Life Really Is Better Without the Internet
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Before our first child was born last year, my wife and I often deliberated about the kind of parents we wanted to be—and the kind we didn’t. We watched families at restaurants sitting in silence, glued to their phones, barely taking their eyes off the screens between bites. We saw children paw at their parents, desperate to interact, only to be handed an iPad to keep quiet. We didn’t want to live like that. We vowed to be present with one another, at home and in public. We wanted our child to watch us paying attention to each other and to him.
The reality, after our son was born, was quite different. In those sleep-deprived early days, I found myself resorting to my phone as a refuge from the chaos. I fell into some embarrassing middle-aged-dad stereotypes. I developed a bizarre interest in forums about personal finance and vintage hats. I spent up to four hours a day looking at my phone while right in front of me was this new, beautiful life, a baby we had dreamed about for years.
My wife, Cristina, felt abandoned in the isolation of new motherhood and complained of my near-constant phone use.
“When you look at your phone,” she told me, “it’s as though you disappear.”
When it comes to having an unhealthy relationship with technology, I’m in good company. Most of us find that smartphones but we struggle to use them in healthy ways. last year that they use their phones too often. American adults spend an average of reported this summer. Almost all of us keep our smartphones within arm’s reach during waking hours, Gallup found, and most of us do so when we sleep.
