The other night my husband and I were out to dinner on the patio of a restaurant in a public “square” if you will. The area was filled with many people, 50-75 maybe, milling around, socializing, every age and generation, gender, cultural diversities, and every one of them was actively engaged, simultaneously, with their phone. Head down, some earphones in, thumbs typing away.  

It was creepy actually. My husband and I sheepishly looked to see where our own phones were. Husband’s in his pocket, mine on the table face down…thank God! 

I am not writing here from a position of relational superiority. I am as susceptible as any to the stimulus on that thing. There is a lot of interesting stuff on that phone I’ve never heard or seen before, whereas my husband and I, having been married over 45 years, have heard, seen, said it all at some point in our marriage. It’s so easy to be captured by interesting material and new ideas, perspectives, and my best friends new baby giggles. But in fact I have an amazing human in front of me who deserves more than an absentminded uh-huh, mmmm, IDK…

I would propose that the mental, emotional and spiritual health of this generation will depend on our ability to put the damn thing down.

Will we be able to though? Here is an interesting read from Time Mag: Americans Check Their Phones 8 Billion Times a Day

I want to stand up and champion a resistance movement in this regard. You can assassinate someone with words, destroy reputations with clicks, influence the gullible, scam the innocent when you are hidden in the covering of “social” experiences via the internet. Am I the only one that sees danger here? #humansmatter

I watch parents battle at the dinner table to get their kids to put their phones down. I pray they find victory over it. “You are going to sit down, have dinner with us, pay attention to us, tell us in words, physical animation and emotional energy how your day was. AND LIKE IT!! We insist.” It has to be a strong determined stance, because nothing in this world will ever take the place of eye to eye, heart to heart, genuine loving affectionate interpersonal engagements. 

My husband has all on his own, shut down most of the social media engagement. He jumps on there once in a while to like, lol, thumbs up some things, but he finds it all, keyboard warriors, misleading headlines, and personal stories, either embellished with glitz, or laden with brokenhearted, anguished narratives, together too much for one person to process. He is all the wiser for it. 

Considering you can meet, date, propose, accept and marry just with your phone, I think we will want to take a good hard look at this thing, and set appropriate boundaries around its place in our lives. 

Oh! Gotta go. I hear pinging in the other room! 

H.