You’ve seen her, right? The frustrated 86-year-old woman with grey hair and wrinkly skin who, for the last 15 minutes, has been writing, editing, and preparing to send one single message. The text on her phone is in 24-point font and she’s typing the letters one by one with her two gnarled, arthritic index fingers. She should be doing the crossword puzzle, knitting a sweater for her great granddaughter, walking slowly around the neighborhood with her slowly dying friends, or baking a pie and forgetting to turn off the oven, but instead she’s sitting alone at the dining room table, bent over her phone with a furrowed brow, reading glasses perched on the end of her nose, desperately trying to send this one message about the nagging pain in her chest.
You’ve seen him, right? The lost 14-year-old-boy at the bus stop with his heavy backpack, fluffy hair, black hoodie, grey sweats, and white crocs, head and neck at a 45 degree angle, concave back, and T-Rex arms, hunched over his phone as he waits for the bus, vapid look on his face as one YouTube Short after another sucks him deeper and deeper into the abyss. He should be playing hacky sack, talking to his friend about the Cubs game, or fantasizing about the girl who sits next to him in math class so, right there and then at the bus stop, he pops a little boner which he has to slyly tuck into the waistband of his shorts. But there’s no little boner today, just 23-second Short after 23-second Short, optimally curated to inevitably lead him and every other 14-year-old boy down the path toward the Manosphere which ends with self-loathing, misogyny, and no girl or woman ever touching his stifled little boner.
You’ve seen her, right? The obsessive 44-year-old mom who, even before her alarm goes off, checks the weather and her email. She should be rolling over to snuggle her man and maybe get an extra few minutes of sleep and tenderness, but instead she’s worried about whether or not she should get her kid a college counselor because she just saw on Facebook that her friend whom she hasn’t spoken to in four years and who lives eight states away has a kid who was accepted to University of Whatever and we’re all so proud of her journey. Later that morning, after berating her colleagues for not using person-centered language, she takes a break from her soul-scorching zooms and advances to level 2,336 in Wordscapes even though she should step outside, get some sun, and ensure she reaches her daily steps goal. That afternoon she micromanages her kids’ snack content and social plans via text message even though she should be entirely focused on the email she is sending to the principal about the dangerous cracks in the gaga pit. That evening while she’s cooking an environmentally sustainable dinner, she watches a video montage of one of her kids that Google Photos has, without being asked, created just for her and, without being asked, sent to her. She should be listening to an old Billy Joel album and drinking half a glass of wine but the glossy images of her child accompanied by soft instrumentals is like catnip. At dinner, she excuses herself to take a “really important call” even though she should be listening to her daughter’s story about the weird substitute teacher who kept touching everyone. After dinner, she reads an article in her Apple News trough about hemorrhoids. She should be laughing at Nailed It! with her family but the notification on her home screen about two great college counselors in her area is impossible to ignore. That night when she is brushing her teeth, her phone is face up on the bathroom counter. She should be looking in the mirror, checking her skin for precancerous moles, but she really doesn’t want to miss that dish towel sale on Amazon. She gets in bed and checks her email one last time. She should be listening to how hard her man’s day was and offering sterile hand relief but instead she watches a couple of deeply concerning YouTube videos of Trump and has trouble falling asleep.
You’ve seen him, right? The distracted 28-year-old man-child at the gym with big biceps and wireless Beats headphones. He’s on his phone between and even during workout sets, scrolling through his Twitter feed, retweeting, and sharing with his friends particularly outrageous videos of women fighting in public. His algorithm is locked in. He should be making eye contact with some of the lonely young ladies in the gym but he’s too busy swiping right on the lonely young ladies on his phone. He’s also texting his friends about who the Bulls drafted and whether or not they would have sex with Maya Rudolph. He should be deep in reflection, thinking about his widowed mother and feeling guilty about missing leg day, but instead he’s calculating how much more money he can afford to lose on DraftKings but still have enough for a vial of coke at the strip club.
You’ve seen him, right? The lonely 58-year-old man who texts when he’s driving, who watches TikTok when he’s taking a shit, and who has a paid subscription to schmornhub.com. When he’s in the car, he should be listening to NPR but the red lights are everywhere and he texts fast. When he’s in the bathroom, he should be reading that article from The Atlantic about DOGE’s death database but the TikTok vids on DIY man caves are awesome. When he’s jerking off, he should be doing it for free but it’s so damn convenient to have his favorites armed and ready, especially in his car at red lights. He had his kid set a screen time password on his phone but he always overrides it. He should be laboriously reading hundreds of pages a month instead of spending hours a day on Reddit. He should be sarcastically/sincerely sexting his wife instead of anonymously joining chat rooms. He should be drinking beers with his friends instead of texting pictures of beer in their group chat. He should be at the park with his daughter or shooting hoops with his son or grilling veggie burgers on his deck instead of lecherously ogling scantily dressed Czech nubiles who share group selfie dance videos on the dark web.
You’ve seen her, right? The morose 20-year-old college girl lying in the fetal position on her bed with her phone propped up next to her in landscape mode. She should be gazing into the soft brown eyes of another 20-year-old college girl with whom she’s just had her first lesbian experimentation, but instead she’s binging Love Island on Peacock. She should be writing that essay on neo-colonial capitalism but ChatGPT is armed and ready. She was planning to go to the gym to work off that freshman 15 but she ended up getting sucked into confidence-crushing “Get Ready With Me” Instagram reels of plastic influencers yapping to no one and everyone about their skincare and makeup routines. No worries, she promised herself she’d do a six-minute ab workout later on YouTube. She also spent time today on Snapchat which she’s used less since finishing high school but still comes back to sometimes because it feels like a warm, familiar blanket of heroin FOMO. She should check out that lecture in the student center on fourth wave feminism but she’d prefer to just watch the TED talk online. Her parents used to control her screen time but now she’s, technically, an adult who, theoretically, can self-manage. Sometimes it occurs to her to text her dad for help but she has too much pride and shame.
You’ve seen him, right? The inattentive 10-year-old boy up in his room, on his bed, hiding under his sheets, face three inches from his phone, eyes wide open like A Clockwork Orange, mesmerized by the complexities of Crossing the Mexican Border in Roblox. It’s his sixth hour on Roblox today. He got access to the old iPhone 6 floating around the house and figured out the wifi. His parents never turned on screen time limits so the boy sneaks away every opportunity he gets to play Steal A Brainrot on Roblox. He should be juggling a soccer ball in the driveway or riding his rusted bike in the rat-strewn alley or reading Percy Jackson for the seventh time or playing ping-pong with his friend or watching Colombia versus Uzbekistan with his sister or playing Monopoly with his dad or selling overpriced lemonade at a lemonade stand or looking through the comics, but all his friends are on Roblox too and it’s about 1,000,000 times more Beavis and Butthead fun fun FUN than Monopoly or lemonade. His thumbs hurt from the fast-paced clicking and he has a headache from the backlight of the phone but he has $20 octillion in Grow a Garden and the chats flying back and forth with his friends are dopamine city, so piano and dessert and showering and pooping can wait.
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What would all of us be doing if we weren’t on our phones?
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