The excerpt above is from the introduction to The Moth, a book of 50 stories from The Moth storytelling organization, which includes a radio hour on 400+ stations around the country.
The book came out in 2013, but those lines are even more relevant (and incriminating) five years later. We’ve all done it, to varying degrees. Sending a text instead of making a call. Trading a birthday lunch for a Facebook “like.” Netflix binging instead of getting together with friends over the weekend.
Often our noses are so buried in our phones that we don’t even look up anymore… at the trees, the sky, or our friend sitting across the table from us.
Do your friends a favor: meet with them, face-to-face, and leave the phones out of sight and out of mind. And just listen.
And now for fans of 80s tunes and/or videos that feature copious amounts of rouge on both male and female performers, here’s Missing Persons with their 1982 semi-hit, “Words”:
I do not disagree with you at all. Since I live in the bucolic college town of Oxford, I see heads buried in phones all the time and it makes me … not pleased.
As for The Moth – That’s great stuff.
I’m sure it’s reached epidemic proportions in Oxford… and every other college town. Thanks Senor Sledge!
I have to agree you. Heads buried in phones or iPads. In their rooms closed off. Not getting enough time meeting other individuals. Not learning social interaction. Just learning how to deal with life…………….
It’s a disease, for sure, and the only cure is human contact (and more cowbell!).