Mobile Phones: We Love Them for Good Reasons

We have a close relationship with our phones. We sleep with them, eat with them, and carry them in our pockets. We check them, on average 82 times a day as a teenager. We love them for some good reasons: They tell the weather, the time of day and the steps we’ve taken. They entertain us with music and connect us to friends and family. They answer our questions and help us get rid of loneliness and anxiety.

Sometimes, phone love can go too far. It can interfere with relationships. In a 2016 study published in the journal Psychology of Popular Media Culture, 70 percent of women revealed that smartphones were negatively affecting their relationships.

Whenever Michael Carl, the fashion market director at Vanity Fair, goes out to dinner with friends, he plays the ‘phone stack’ game. Everyone places their phones in the middle of the table; whoever looks at their device before the check arrives pays the bill.

Brandon Holley, the former editor of Lucky magazine, had trouble turning off her iPhone when she got home from work. So, about six months ago, she began tossing her phone into a tin the moment she walked in. It remains there until after dinner.

Marc Jacobs, a fashion designer, didn’t want to sleep next to a beeping sound, so he banned digital devices from his bedroom, a house rule he shared with audiences during a recent screening of Disconnect, a film that dramatises how technology has made people stay away from each other.

(Adapted from the NY Times Website)