through Facebook, the room lit up with excited nods and chants of “Yes!” The audience included smartphone addictslike me, bloggers, and digital media professionals—basically all the kinds of people who annoy you at dinner because they can’t put down their devices. Yet all of us were agreeing enthusiastically that we hated how much our dinner companions and friends constantly ignored us . I wondered if some of the people nodding in staunch agreement were sort of guiltily admitting that they are often the ones who are too busy tweeting, Instagramming, e-mailing, Tumblring, Facebooking, BBMing, or Snapchatting to give their friends and family the attention they deserve—I know I was.
We hate ourselves for using these things so much, but we learn to live with the guilt—we are relieved instead of aggravated or insulted when others take out their phones at dinner, because it means we can too. It’s like when you want to cancel plans with someone but are dreading that awkward e-mail and then they send you a text canceling before you have the chance to! The best. That is how I feel when I see a friend take out her phone at dinner. What a relief. I can now reach for mine. We can remember when we were focused and attentive, and it bothers us, but that doesn’t mean we will stop.
While on the panel, I began to notice how the reactions differed throughout the audience. The group consisted mainly of people in my age group, between twenty-five and thirty-five, but there were also several teenagers, as well as a few people who were at least forty or fifty. When the complaints about tech and smartphone addiction were raised, those in their midtwenties and early thirties were by far the most passionate—responding as if we were allinmates of the same prison, aware of our lives beforehand, and dumbfounded by how we had let ourselves become captive to these devices that now run our lives. In contrast, the younger members of the audience seemed less annoyed and at times almost nonchalant and generally unaffected. I guess it makes sense if you consider that these digital natives haven’t known life any other way. But what really surprised me was that the older people in the room, those who had spent much more time in their lives without such technology, were just as affected by its hypnotizing pull.
I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised. Of all the people I talked into joining Foursquare (my parents, seven friends, and two coworkers), my dad was the one who became the most addicted. Foursquare is the location-based social media game that crowns a person “mayor” of any location once they have visited and “checked in” at a place more than anyone else. It works with your phone’s GPS functionality, so you need to actually be at or very near the place at which you are requesting to “check in.” When someone checks in more than you, Foursquare sends you an e-mail saying that you’ve been “ousted” as the mayor. The other day I was ousted from my mayorship of the Amanpulo resort in the Philippines. It destroys me that I will likely never get it back and there is nothing I can do about it.
My father is a retired Wall Street sales trader with a serious competitive streak. He and my mother are happily married and live in Bridgehampton. They have the kind of connected relationship and home life I aspire to emulate. Nonetheless, thanks to Foursquare, he became wildly obsessedwith becoming mayor of as many places in the Hamptons as possible. Most days he would wake up around six A.M . to play a round of golf, then drive through town, checking into Bobby Van’s, Candy Kitchen, Starbucks, Hampton Coffee Company (yes, that’s two coffee places), Pierre’s, and the bank, in addition to any other place he actually needed to be. He even became mayor of long-term parking at JFK International Airport for two months. He felt particularly proud of this mayorship. I think my favorite aspect of my father’s Foursquare addiction,
We hate ourselves for using these things so much, but we learn to live with the guilt—we are relieved instead of aggravated or insulted when others take out their phones at dinner, because it means we can too. It’s like when you want to cancel plans with someone but are dreading that awkward e-mail and then they send you a text canceling before you have the chance to! The best. That is how I feel when I see a friend take out her phone at dinner. What a relief. I can now reach for mine. We can remember when we were focused and attentive, and it bothers us, but that doesn’t mean we will stop.
While on the panel, I began to notice how the reactions differed throughout the audience. The group consisted mainly of people in my age group, between twenty-five and thirty-five, but there were also several teenagers, as well as a few people who were at least forty or fifty. When the complaints about tech and smartphone addiction were raised, those in their midtwenties and early thirties were by far the most passionate—responding as if we were allinmates of the same prison, aware of our lives beforehand, and dumbfounded by how we had let ourselves become captive to these devices that now run our lives. In contrast, the younger members of the audience seemed less annoyed and at times almost nonchalant and generally unaffected. I guess it makes sense if you consider that these digital natives haven’t known life any other way. But what really surprised me was that the older people in the room, those who had spent much more time in their lives without such technology, were just as affected by its hypnotizing pull.
I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised. Of all the people I talked into joining Foursquare (my parents, seven friends, and two coworkers), my dad was the one who became the most addicted. Foursquare is the location-based social media game that crowns a person “mayor” of any location once they have visited and “checked in” at a place more than anyone else. It works with your phone’s GPS functionality, so you need to actually be at or very near the place at which you are requesting to “check in.” When someone checks in more than you, Foursquare sends you an e-mail saying that you’ve been “ousted” as the mayor. The other day I was ousted from my mayorship of the Amanpulo resort in the Philippines. It destroys me that I will likely never get it back and there is nothing I can do about it.
My father is a retired Wall Street sales trader with a serious competitive streak. He and my mother are happily married and live in Bridgehampton. They have the kind of connected relationship and home life I aspire to emulate. Nonetheless, thanks to Foursquare, he became wildly obsessedwith becoming mayor of as many places in the Hamptons as possible. Most days he would wake up around six A.M . to play a round of golf, then drive through town, checking into Bobby Van’s, Candy Kitchen, Starbucks, Hampton Coffee Company (yes, that’s two coffee places), Pierre’s, and the bank, in addition to any other place he actually needed to be. He even became mayor of long-term parking at JFK International Airport for two months. He felt particularly proud of this mayorship. I think my favorite aspect of my father’s Foursquare addiction,
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