it really is that damn phone

a tribute to the life we're missing out on

Lately, I’ve been thinking about all the moments that have passed by. Slowly. Quietly. Without notice.

Not because I was deeply fulfilled in the present or really busy at all. But because I was distracted. Head down, thumb scrolling, mind elsewhere.

The small pockets of time that disappear without leaving much of a trace. When what’s meant to be a 10 minute break quickly turns into hours of distraction.

And the saddest part is, it’s not even like I enjoy it, that I come out of it feeling rested and refreshed. Truth be told, it feels like I’m in a trance - I never really notice the time slipping away.

And when it’s over, I couldn’t really tell you much of what I just consumed. I’m unable to recount a single video that justified the amount of time I spent.

It’s not that I chose those hours. They just disappeared.

I can pinpoint the moment this all started. The moment I stopped reaching for my books and started reaching for a screen.

When I was thirteen, I got my first tablet. It was a gift from my parents because I was doing well in school, one they thought would help with my homework, that would make me more productive.

What I didn’t realise then was that it was the means to an end. This was the first time in my life I had unrestricted access to the internet.

I discovered the world of YouTube and got hooked, spending hours watching all my favourite creators and falling in love with the art of storytelling.

But the ugly truth: it was an addiction. It would pull me away from my homework, keep me up at night and drastically impact my sleep. It fuelled my procrastination, so much so that I would be up at 4am the day of a test, frantically cramming so that I wouldn’t fail.

I was still a high achiever, a perfectionist, and this was a tool used for my demise. A seemingly harmless habit - just one more video, one more recommended clip - until suddenly, it wasn’t.

Then lockdown hit, and TikTok arrived, right on cue. I was one of the few who tried to resist at first, citing that I didn’t need another addiction, another form of mindless content consumption.

But my friends were sending me videos. And I got curious. Wanted to feel involved, to see what everyone was talking about, what I was missing out on.

And at first, I was unimpressed. None of the videos made sense. Nothing about it made me laugh, made me want to keep staying on the app.

But then one day, it clicked. The algorithm got eerily specific, and I was hooked.

Hours passed by without me noticing. I’d sit on my bed and scroll until my eyes hurt, until the algorithm knew me better than I knew myself.

I stopped eating meals without a screen in front of me. Silence became uncomfortable, something I looked to fill. Stillness became unbearable.

Somehow, rest turned into another form of stimulation.

And I didn’t even realise what my life was becoming, because everyone was doing the same thing. We all had nowhere to be, no one to see. It was just us at home with our screens, and somehow that left us feeling connected. Left us feeling like we had a sense of community, even though it wasn’t real.

Now as an adult, I wouldn’t say my phone has impacted too much of my day to day functionality - the obvious parts like work or sleep, despite the occasional late night where I’ve fallen victim to doom scrolling.

But what it does steal is arguably far more important; the unfilled moments in between which are reserved for myself. Quiet mornings. Moments of self care.

The gaps between tasks, when I say I’m going to meditate. Read. Paint. Write. Have a quiet night in.

When I do have a moment of peace, a moment in between the constants of day to day life, I find myself instinctively reaching for my phone.

Not sitting with my thoughts, or giving my brain the time and space it needs to breathe. I’m constantly on the hunt for a mindless distraction, reaching for a screen without thinking, even when there’s nothing I’m really searching for.

I may remember when this all started, but I don’t remember when it started to become the default.

Any moment that asked me to be still, I filled.

Somewhere along the way, it stopped being a choice and started feeling like muscle memory - an instinct I didn’t realise I was training until it had already settled in and made itself at home.

Maybe I’m trying to run away from something. Maybe I’m scared to be alone with my own thoughts.

Or myself I’ve just adapted over time to fill every moment of silence.

The average adult spends between 4-6 hours a day on their phones. It’s an ugly truth, how much time we waste.

When you break it down, that’s roughly five hours a day, on top of the eight hours spent working, two hours commuting, and six to eight hours of sleep we get per night.

Which means that any spare second we have, we’re scrolling.

And I guess five hours doesn’t feel dramatic in isolation. It can be chalked up to a bad day, a bad week, even a bad month.

I work hard, so surely I’m allowed to take some time to rest and relax.

Unless you actively try and quantify the problem, it can feel like checking a few things here and there. Spending a few minutes after work winding down.

Until it’s not. Until it becomes an obsession, consuming hours of your time.

Five hours a day is over seventy-five days a year.

That’s more than two months of our life a year, spent staring at a screen.

And if we think about that over 20 years? Over two full years.

Two years of mornings that could have been slower. Of books we could have read, conversations we could have had, memories we could have made.

I don’t think we realise just how much of life can pass by in fragments. When it’s broken down to minutes or hours on a screen, you don’t see how quickly this can add up to months and even years.

When I think of the times I reach for my phone, a lot of it is when I’m putting something off. Procrastinating on something I know I need to do - working out or writing or going outside or cleaning.

Starting one of the three new hobbies I told myself I’d get back into.

A lot of my problems can also be attributed to my phone: Brain fog? Phone. Constant comparison? Phone. Never quite feeling truly at peace? Phone. No time to do anything? Because I’ve spent too long scrolling on my phone.

It’s not just the time it takes, it’s what it has replaced.

The version of me that used to sit curled up on my couch with a book for so long that I needed to physically tear myself away. The version of me that used to ponder a problem long enough to understand it. The version of me that lay on my bed and stared at the ceiling, letting my thoughts wander into somewhere unexpected.

The second any feeling becomes even slightly inconvenient - boredom, sadness, uncertainty, I reach for something to drown it out.

Our phones have become the default response to being alive.

And isn’t that a sad reality?

It’s so subtle that we barely notice what’s happening. Because in the moment, it may not feel like we’re losing anything - it just feels like something to do.

But I think we can all feel it in the way our attention breaks more easily now. How hard it has become to do the things we once loved.

Now, it’s simply a struggle to read a book without having our phones by our side. To write without the urge to switch tabs. To watch a movie without splitting our attention across two screens.

And honestly… I think we’re all tired. The mental clutter is high. We’re stressed and exhausted and over stimulated, and our minds need a break.

The moments I feel lighter, more blissful, at peace with myself, are those where I forget my phone exists. When I’m sitting on the train without music, staring into the distance. Laughing with my friends.

Before I jolt and the reflect kicks in. Before the itch appears and the urge to scratch it magnifies.

Once the thought surfaces, it’s hard to ignore.

But I don’t want to spend my whole life living through the screen. I don’t want to be ninety-five and on my deathbed wishing I’d done more of the things I wanted to, that I could go back in time and actually live my life instead of comparing it to someone else’s.

Instead of living through someone else’s.

I want to live in the present. I want to fall back in love with my hobbies. I want to find different ways to decompress, to recapture my attention.

And this alone is enough to make me want to take action.

Lately, I’ve been making a conscious effort to be present in the moment. To put my phone away and use it as the tool it was meant to be.

Not a detox. Not a dramatic declaration. Not an extreme of one thing or the other - but rather small, intentional moments of presence.

It’s uncomfortable and challenging and at times I feel myself wanting to crawl out of my skin, to curb the insatiable boredom I feel.

But how lucky am I to have those moments of boredom? To have moments of rest and relaxation that I get to just sit with.

And I think the important thing is knowing that we will have bad days, we will have days where we rebound and spend hours scrolling, where we feel terrible after and need to start all over again.

But perhaps that’s the point. Because at the same time, I can feel it getting easier, more manageable day by day.

Maybe this piece isn’t really about our phones at all, but an ode to the life that slipped past us while we were all looking down. Maybe the life we’re missing out on isn’t fully gone, it’s just waiting patiently on the other side of the screen.