Home Alone: The Lies That Tie Us to Our Phone

By: American Decency Staff

 

One of the most common conflicts in homes today is triggered by a smartphone. Someone in most homes has cultivated the habit of disconnecting from others in the room and constantly checking his phone. In fact, if you’re around long enough, it feels less like a habit and more like a right or basic need — air, food, sleep, and Facebook.

I’ve been that person in our home, and am making serious effort to change.

The message we’re really sending while sending one more quick text is: Better to be away from the family — the spouse, the children, the roommate, the guest — and at home with the phone. As Sherry Turkle has observed, our phones now present the potential to be with someone, but always somewhere else as well (Alone Together, 152). To constantly check our phone, then, is to put up an away message and declare that we’re not really there. We’re home together, yet home alone.

The same device that connects us with people all over the world alienates us from those just across the room. It’s the in-home home-wrecker. The trade-offs are pretty silly when we stop and look up long enough to weigh them. We trade the needs in front of us, the meaningful conversation with our spouse or children, the opportunity to truly know and be known, and for what?

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