Hi friends and strangers, please interact with me, not your mobile device

Phone addiction has spread far and wide. I see it amongst my friends, my family, my colleagues, my students, strangers. Really, everywhere. Not everyone, yet, but I'm getting worried. I am an educational technologist. I love technology. I am writing on my laptop while listening to Spotify remote streaming to my TV. But, things go awry when it interrupts our ability to love and interact with each other.

I feel like maybe we're on a pendulum ride that has swung way over to one side, and we'll swing back a bit. I hope so, because I'm not loving blind compulsion to "interact" with our devices. We should control devices, and not the other way around.

This video spoke to me so clearly in exhibiting this phenomenon. I hope you take 2 minutes and 11 seconds of dedicated (no multitasking) to watch it. It's sad in some ways, but so spot on.