve made great strides in overcoming those challenges, and so have many people. Yet, it seems like there’s a new challenge that is blocking even the best individual efforts. Our phones. Everything has begun to revolve around our phones instead of the world and the people in it. This is why there’s a palpable sense of longing for a more connected world right now, particularly among young people. People want to be out in the world meeting people and building their lives, but phone culture is what’s holding us all back. (Donald Glover was the first person I heard use the term “phone culture”, and I think it really encapsulates where we’re at today).
On an individual level, it’s nothing I haven’t talked about before. The vast majority of apps and services on our phones have business models that rely on us spending as much time as possible on them, so we do. We spend hours each day not looking at the world but looking down and scrolling. Now some of that time is spent connecting with people we care about, but the problem lies in how that connection is done. It’s all just small fragments of information that get lost among all of the other things we’re doing on our phones. Think about how many times you’ve read a text, reply and then immediately switch back to another app. When we do that, we don’t have time to digest any of the communication. It’s all just noise. Video and phone calls are supposed to be more engaging, but many of us still multitask during them. Multitasking prevents us from having real connections and communication. We can’t have real conversations if we spend all day staring at screens.
It’d be one thing if it was just a few of us trapped by our screens, but at this point, it’s almost all of us. It’s rare to see anyone under the age of 40 without a screen or headphones. We’re trained to pull out our phones and start scrolling any time there’s a moment of downtime or silence. We crave stimulus. That’s why it’s so hard to talk to people and form connections out in the world. The moments when connections were made are now filled with social media and podcasts. Granted there’s nothing wrong if there are moments where you genuinely want to be left alone so you pull out your headphones. We all need our space and privacy. I love having music be a soundtrack to some runs and walks. Again though issues arise when we’re not conscious of what we’re doing, and we let this conditioning take over. So many of us desire to feel more connected but end up disconnecting ourselves through our phones. We miss out on the world when we’re never truly in it.
Not every space has been taken over by phones. Social spaces like bars, restaurants, and concerts haven’t been totally lost. Yet, phone culture still influences what goes on there. If you observe groups at bars or restaurants, you’ll notice that when there’s a lull in conversation phones come out. Sometimes it will be just one person who’s not totally involved in the conversation, and other times it’s everyone. Those pauses used to be where spontaneity lived. Someone had to either break an awkward silence or actually take part in a conversation that they know nothing about. It was those pauses where someone would suggest trying to join another group or find something else to do. Those moments now are just filled with scrolling. The same thing happens with groups at concerts. It’s almost worse for people who are alone, the conditioning from phone culture leads them to fill almost any break with their phone. With that, they lose the opportunity of meeting other people or catching those small moments of serendipity that can only happen in places like concerts. Phone culture also creates this preoccupation with filming the event instead of experiencing the event itself. Concerts aren’t just about the performer they’re about the fans too. Phones have changed this dynamic by giving us all the ability to make content. So that’s what we do, we view the concert through the eyes of the content machine. We patiently wait for the moment to pull out the phone and hit record. Most people don’t have their phone out the whole show, but the phone is still there, lurking. This dynamic shifts our mindset away from the collective to the individual.
This mindset that phone culture perpetuates is the fuel for so much of our anxiety. We see all of these photos and videos that make it seem like everyone is living a better life than us. I think because of that we’re hesitant to even approach people. In our minds, we see everyone as having their own little world, a world that’s insulated by their phone. This creates an invisible barrier that we don’t want to cross. It also makes us anxious about our own online presence and how people may judge our own little phone world. Phone culture is a neurotic culture, where we’re all obsessed with other people’s lives and how ours compares to theirs. It’s also an addictive one where despite focusing on these online selves, we can’t look up to focus on real people. What we fail to realize is that everyone feels like this. We’re all struggling and we’re all longing for connection. We want people to talk to us and to talk to them. We want to have interesting experiences and lives. We want to be in the world.
Phone culture isn’t going away any time soon. Phones have become integrated into our lives. In the face of all of it though, I still think there are opportunities to gain the connection we want and need. The first is just being active. One of the few times that you rarely see anyone on their phones is when they’re moving, either by themselves or with others. You can’t be on your phone during a yoga or HIIT class. It’s almost impossible to walk, talk with a friend, and be on your phone all at the same time. By doing active things with people, we can have more real connections that go beyond our screens. It doesn’t even have to be super active, like I said just going for a walk can help you connect with the world. At the top, I said that phone culture can be a barrier to individual efforts, and that’s true. Unfortunately, the tech industry isn’t going to change anytime soon, so we’re going to have to do our best to escape phone culture ourselves. We’ll have to try to start a conversation in the coffee shop. Chat with the bartender while waiting for friends. Stay off our phones at concerts. Most of all though, we’ll need to think about what it is that we want and recognize that’s what other people want too. Our phones make it seem like we’re all islands. In a lot of ways they do make us islands, but it doesn’t have to be that way. We may not all become social butterflies, but by engaging with the world and the people in it, we can find the belonging and connection we’re all looking for.