I get out of bed and yell at Alexa a few times to turn on NPR. I turn on the shower. As it warms up, I check Slack to see if there’s anything I need to attend to as the East Coast wakes up. When I get out of the shower, the radio’s playing something interesting, so while I’m standing there in my towel, I look it up online and tweet it.
I’m checking out at the grocery store and I’m checking email. I’m getting into the car to drive home and I’m texting my friend an inside joke. I’m five minutes from home and I’m checking in with my boyfriend. I’m back at home with a beer and sitting in the backyard and “relaxing” by reading the internet and tweeting and finalizing edits on a piece. I’m texting my mom instead of calling her. I’m posting a dog walk photo to Instagram and wondering if I’ve posted too many dog photos lately.
We know this. We know our phones suck. We even know the apps on them were engineered to be addictive. We know that the utopian promises of technology—to make work more efficient, to make connections stronger, to make photos better and more shareable, to make the news more accessible, to make communication easier—have in fact createdPart of the problem is that these digital technologies, from cell phones to Apple Watches, from Instagram to Slack, encourage our worst habits.
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