When you look down at your smartphone a barrier of energy forms around you. This barrier cannot be seen with the naked eye but it can be felt, by you and those around you.
All of your body language, your entire being, sends the following message to the world around you: Leave me alone. I have better things to do than communicate with you.
People look down at their smartphones because it looks cool.
The smartphone is a social tool that indicates to others your high social-status. When you look at your smartphone, you signal to those around you that have somewhere better to be and that you have unknown social connections that others aren’t aware of.
Where you are right now is never your end destination and where you are right now is never good enough.
The smartphone can certainly convey high status to those around you. You instinctively know that. That’s why you look down at it at parties, in the bar and in the nightclub. Even though there’s nothing on it to see. Even though nobody sent you any messages. Even though you’re pointlessly scrolling through social media feeds. And even though you’re missing the real party right in front of your eyes.
It’s a more high status body language than standing around, staring into space and flapping your hands around, that’s for sure. When people see you standing there, looking down at your phone, they think you’re talking to other, perhaps cooler people than those in the immediate physical environment.
Yet the smartphone also creates a barrier. You will miss social opportunities that you never knew you had because you were inside your smartphone barrier. The handsome, nervous man at the cafe is less likely to open a conversation with you when your smartphone barrier is up, and the same goes for that cute girl trying to make eye-contact at you from across the room.
Looking down at your smartphone on the train. Looking down at your smartphone while walking down the street. Looking down at your smartphone at the party. Looking down at your smartphone in the nightclub. This what your life looks like.
Do you feel cool as your look down at your smartphone at the party? Or do you feel like a loser in disguise?
And can you feel it? That dull ache in your neck? It’s been created through habitual use of technology. Those hunched shoulders, they’ll become permanent. Because your body adapts to what you consistently do. And if you spend large amounts of time on your smartphone, your body will adapt to the task by hunching over permanently.
Spend enough time inside the smartphone barrier and eye-contact with other human beings might become difficult. Again, your body adapts to what you consistently do, and if you don’t spend time making eye-contact with others, your body may forget how to do it. You may find that holding eye-contact with others becomes difficult, uncomfortable and frightening.
Yet it’s not only you who’s inside the smartphone barrier, it’s everyone else too.
Strangers all around you are also inside their smartphone barrier. Men continue to swipe on Tinder instead of approaching the girls in their immediate environment. In the past, strangers would engage in general chit-chat as they waited for the bus, now they all stare at their own palms.
Psychologists believe that the increase in technology use and the loneliness epidemic are linked.
Today, many people aren’t where they are. They’re elsewhere. Messaging a friend who isn’t here. Laughing at videos of dogs who aren’t here. Scrolling social media looking at the lives of others who aren’t here. Looking at images of attractive people who aren’t here.
Physically, they sit on the train. Yet mentally, they’re elsewhere. Inside their barrier, they can mentally travel wherever they like.
As technology continues to improve, and VR headsets gradually become more normal, less and less people will be where they are. More and more, people will mentally transport themselves somewhere else instead of being present in their physical environment.
Beep! Beep! Another notification rings, and what potential notifications have! Maybe a hot girl on Tinder matched with you. Maybe she’ll agree to go on a date tonight. Maybe you can take her back to your place and…Nope, it’s a spam email.
Your phone seems like it’s full of potential and opportunity, but really this is an illusion. The potential for good things to happen is in the reality that surrounds you.
It doesn’t matter if you have 100 matches on Tinder because you can only go on one date at a time. It doesn’t matter if you have 100 likes on your Instagram photo because those people aren’t here with you now.
When it comes down to it, you are where you are. And you are what you are. Not where or what you imagine yourself to be when you stare down at your smartphone.
So perhaps it’s time to reconsider your relationship with your smartphone. Maybe that smartphone isn’t as important or as useful as you thought it was. In fact, maybe it’s more of a hindrance than an aid.
Can you step outside your smartphone barrier? Can you sit in a public place, by yourself, without a phone in your hands? Do you actually have the ability to do this? Or is it too difficult for you?
And what would happen if you switched off the barrier and opened yourself up to the world? Not that much. But a subtle change would occur. And you might find that you feel more connected with the world around you, rather than a disconnected ghost who feels they don’t belong where they are.
You might even, dare I say it, start a conversation with a stranger.
