Junior classical languages and literatures and history major
We millennials constitute a unique group of people. While future generations will be born into a tech-saturated world, we got to grow up alongside this new technology, experiencing the change from flip phones to smartphones firsthand.
It’s no wonder, then, that we can’t put down those smartphones. Whether we’re at home, in cars or – I can confirm – driving a golf cart across the campus, the need to be plugged in to an endless stream of new information is as addictive as it is instructive.
But this column is not about those common venues. Instead, by far the most intrusive and ill-mannered cellphone arena is at the dinner table. Of course, I don’t mean dinner with yourself because if you don’t read BuzzFeed while sucking down ramen, who will?
No, I’m talking about pulling out your cellphone at the most important kind of meal: dinner with friends. It’s an all too familiar scenario — you go to the diner or to Bagel Place, and all of the sudden, you have a perfect view of all of your friends’ bald spots as they stare down at their Facebook pages.
The need to socialize while you’re already socializing is, to be sure, the definition of a sociopathic gesture. It is an anti-social retreat to a virtual mock-up that was designed to imitate the feelings you get from having dinner with friends — an event you ironically miss by shoving your face into your phone (while your nontexting friends might be more pleased if they could actually push your face into your phone).
Like I said, smartphones are a novelty of our generation, and what is America if not a place to enjoy all the personally harmful things you desire? That’s what the founders were committing treason for, right?
But I’ll give you an out. There’s a game you can play to break this habit, and it might end up benefiting you in more ways than one.
It goes like this: Next time you and your friends go out to dinner, turn up the volume on your phones, place them screen-side down in the middle of the table and then have your meal. If, during the course of the meal, anyone at the table picks up his or her phone, that person pays the bill.
All of it.
So it is on record, this means no text messaging, talking, Googling, tweeting, Snapchatting and, for the benefit of all, no Instagramming the meal. With that final rule alone, the social implications of this game reach much further than the dinner table, as throngs of us will rejoice for not knowing what you just ate for once.
Of course, if the game’s losers say they are unable to pay, worry not: Clearly they have other friends important enough to lend them money for having ignored your company.
Hopefully, however, the gravity of this game will sink in early on, and everyone will take it so seriously that they, through the archaic art of dialogue, will find themselves taken away by the stimulating effects of person-to-person interaction.
I’m no enemy of the digital world. But I, along with potential employers, significant others and people interested in your well-being, have forgotten what your face looks like. Instead, we talk to phone covers and, frankly, we could do that without you there.
Erik Shell is a junior classical languages and literatures and history major. He can be reached at eshelldbk@gmail.com.
