There’s something beautiful about watching someone get wise all on their ownsome. You can tell someone til you get blue in the face, but until they get it themselves, it's not really a lesson.
My beautiful boy was a few weekends ago with my grand-munchkin. We don’t get to see them often enough now that he lives up in Melbourne, so I treasure every minute. But the last few visits had become a bit of a sore point for me. He’d sit there scrolling endlessly on his phone while I tried to talk to him, and apparently I’m no longer allowed to tell him what to do “because I’m his mother.” So I’d just sit quietly and wait for Facebook or reels or whatever else had stolen him away from the room to finally spit him back out again. Even his partner would roll her eyes and say he was 'terrible' in this regard.
But this visit was different.
The phone mostly stayed in his bag or face down on the bench. He’d check a message, answer a call maybe, but there was no mindless scrolling. I noticed it immediately, but I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want to sound bossy or nagging or too motherly. Sometimes it's better to mark a good thing as normal instead of make a fuss.
Over wine he mentioned he’d put a timer on his apps. Half an hour a day on Facebook, if that. And I thought: bloody hell. He’s figured it out. Coincidentally, I'd done the same thing. Half an hour. That’s it.
What happens is you suddenly become very aware of your time. You stop opening the app just because your hand twitches towards your phone, or disappearing into reels because you know ten minutes of nonsense videos can swallow whole eons of time before breakfast.
Once you start paying attention, you realise how much absolute rubbish - my Dad'd call it 'bullshit' - you consume every single day. So much noise and useless information taking up space in your brain and hours from your life. We all know this - this post is absolutely nothing new for any of us.
My son did say something else that really struck me, because I’ve experienced it too and it's a turning point, once you realise how to fill this empty time with something that seems initially odd and even, god forbid 'boring'. When you stop reaching for your phone every spare second, eventually you hit this strange, liminal, expansive moment where you just - wait for it - stare into space.
You think: 'Well. Now what?'. Because sometime we use our phones to fill the gaps - when we can't be bothered cleaning, reading, doing 'productive' things. We tell ourselves we need a break from the world and half an hour on reels ain't gonna hurt, because we deserve it. But I think we realised something was much, much cooler than that.
He said he realised he could just sit there and watch his thoughts drift by. And honestly, I remember that feeling so clearly from the early 2000s before we all became permanently popping phone pills. We talked about how kids born in the late 90s — his generation, born in ’97 — were probably the last to remember a childhood before constant internet connection.
You know, when boredom still existed, and you had to fill time all on your own. You'd pick up a guitar, a book. Do what I've been doing lately and staring at trees and clouds - five stars out of five, seriously. In that empty space you get to process life or even create something.
He said he’s grateful he remembers that life before algorithms and every second became stolen by corporations to capture your attention and sell it back to advertisers and the blood-sucking algorithms designed to consume you.
It reminded me of why I gave up smoking years ago. Even before I really cared about my health, I became furious at the idea of being controlled by something designed to make me consume and consume and consume while handing my money over to companies that didn’t give a shit about me.
Honestly, maybe one of the most precious things left in this world is simply being fully present in a room with the people you love - fully present, not half here, half sucked into worm holes you didn't ask for, not really.
When you’re dying, you’re not going to miss your phone, we agreed. We're going to miss the moments we didn't have.
With Love,e