Scrolling Phone Quotes

For all we know, this”—he scrolled up on the phone screen to find a label—“this Wikipedia information database here is compiled by complete idiots.

Back in Georgie's attic, he yanks the phone out of the socket and begins scrolling down the names under dialed calls, praying to anyone who will listen. God. Baby Jesus. Saint Thomas the doubter. Saint Whoever, patron saint of losers. Praying, Please, please, don't let it be true. The first name shatters him. The second makes his head spin.

The way you are self-sabotaging: Mindlessly scrolling through social media as a way to pass the time. What your subconscious mind might want you to know: This is one of the easiest ways to numb yourself, because it is so accessible and addictive. There is a world-altering difference between using social media in a healthy way versus as a coping mechanism. Mostly, it has to do with how you feel after you’re finished. If you don’t put the phone down feeling inspired or relaxed, you’re probably trying to avoid some kind of discomfort within yourself—the very discomfort that just might be telling you that you need to change.

I’m…pretty sure I’m in love with Travis,” My eyes still focused on the pavement, I handed Travis his phone, and then reluctantly peered up at his expression. A combination of confusion, shock, and adoration scrolled across his face. He scanned my face with careful hope in his eyes. “You love me?” “It’s the tattoos,” I shrugged. A wide smile stretched across his face, making his dimple sink into his cheek. “Come home with me,” he said, enveloping me in his arms. My eyebrows shot up. “You said all that to get me in bed? I must have made quite an impression.” “The only thing I’m thinking about right now is holding you in my arms all night.” “Let’s go,” I smiled.

An incomplete list: No more diving into pools of chlorinated water lit green from below. No more ball games played out under floodlights. No more porch lights with moths fluttering on summer nights. No more trains running under the surface of cities on the dazzling power of the electric third rail. No more cities. No more films, except rarely, except with a generator drowning out half the dialogue, and only then for the first little while until the fuel for the generators ran out, because automobile gas goes stale after two or three years. Aviation gas lasts longer, but it was difficult to come by. No more screens shining in the half-light as people raise their phones above the crowd to take pictures of concert states. No more concert stages lit by candy-colored halogens, no more electronica, punk, electric guitars. No more pharmaceuticals. No more certainty of surviving a scratch on one's hand, a cut on a finger while chopping vegetables for dinner, a dog bite. No more flight. No more towns glimpsed from the sky through airplane windows, points of glimmering light; no more looking down from thirty thousand feet and imagining the lives lit up by those lights at that moment. No more airplanes, no more requests to put your tray table in its upright and locked position – but no, this wasn't true, there were still airplanes here and there. They stood dormant on runways and in hangars. They collected snow on their wings. In the cold months, they were ideal for food storage. In summer the ones near orchards were filled with trays of fruit that dehydrated in the heat. Teenagers snuck into them to have sex. Rust blossomed and streaked. No more countries, all borders unmanned. No more fire departments, no more police. No more road maintenance or garbage pickup. No more spacecraft rising up from Cape Canaveral, from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, from Vandenburg, Plesetsk, Tanegashima, burning paths through the atmosphere into space. No more Internet. No more social media, no more scrolling through litanies of dreams and nervous hopes and photographs of lunches, cries for help and expressions of contentment and relationship-status updates with heart icons whole or broken, plans to meet up later, pleas, complaints, desires, pictures of babies dressed as bears or peppers for Halloween. No more reading and commenting on the lives of others, and in so doing, feeling slightly less alone in the room. No more avatars.

It's not that you have lost touch with these people. You haven't. It's just that they have kept in such close touch with each other. When scrolling through your cell phone, you generally let their numbers be highlighted for a second, hovering, and then move along to people you have spoken to within the last month. It's not that you're a bad friend to these people. It's just that you're not a great one. They know the names of each other's coworkers and the blow-by-blow nature of each other's dramas; they go camping in the Berkshires together and have such sentences in their conversational arsenal as "you left your lip gloss in my bathroom." You have no such sentences. Your connection to your friends is half-baked and you are starting to forget their siblings' names, never mind their coworkers. But you're still in the play even if you're no longer a main character.

Wait.” I looked around. “How did you get here?” “I ran.” I reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. Scrolling through his menu, I said, “You called a cab.” “But I ran to the cab when it got to the cemetery.

There’s a lot of repetition in my life. No real routine or narrative, just a lot of repetition, and before I know it, I’m sitting in the break room drinking a cup of coffee (it doesn’t taste good) and staring at my phone again, scrolling, waiting for the motivation to get up and go to my desk.

Most of us would rather read a book than stare at our phones, but we’re so tired that mindless scrolling is all we have energy to do.

The phone in my hand buzzed, demanding my attention, and a text flashed on the screen. It was from Cletus and the sight made my heart lurch and twist, a pining ache stealing my breath. As I scrolled through my notifications, I noticed several texts. Cletus: I’m sorry. I was wrong, you were right. Cletus: I just realized you probably don’t have your phone. Cletus: I think I’m going to make myself useful by retrieving your phone. Cletus: I just left your parents’ house. I have your phone. Cletus: Clearly I had your phone, if you’re reading these messages.

Do you have her phone number?” Aline asked. “In case we get separated, or something?

As I brush my teeth, I scroll through my phone to see if Sabrina texted when my phone was on silent last night. She didn’t. Damn. I was hoping my speech—and that amazing fucking kiss—might’ve changed her mind about going out with me, but I guess it didn’t. I do, however, find the most mind-boggling conversation in the group chat I have with my roommates. All the messages are from last night, and they’re bizarre as fuck. Garrett: The hells, D?! Dean: It’s not what you think!! Logan: It’s hard to mistake ur romantic bath with that giant pink thing! In ur ass! Dean: It wasn’t in my ass! Garrett: I’m not even going to ask where it was Dean: I had a girl over! Garrett: Suuuuuuuuure Logan: Suuuuuuuuure Dean: I hate you guys Garrett: <3 Logan: <3 I rinse my mouth out, spit, and drop the toothbrush into the little cup on the sink. Then I quickly type out a text. Me: Wait… what did I miss? Since we have practice in twenty minutes, the guys are already awake and clearly on their phones. Two photos pop up simultaneously. Garrett and Logan have both sent me pics of pink dildos. I’m even more confused now. Dean messages immediately with, Why do you guys have dildo pics handy? Logan: ALINIMB Dean: ?? Me: ?? Garrett: At Least It’s Not In My Butt. I snort to myself, because I’m starting to piece it together. Logan: Nice, G! U got that on the first try! Garrett: We spend too much time 2gether. Me: PLEASE tell me u caught D playing w/ dildos. Logan: Sure did. Dean is quick to object again. I HAD A GIRL OVER! The guys and I rag on him for a couple more minutes, but I have to stop when Fitzy stumbles into the bathroom and shoves me aside. He’s got crazy bedhead and he’s buck-naked. “Gotta piss,” he mumbles. “Mornin’, sunshine,” I say cheerfully. “Want me to make you some coffee?” “God. Yes. Please.” Chuckling, I duck out of the bathroom and walk the four or so steps into his kitchenette. When he finally emerges, I shove a cup of coffee in his hand, sip my own, and say, “Dean shoved a dildo up his ass last night.” Fitzy nods. “Makes sense.” I snicker mid-sip. Coffee spills over the rim of my cup. “It really does, huh?

I missed whole days huddling in my bed, scrolling through my phone without pleasure or intent, locked into its repetition as a safeguard.

Be nice to Helen Blackthorn," Alec said urgently. "You don't have to like her, but don't treat her differently from any other Shadowhunter." Aline blinked. "I wasn't planning on it. Of course she's . . . a colleague. I will treat her in a professional fashion. That was my plan on how to treat her. With a calm professionalism." "Good," said Alec. "Do you have her phone number?" Aline asked. "In case we get separated, or something?" "I don't," said Alec. In the weapon's room, Helen came toward them, her arms full of seraph blades, her fair hair curling around her ears. Aline made a sighing sound.

Her phone beeps and she pulls it out again. She frowns. I give her a side-eye. “Everything all right?” She scrolls through her email. “Earth to Gail?” Nothing. “Gail Morgan O’Sullivan.” “What? Oh!” She shoves her phone into her back pocket. “Sorry, sorry. Do you ever feel like you’re forgetting something?” “My underwear. All the time,” I say with dead seriousness. “Sometimes I give myself a wedgie just to make sure I have them on.

Luke pulled up photos on his phone. Lots of them. Falk scrolled through with the polite forbearance of the childless.

Scrolling on his phone passed the time as he fought to tamp down the swelling tide of memories and miseries.

Um, Jace, can I ask you something? If you want something to happen, and you feel like it could but maybe the other person is waiting for you to give a signal that you're ready - that you're maybe ready - no, that you're definitely ready, maybe, what should you do? In this hypothetical scenario." There was a pause. "Hmm," said Jace. "Good question. I'm glad you came to me with this. I think you should go ahead and give a signal." "Great," said Alec. "Yes, that's what I was wondering. Thanks, Jace." "Hard to work out signals on the phone," Jace said thoughtfully. "I'll think about various signals and show you when you get home. Like, one signal is for 'there is a demon creeping up behind you and you should stab it,' right? But there should be a different signal for if a demon is creeping up behind you, but I have it in my sights. That just makes sense." There was another silence.

I wait in front of the stadium, scrolling through Facebook on my cell phone. I swear if one more of my high school friends posts pictures of their lunch, kids, or dogs, I'm going on a spree reporting everyone as spam.

For example: 1.  I will wake up at 7 a.m. every day. 2.  I will journal every evening before bed instead of scrolling through my phone. 3.  I will exercise every morning, whether that’s a walk, a stretch, or a HIIT class. Continue to incorporate more and more healthy habits when you feel you are able to (don’t overwhelm yourself with too many at once).

Stop waiting for something to happen. Stop waiting for someone to save you. Stop waiting for answers. Stop waiting for love. Stop waiting for the right moment, for the right situation. Stop waiting for relief. Stop waiting for clarity. To bring this to a practical level, how many times do you find yourself scrolling through your phone aimlessly, waiting for something to happen? Or spending every moment you’re not working, studying, or doing whatever it is that you do, in texting, calling others, watching a show, and so forth? And it all feels like the feeling you get when you’re continuously eating but not getting nourished. You’re ingesting so much that it overwhelms you, but you still feel empty. This happens when you’re subconsciously waiting for something to happen that will take you out of the situation you’re in, whatever that situation is.

I scroll through iPhone photos and see that if I delete pictures of myself with a double chin, I will erase all proof of my glorious life.

There are those who insist they are far too busy to read and who instead spend their time watching Netflix and scrolling social media on their iPhones or Androids.

I reached into my purse for my phone and scrolled to the last text my father had sent me, two days ago. Are you busy?

You’ve both got that sweet Hotbox sheen. Looks better on the two of you than the last pair. By the way, one of them is . . .” He swipes his thumb across his throat, indicating that the kid quit, and not that he actually offed himself. I hope. “Another one?” Grace murmurs. He leans back against the door, one foot propped up, scrolling through his phone. The propped-up foot puts his knee in my space, mere centimeters from mine. It’s like he’s purposely trying to crowd me. “This job weeds out the weak, Gracie. They should flash their photos over the teepees in the fake starry sky in Jay’s Wing.

I scroll through my own stories in my phone, the ones I write when I can't sleep, when I think about her, about what the fuck happened, when I make like Alvy Singer and try to correct it all with my imagination.

Practicing law in a general practice litigation firm can quickly sap an attorney’s enthusiasm for life as well as their inner will to pursue their line of trade that they invested years of schooling qualifying to perform. In phone calls, an attorney listens to clients scream, cry, and curse, make wild accusations, and threatening to harm other people. Because the client is paying the firm, they feel entitled to act obscenely.

Any time your circumstances start to feel all-consuming, I suggest you try going in the other direction—toward the small. Look for something that’ll help rearrange your thoughts, a pocket of contentedness where you can live for a while. And by this I don’t mean sitting passively in front of your television or scrolling through your phone. Find something that’s active, something that asks for your mind but uses your body as well. Immerse yourself in a process. And forgive yourself for temporarily ducking out of the storm.

And then my breathing quickens, and my head swims, and I know I’m on the verge of an anxiety attack, so I double back to my apartment and curl up on my bed and whip out my phone for another hour of doom-scrolling, because that is paradoxically the only thing that calms things down.

She felt lonely and pathetic, but she knew that all across the city there were girls just like her who had spent their Saturday nights waiting for something to happen, nursing a drink or reading a paperback in a coffee shop or scrolling endlessly on their phones, alone and biding their time until their real life would begin.

If at all feasible, allow yourself to do whatever you’re doing to the exclusion of everything else. If you’re on the phone, don’t scroll through social media at the same time. If you’re making breakfast, don’t also work on your to-do list for the day. By doing one thing at a time, your concentration “muscle” will become incredibly

The Pascal of our generation puts it this way: “We run away like conscientious little bugs, scared rabbits, dancing attendance on our machines, our slaves, our masters”—clicking, scrolling, tapping, liking, sharing . . . anything. “We think we want peace and silence and freedom and leisure, but deep down we know that this would be unendurable to us.” In fact, “we want to complexify our lives. We don’t have to, we want to. We want to be harried and hassled and busy. Unconsciously, we want the very thing we complain about. For if we had leisure, we would look at ourselves and listen to our hearts and see the great gaping hole in our hearts and be terrified, because that hole is so big that nothing but God can fill it.”12

A finger touches my pinkie. My eyes pop open and my head snaps toward Jeremy. My body is tense once again, but my hands have stopped moving. What the hell is he doing? The video call on his phone has ended, now he’s scrolling through social media. Despite not looking at me and appearing completely oblivious to what is happening in my head, he hooks his finger around mine. He mutters something I don’t hear over the music in my ears but looks like ‘I’ve got you.

Jobs spent part of every day for six months helping to refine the display. “It was the most complex fun I’ve ever had,” he recalled. “It was like being the one evolving the variations on ‘Sgt. Pepper.’ ” A lot of features that seem simple now were the result of creative brainstorms. For example, the team worried about how to prevent the device from playing music or making a call accidentally when it was jangling in your pocket. Jobs was congenitally averse to having on-off switches, which he deemed “inelegant.” The solution was “Swipe to Open,” the simple and fun on-screen slider that activated the device when it had gone dormant. Another breakthrough was the sensor that figured out when you put the phone to your ear, so that your lobes didn’t accidentally activate some function. And of course the icons came in his favorite shape, the primitive he made Bill Atkinson design into the software of the first Macintosh: rounded rectangles. In session after session, with Jobs immersed in every detail, the team members figured out ways to simplify what other phones made complicated. They added a big bar to guide you in putting calls on hold or making conference calls, found easy ways to navigate through email, and created icons you could scroll through horizontally to get to different apps—all of which were easier because they could be used visually on the screen rather than by using a keyboard built into the hardware.

During the late nights, when my eyes are a little sunken, and heart is a little full. When my brain is a little poetic, and soul is a little dull. I pull, my phone and scroll, the Instagram. At that moment I feel how I, don't belong. Not to this. Not to this, which is everything perfect and everything bliss. The uphill battle, the tough grind, the donkey work- we all do. and we all want to decline. We end up opening Instagram, to put up a false pretty ME, and a fake perfect AM

Maybe you can imagine this in your own life. We no longer look at the sun but at our phones to see what kind of time has passed. We don't look out of our cells but at our cell, flipping to a social media stream and scrolling through what our friends are doing. While we scroll, we develop a resentment that our lives are less fun and fulfilling than the lives of our friends. The here and now, the people who are around and present, pale in front of the manicured and curated versions of another person's life. We begin to wonder, like Evagrius, if we have lost the love of our friends, and we begin to believe that there is "none to comfort" us. So we fill our evenings with overeating, because it feels comforting, or binge-watching our favorite show, because we are so tired that we just need to "relax." We split our attention between the screen of the television and the screen of our phones. Indeed, one of the most effective ways to avoid the gnawing questions of meaning is by staying busy enough to avoid them. A constant flow of information and distraction turns the mind and the heart away from the abyss of asking why. Why do we worry about tomorrow? Why do we toil and reap? What is the treasure of great price that all our lives are working toward? When we do pause between activities, we try to fill the void. We forget that we are more than our work or the things that we produce. Our busyness represents a profound loss of freedom, and one that occurs through a gradual winnowing away of what it means to be human. We replace that it means to be a person with a shallowness of activity

AN INCOMPLETE LIST: No more diving into pools of chlorinated water lit green from below. No more ball games played out under floodlights. No more porch lights with moths fluttering on summer nights. No more trains running under the surface of cities on the dazzling power of the electric third rail. No more cities. No more films, except rarely, except with a generator drowning out half the dialogue, and only then for the first little while until the fuel for the generators ran out, because automobile gas goes stale after two or three years. Aviation gas lasts longer, but it was difficult to come by. No more screens shining in the half-light as people raise their phones above the crowd to take photographs of concert stages. No more concert stages lit by candy-colored halogens, no more electronica, punk, electric guitars. No more pharmaceuticals. No more certainty of surviving a scratch on one’s hand, a cut on a finger while chopping vegetables for dinner, a dog bite. No more flight. No more towns glimpsed from the sky through airplane windows, points of glimmering light; no more looking down from thirty thousand feet and imagining the lives lit up by those lights at that moment. No more airplanes, no more requests to put your tray table in its upright and locked position—but no, this wasn’t true, there were still airplanes here and there. They stood dormant on runways and in hangars. They collected snow on their wings. In the cold months, they were ideal for food storage. In summer the ones near orchards were filled with trays of fruit that dehydrated in the heat. Teenagers snuck into them to have sex. Rust blossomed and streaked. No more countries, all borders unmanned. No more fire departments, no more police. No more road maintenance or garbage pickup. No more spacecraft rising up from Cape Canaveral, from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, from Vandenburg, Plesetsk, Tanegashima, burning paths through the atmosphere into space. No more Internet. No more social media, no more scrolling through litanies of dreams and nervous hopes and photographs of lunches, cries for help and expressions of contentment and relationship-status updates with heart icons whole or broken, plans to meet up later, pleas, complaints, desires, pictures of babies dressed as bears or peppers for Halloween. No more reading and commenting on the lives of others, and in so doing, feeling slightly less alone in the room. No more avatars.

While I'm in the shop, I dream of all the things I could be doing if I were at home, cleaning my flat, reading the stack of unread books by my bed, cracking on with the poem I'd started back in September, but when my days off come around, I waste them in bed on my phone, scrolling and scrolling and scrolling, and stalking Eli's girlfriend. I'd planned to start writing something that I'd been thinking about for a while, something about my mother, but everything feels soupy, my body a great weight I have to drag around my flat. I never have the energy when I have the time and I never have the time when I have the energy.

Kingsley’s phone begins to ring, and her ringtone almost makes me grin. It has Lake and Falcon chuckling. ‘It’s your daddy calling, and you know he’s gonna chew your ear off. It’s your daddy calling, all you’re gonna hear is blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.’ “Hey, Dad,” she answers. “No, we came back early.” She smiles. “Yeah, it was okay.” She leans back against the couch and catches me watching her. I glance away as she continues, “No, nothing happened. We just felt like coming back before the other students.” After a short silence, she quickly rambles, “Someone’s knocking at the door. Gotta go. Love you, Dad.” She hangs up and pulls a worried face at the phone. “That was close.” “You’re not telling your father about the avalanche?” I ask. “There’s no need to worry him about something that’s done and dealt with,” she brushes it off. Changing the subject, Layla asks, “Which ringtone do you have for me?” “Oh!” Instantly the frown vanishes, and Kingsley grins at Layla. “You’re going to love it.” A moment later ‘You are my sunshine,’ comes from the phone. “Aww… thanks, my friend,” Layla coos. Lake leans over the back of the chair. “And me?” Kingsley looks at him from over her shoulder. “Have you heard of Lucas, the spider?” “Yeah.” “You have Lucas.” Kingsley presses play, and then you hear, ‘What you eating? I’m starving.’ “That’s perfect,” Falcon chuckles. “Now I have to hear mine.” “One sec.” Kingsley scrolls to his name and then I let out a bark of laughter. “You have a call from God. Haa-llelujah! Haa-llelujah!” “Badass,” Falcon grins, obviously happy with it. “This is Mason’s.” Kingsley grins mischievously, which tells me I’m not going to like it. Then a butler’s serious voice sounds up, ‘Excuse me, but I’m afraid someone is endeavoring to contact you telephonically. Shall I tell them to fuck off?’ Lake cracks up, disappearing behind the couch which doesn’t help shit seeing as I can hear the fucker laughing his ass off.

A smartphone allows you to choose your own adventure. So be a hero, not a villain. Don’t be your own worst enemy. No wasting time… No training your brain not to remember things, losing the skills necessary to read a fucking map… No trolling. Don’t make snarky remarks on comment threads or internet forums or social media. Just do good. Help others. If you’re out in the world and bored, which you shouldn’t be anyway, but still, if you feel like you need to get on your phone, be useful. Answer questions, offer advice. Look only for question marks when you scroll through your Facebook news feed. Log on to Reddit and comment on something you have firsthand knowledge of and real insight about. Give far more than you take. Never text and walk. And stop googling things as you think of them. Instead, write it down and look it up later. If you can’t remember to do this, then you didn’t deserve to know the answer. This will keep your mind active, agile; clear to really think. It will keep you sharp. Using the internet for information or socialization should be an activity, something you sit down for—it should not be used while out and about. You should not refuse the beauty of what’s in front of you for mere pixels of red, green, blue on a 3.5-inch screen. Otherwise, you’ll lose yourself. An abyss of ones and zeros will swallow you whole. Don’t be a dumb motherfucker with a smartass phone.

Do you know how long I was waiting at the airport? Assuming someone in my family would come and get me? Looking at all the cars driving past, and none of them for me?” - J.J. “Uh . . . ,” Rodney said. “Did you tell anyone to pick you up at the airport?” “Of course I did!” J.J. exploded. “Do you think I would have just . . . just . . .” He trailed off, his expression changing from angry to thoughtful. “Actually, let me check one thing,” he said, pulling his phone out of his pocket and scrolling through it. “Huh,” he said after a moment. “You know, looks like that e-mail never made it out of drafts. Whoopsie.” He put his phone back in his pocket. “So hi!” He strode over to us, now smiling. “How’s it going, family?

He was quiet as he pulled out his phone and began typing something in. I watched as he searched feminine products, and boxes of tampons, pads, and liners came up in various sizes and brands. “Fucking hell… why are there so many flavours?” I stilled on the spot, my eyes going wide as I stared at him, wondering if I heard him correctly. “I beg your pardon?” “Look here!” He held up his phone, showing a picture of a box marked green for small. “I think this means mint or lime… there’s also yellow. Is that lemon? Or do you want oranges?” He scrolled through, looking at the different sizes, and it took literally every ounce of self-control I had to not burst into laughter as he continued his search. “What flavour should I ask for, love?

I drop the phone in my lap and stare at him. “What?” he asks. “Who are you? I mean . . . you have hundreds of comments in a matter of seconds about milk-shake man and his wife.” “What are people saying?” I check again. The numbers are already way up. “Really nice things.” I scroll and hardly know what to read aloud, because the sheer volume of comments is overwhelming. I read, “‘I’ve always wanted to do something like this. Good for them. Hope they rock it out.’ Lots like that. Someone wants to know the name of the store and when they’ll be opening. Another person says . . .” I squint and then giggle. “She says that the milk-shake dude is crazy hot, and she’s single, in case his wife ends up hating milk-shake life and runs off to Barbados with the ice-cream delivery boy.” “Well, that would be a sad ending to an otherwise inspiring story.

Maybe that’s his game, though,” I said. “The hunt for one soul, again and again.” “Then why are you still here?” “The other women lived with him for a long time too. Maybe he wants to wait until my defenses are down, and then-“ “Wow, Clea, you are so jaded. You found your soulmate. People wait their whole lives for this. It’s the most amazing thing in the world, and it’s happened to you. Can’t you just accept it and be happy?” What she said made sense, but… I flopped back on the bed and stared at the ceiling. Without looking at Rayna, I said, “He doesn’t act like he’s my soulmate. Sometimes I think maybe he liked the other women more. I think maybe he wishes I was one of them.” Rayna was silent. This was something I’d never heard. “This is seriously, deep,” she finally said. “You’re feeling insecure because you’re jealous…of yourself.” “I didn’t say I was jealous…” “You’d rather think he’s a serial killer than risk being with him and finding out he doesn’t like you as much as he liked…you?” She scrunched her brow and thought, then tried again. “Yous? Anyway, you know what I mean-the other yous.” “Forget the jealousy thing, okay? There are other reasons to doubt him too. Ben doesn’t trust him at all. He thinks Sage is some kind of demon. He said there’s a spirit called an incubus that comes to women in their sleep, and-“ “Of course Ben said that.” Rayna shrugged. “He’s jealous.” “Of what?” “Ben’s crazy in love with you, Clea. I’ve been saying that forever!” “And I’ve been ignoring you forever, because it’s not true. You just want it to be true because it’s romantic.” “Did you not see the pictures of you from Rio?” I narrowed my eyes. “What are you talking about?” Rayna pulled out her phone. “Honestly, I don’t know how you survive without Google Alerts on yourself. The paparazzi were out in full force for Carnival.” She played with the phone for a minute, then handed it to me. It showed a close-up of Ben and me at the Sambadrome that could only have been taken with a serious zoom. I felt violated. “I hate this,” I muttered. “Why? You look cute!” “I hate that people are sneaking around taking pictures of me!” “I know you do. Ignore that for the moment. Just scroll through.” There were five pictures of Ben and me. Four of them were moments I vividly remembered, pictures of the two of us facing each other, laughing as we did our best to imitate the dancers shimmying and strutting down the parade route. The fifth one I didn’t remember. I wouldn’t have; in it I had my camera up to my face and was concentrating on lining up the perfect shot. Ben stood behind me, but he wasn’t wearing the goofy smile he’d had in the other pictures. He was staring right at me with those big puppydog eyes, and his smile wasn’t goofy at all, but… “Uh-huh,” Rayna said triumphantly. She had climbed into my bed was looking at the picture over my shoulder. “Knew that one would stop you. There is only one word for the look on that boy’s face, Clea: love-struck. Which is probably why a bunch of websites are reporting he’s about to propose.” “What?” “Messenger. Don’t kill the messenger.” I looked back at the picture. Ben did look love-struck. Very love-struck. “It could just be the picture,” I said. “They caught him at a weird moment.” “Yeah, a weird moment when he thought no one was looking so he showed how he really felt.” I gave Rayna back the phone and shook my head. “Ben and I are like brother and sister. That’s gross.” “Hey, I read Flowers in the Attic. It was kind of hot.” “Shut up!” I laughed. “I’m just saying, think about it. Really think about it. Is it that hard to believe that Ben’s in love with you?

As she’s scrolling through her feed, a picture from the ski trip pops up. Haven’s in the Charlottesville Youth Orchestra, so she knows people from a lot of different schools, including mine. I can’t help but sigh a little when I see it--a picture of a bunch of us on the bus the last morning. Peter has his arm around me, he’s whispering something in my ear. I wish I remembered what. All surprised, Haven looks up and says, “Oh, hey, that’s you, Lara Jean. What’s this from?” “The school ski trip.” “Is that your boyfriend?” Haven asks me, and I can tell she’s impressed and trying not to show it. I wish I could say yes. But-- Kitty scampers over to us and looks over our shoulders. “Yes, and he’s the hottest guy you’ve ever seen in your life, Haven.” She says it like a challenge. Margot, who was scrolling on her phone, looks up and giggles. “Well, that’s not exactly true,” I hedge. I mean, he’s the hottest guy I’ve ever seen in my life, but I don’t know what kind of people Haven goes to school with. “No, Kitty’s right, he’s hot,” Haven admits. “Like, how did you get him? No offense. I just thought you were the non-dating type.” I frown. The non-dating type? What kind of type is that? A little mushroom who sits at home in a semidark room growing moss?

Consider the average worker in almost any urban industrialized city. The alarm rings at six forty-five and our workingman or -woman is up and at it. Check the phone. Shower. Dress in the professional uniform—suits for some, coveralls for others, scrubs for the medical professionals, jeans and T-shirts for construction workers. Breakfast, if there’s time. Grab commuter mug and briefcase (or lunch box). Hop in the car for the daily punishment called rush hour or get on a bus or train packed crushingly tight. On the job from nine to five (or longer). Deal with the boss. Deal with the coworker sent by the devil to rub you the wrong way. Deal with suppliers. Deal with clients/customers/patients. E-mails pile up. Act busy. Scroll through social media feeds. Hide mistakes. Smile when handed impossible deadlines. Give a sigh of relief when the ax known as “restructuring” or “downsizing”—or just plain getting laid off—falls on other heads. Shoulder the added workload. Watch the clock. Argue with your conscience but agree with the boss. Smile again. Five o’clock. Back in the car or on the bus or train for the evening commute. Home. Act human with your partner, kids, or roommates. Cook. Post a picture of your dinner online. Eat. Watch an episode of your favorite show. Answer one last e-mail. Bed. Eight hours of blessed oblivion—if we’re lucky.

STEP 4: BEWARE OF LIMINAL MOMENTS Liminal moments are transitions from one thing to another throughout our days. Have you ever picked up your phone while waiting for a traffic light to change, then found yourself still looking at your phone while driving? Or opened a tab in your web browser, got annoyed by how long it’s taking to load, and opened up another page while you waited? Or looked at a social media app while walking from one meeting to the next, only to keep scrolling when you got back to your desk? There’s nothing wrong with any of these actions per se. Rather, what’s dangerous is that by doing them “for just a second,” we’re likely to do things we later regret, like getting off track for half an hour or getting into a car accident. A technique I’ve found particularly helpful for dealing with this distraction trap is the “ten-minute rule.” If I find myself wanting to check my phone as a pacification device when I can’t think of anything better to do, I tell myself it’s fine to give in, but not right now. I have to wait just ten minutes. This technique is effective at helping me deal with all sorts of potential distractions, like googling something rather than writing, eating something unhealthy when I’m bored, or watching another episode on Netflix when I’m “too tired to go to bed.” This rule allows time to do what some behavioral psychologists call “surfing the urge.” When an urge takes hold, noticing the sensations and riding them like a wave—neither pushing them away nor acting on them—helps us cope until the feelings subside.

He and Powell would be celebrating their twentieth wedding anniversary a few days later, and he admitted that at times he had not been as appreciative of her as she deserved. “I’m very lucky, because you just don’t know what you’re getting into when you get married,” he said. “You have an intuitive feeling about things. I couldn’t have done better, because not only is Laurene smart and beautiful, she’s turned out to be a really good person.” For a moment he teared up. He talked about his other girlfriends, particularly Tina Redse, but said he ended up in the right place. He also reflected on how selfish and demanding he could be. “Laurene had to deal with that, and also with me being sick,” he said. “I know that living with me is not a bowl of cherries.” Among his selfish traits was that he tended not to remember anniversaries or birthdays. But in this case, he decided to plan a surprise. They had gotten married at the Ahwahnee Hotel in Yosemite, and he decided to take Powell back there on their anniversary. But when Jobs called, the place was fully booked. So he had the hotel approach the people who had reserved the suite where he and Powell had stayed and ask if they would relinquish it. “I offered to pay for another weekend,” Jobs recalled, “and the man was very nice and said, ‘Twenty years, please take it, it’s yours.’” He found the photographs of the wedding, taken by a friend, and had large prints made on thick paper boards and placed in an elegant box. Scrolling through his iPhone, he found the note that he had composed to be included in the box and read it aloud: "We didn’t know much about each other twenty years ago. We were guided by our intuition; you swept me off my feet. It was snowing when we got married at the Ahwahnee. Years passed, kids came, good times, hard times, but never bad times. Our love and respect has endured and grown. We’ve been through so much together and here we are right back where we started 20 years ago—older, wiser—with wrinkles on our faces and hearts. We now know many of life’s joys, sufferings, secrets and wonders and we’re still here together. My feet have never returned to the ground."  By the end of the recitation he was crying uncontrollably. When he composed himself, he noted that he had also made a set of the pictures for each of his kids. “I thought they might like to see that I was young once.

He had a rough idea where he was going, since Rylann had previously mentioned that she lived in Roscoe Village. At the stoplight at Belmont Avenue, he pulled out his cell phone and scrolled through his contacts. The beauty of text messaging, he realized, was in its simplicity. He didn’t have to try to explain things, nor did he have to attempt to parse through all the banter in an attempt to figure out what she might be thinking. Instead, he could keep things short and sweet. I’D LIKE TO SEE YOU. He hit send. To kill time while he waited for her response, he drove in the direction of his sister’s wine shop, figuring he could always drop in and harass Jordan about something. This time, however, she beat him to the punch. “So who’s the brunette bombshell?” Jordan asked as soon as he walked into the shop and took a seat at the main bar. Damn. He’d forgotten about the stupid Scene and Heard column. Kyle helped himself to a cracker and some Brie cheese sitting on the bar. “I’m going to say…Angelina Jolie. Actually, no—Megan Fox.” “Megan Fox is, like, twenty-five.” “And this is a problem why, exactly?” Jordan slapped his hand as he reached for more crackers. “Those are for customers.” She put her hand on her hip. “You know, after reading the Scene and Heard column, I’d kind of hoped it was Rylann they were talking about. And that maybe, just maybe, my ne’er-do-well twin had decided to stop playing around and finally pursue a woman of quality.” He stole another cracker. “Now, that would be something.” She shook her head. “Why do I bother? You know, one day you’re going to wake up and…” Kyle’s cell phone buzzed, and he tuned out the rest of Jordan’s lecture—he could probably repeat the whole thing word for word by now—as he checked the incoming message. It was from Rylann, her response as short and sweet as his original text. 3418 CORNELIA, #3. He had her address. With a smile, he looked up and interrupted his sister. “That’s great, Jordo. Hey, by any chance do you have any bottles of that India Ink cabernet lying around?” She stopped midrant and stared at him. “I’m sure I do. Why, what made you think of that?” Then her face broke into a wide grin. “Wait a second…that was the wine Rylann talked about when she was here. She said it was one of her favorites.” “Did she? Funny coincidence.” Jordan put her hand over her heart. “Oh my God, you’re trying to impress her. That is so cute.” “Don’t be ridiculous,” Kyle scoffed. “I just thought, since I’ve heard such good things about the wine, that I would give it a shot.” Jordan gave him a look, cutting through all the bullshit. “Kyle. She’s going to love it.” Okay, whatever. Maybe he was trying to impress Rylann a little. “You don’t think it’s too much? Like I’m trying too hard?” Jordan put her hand over her heart again. “Oh. It’s like watching Bambi take his first steps.” “Jordo…” he growled warningly. With a smile, she put her hand on his shoulder and squeezed affectionately. “It’s perfect. Trust me.

I don't know about you, but first thing in the morning I lie in bed and scroll through my cell phone. Facebook, Google +, Twitter, email. Those all come first even before brushing my teeth.

While some blame our collective tech addiction on personal failings, like weak willpower, Harris points a finger at the software itself. That itch to glance at our phone is a natural reaction to apps and websites engineered to get us scrolling as frequently as possible. The attention economy, which showers profits on companies that seize our focus, has kicked off what Harris calls a “race to the bottom of the brain stem.” “You could say that it’s my responsibility” to exert self-control when it comes to digital usage, he explains, “but that’s not acknowledging that there’s a thousand people on the other side of the screen whose job is to break down whatever responsibility I can maintain.” In short, we’ve lost control of our relationship with technology because technology has become better at controlling us.

already laid out to get responses from “warm” e-mails. • Live and die by your Subject line. If you don’t, your e-mail may never get read. Focus on your strongest hook, either the contact you have in common or the specific value you have to offer. Make them curious. • Game the timing. There’s a lot of debate about the best time to e-mail, but I personally like to fire away when I think the person is apt to be spending time on e-mailing. Their morning, lunchtime, and the last hours of the workday are typical. • Be brief. Once you’ve written a draft, the “best” version of it is usually 50 percent shorter. Yes, we’re half as interesting as we think! Your e-mail should fit into a single screen. If I have to scroll to get to the point, I’ve already lost interest. • Have a clear call to action. What do you want them to do? Make your first request clear and easy. Request fifteen minutes on the phone, not just a vague phone call. Offer suggested dates and times, not just “a meeting sometime.” Short-circuit the process as much as you can, and don’t make them guess what you’re looking for. • Read it out loud. I had an assistant who would do this with every e-mail she wrote, and it always made me laugh when I caught her in the act. But she was smart. Listening to herself, she ensured that the language was clear and conversational, and she timed it, too, with a forty-five-second limit. • Spell-check. There’s no excuse for poor spelling and grammar in an e-mail. I’ve written two books and have a URL with my name in it, and I still get people e-mailing “Keith Ferazzi” with one “r.” I know you’ll do better.

I remember looking up and into the still-lingering crowd and seeing another person scrolling their phone, stopped in their tracks. And then another, and one or two more. I imagined they were all taking in what I was taking in, even if they weren’t. I wanted, for a moment, to share in this small horror. What a country’s fear of blackness can do while you are inside a room, soaking in joy, being promised that you would make it through.

America stakes a relatively modest claim to world history when compared to other nations. Perhaps this lack of historical longevity partially accounts for why each generation of Americans tends to define themselves based largely upon the flashbulb remembrances that took place during their lifetime. Despite the relative newness of The United States of America emergence as a great power, post-Vietnam Americans display no deeply entwined interest in their national heritage. The battle cries of the American Revolution, the Civil War, and the battle hymns of World War I and World War II seem like ancient relics in the springtime commencement of the digital age. Today’s consumerism society brazenly casted aside the legacy of its predecessors similar to how one would toss away a functionally obsolete toaster, bulky television set, or land phone when the newest and slimmest best thing comes along. It is a fundamental mistake to forget the embryonic stages of America. When a nation’s citizens respect the accomplishments of its ancestors, the populous feels spiritually rooted. Without a clear vision and a unified approach, America will never become the beacon of universal justice.

A multitude of design trends has come and passed over the years, often conditioned by external technology innovations, such as the birth of social media or the first iPhone. From the 90’s guest counters and solitary guestbooks to skeuomorphism, from flat design to parallax scrolling, the core of any good website has always been and will always be the user experience.

My phone rings on my bare thigh as I scroll through my recorded Ellens, and I hit pause to glance at the number. Ah… case in point. My sister has sent me a birthday message along with a picture of a guy who knows her husband’s co-worker’s aunt, and she just knows we are meant to be! She’s ready to set me up with him for this weekend.

Life is so much more than our pity version of reality where we worry about financial wealth, social status, power, and interacting with machines that provide pleasures such as cars, boats, smart phones, and television. Life is limited and ultimate reality – the realm of potential knowledge – is unlimited.

There definitely isn’t a girl like this Embers chick anywhere in Ohio, he playfully thought to himself. It didn't take long before his phone was exploding with text replies, but the grin on his face disappeared as he began to read them. The consensus (to put it in a much more polite way than a group of college football players normally would) was to ask him: ”Are you coming out of the closet, dude?” Taken aback by the bombardment of texts questioning his sexuality, rather than the expected congratulatory replies and requests for more, Zane scrolled through the pictures on his phone, and then his camera –shocked to find these were not the pictures of a stunning raven-haired beauty that he'd taken, but instead image after image of hairy, balding, middle-aged men, wearing Speedos. Confusion turned to horror as he went through dozens, and then hundreds of pictures on his phone. From work, from parties, from Spring Break in Panama City Beach, in every picture, without exception, all girls had been replaced by an assortment of increasingly repulsive men, some with their arms draped across Zane Holt’s broad, well-muscled shoulders, just as the women he’d been partying with had been. Across the pool, the hint of a wicked smile crossed the lips of Calista Embers.

My phone buzzed in the center console again. "What's happening with this thing?" Dad grabbed it. "Dad, really?" I didn't want him to see the texts between Dash and me. Awkward. "He says he knew it." The traffic opened up, and I went right on Sunset. "Please don't scroll." "Knew what?" "I have no idea, and I'm driving. So forget it for now." "I'll ask him." —Knew what?— "Dad, really?" I snapped the phone away. Ding ding. I couldn't look. I was going thirty on Sunset and the lights were synchronized for a westward trip, so there would be no stopping at a red. "Let me see," Dad said, hand out. All I needed was for my father to see something about Dash's tongue on my pussy or the way I sounded when I came. So I pulled over.

I think about what makes us lonely on a recent subway ride from Brooklyn to Manhattan. As the train hurtles over the Manhattan Bridge, the subway car is silent, save for the muffled beats of a pop song. A woman up front is reading a book, and a few commuters are dozing. The rest of us are glued to our devices: heads bent, earbuds in, fingers scrolling. The trains sputters and then stops completely mid-bridge; plugged into our own curated digital landscapes, no one looks up. What was once a period of contemplation, boredom, small talk, confrontations, maybe even some light flirting, has been replaced by screens. In addition to filling the blank spaces in our day, our phones double as a crutch to “lean on when we are socially anxious or uncomfortable,” says Julia Bainbridge, a freelance writer and editor, who, in 2016, launched The Lonely Hour, a podcast dedicated to exploring the condition. The world is unpredictable, but our screens provide a convenient buffer against the possibility of spontaneous human interaction.

May 19th 2031_ Eleven months before_ I opened my eyes to see darkness and the sound of my alarm beeping. 0400 hours. I turned it off and got up. I looked for my glasses on my bedside cabinet and put them on. "Alexa, Good morning roll," I said loudly in the dark room. The lights came on and the curtains opened, the speaker turned on and started playing my Spotify playlist. I slowly got dressed and made myself breakfast. After breakfast, I downed a 500ml bottle of zero coke. I leaned to one side and burped. I looked around my kitchen. The dark marble counter and white cupboards, walls and ceiling matched with each other. I looked outside the kitchen window at the traffic down below. I was about 6 floors high, if you were to jump off from that high, there is a very high chance you might die. And if you were lucky to survive, you would be immobilised from your broken legs and hip and ribs. I turned around and sat on the black leathery sofa and switched on the TV. I looked on Netflix at old World War Two films that I could watch before bed. I scrolled through the list. From 'Dunkirk' to 'Unbroken' to a lot more films. I chose a couple and switched the TV onto the news. The reporter said that there was a knife crime in Redding earlier. I sighed but was relieved that it wasn't me. It is a low chance that I would get murdered by someone or people with knives in England but it's still a possibility. I turned the TV off and looked at my phone. There was nothing new on Discord and nothing new on WhatsApp. I checked my Snapchat and opened a few Snaps from my friends at work. I took a selfie of myself in my apartment not working. I sent it off and was happy that I don't work on

The Collective De-Professionalization of Business,’” noted the billionaire. “People who should be working, delighting customers, showcasing extraordinary skills, unlocking otherworldly value for their organizations so both they and their firms experience success are watching inane videos on their phones, shopping online for shoes or scrolling through their social feeds. I’ve never seen people so disengaged at work, so checked out and so exhausted. And I’ve never seen people making so many mistakes.

With all that taken care of, she was officially off duty for the day. And out of excuses to not call her mother back. Was she being a healthy adult by avoiding unnecessary stress? Or was this an immature defense mechanism left over from a tumultuous childhood? She picked up the phone and scrolled to her mother’s contact. Andrea. Not Mom. Andrea hadn’t earned the title. “Mackenzie!” her mother trilled when she answered, and Mack automatically shifted into carefully listening mode for any signs of alcohol, her mother’s favorite hobby. “Hi, Mom.

It was easy to see why Robyn and her friends mindlessly scrolled through their phones during any less-than-optimal experiences in life—boredom, shyness, jaw-clenching agitation. It was a great way to check out in plain sight from a place you couldn’t leave—the confines of your thinking, history, or thoughts of the future.

Ariel can’t help but notice that Persephone hasn’t relinquished her cell phone; the device is still in her palm, always there, thumb hovering above screen, cocked, ready to tap and scroll and sweep, to move on. Her generation never had a chance. Their schooling should have included dedicated training on how to put down your phone, exercises on how to focus on talking to real people in person. But no one knew how bad it would become.

I’ve used an activity in my classrooms before, where I tell my class that we’re going to spend three minutes in complete silence. Nobody can close their eyes and sleep through the three minutes, nor can they busy themselves by reading or scrolling. Instead, we simply sit in silence together for a full three minutes. You should see their eyes when I announce this. I may as well announce that our guest speaker for the day is a greasy, stank-ass hillbilly with a chainsaw and a mask made from the skin of his prior victims. In fact, such a guest “lecture” may be preferable for many. During this time, people behave predictably. The first 30 seconds are the easiest. From 30-45 seconds, everyone contracts a case of the giggles, and students try to stifle themselves. After the one-minute mark, eyes wander, desperately seeking something to occupy their attention. Some count ceiling tiles, others stare out the window at cloud formations, and many discover solace in examining feet. From 90 seconds to the two-minute mark, students visibly squirm in their seats like a crack addict jonesing for a fix, but once we get into the second minute, something remarkable happens. People chill the fuck out. They no longer avoid eye contact with me or one another. They smile quaint little grins. The squirming subsides, they sit up a bit straighter, and the tension hanging heavy in the air like leaded fog dissipates. When the timer on my phone goes off at three minutes, one might assume that someone in the room would shout and break the uncomfortable silence like they’d been holding their breath the whole time, but they don’t. I never rush our entrance back into dialogue; rather, I wait and allow students to speak first. What’s crazy is that, generally speaking, most students go nearly another minute or so before saying anything.

Layla sighed. “Mom, can we maybe talk about some stuff tonight? I'll send Donny on his way, and I can ride with you.” “Tonight? Oh, sweetie, can we talk about it in the morning? You'll see things differently then anyway.” Layla's mother dug in her purse and pulled out her cell phone. Layla's heart sank. “Are you going out?” she asked, even though she knew the answer. “I've got a date,” her mom said, a distracted smile lighting her face as she scrolled through her text messages. A too-familiar pressure tightened in Layla's chest. She lowered her voice and said angrily, “You and Daddy are not divorced! He's coming back!” She and her mother had had this conversation far too many times. “Layla, I'm not going to marry the guy. We've been over this! I just deserve a little fun in my life,” her mother replied in exasperation. “Well, I hope you take a shower before you go out,” Layla lashed back. “You stink of chicken grease!” “And I bothered to hurry over and see you!” Mrs. Ridgewood fumed. “Tell Donovan to have you home at a decent hour.” Her eyes stinging with tears, Layla looked around and hoped no one had heard their conversation. The lobby was almost empty. Justin was leaning against a table, waiting for his dad, but he wasn't looking her way.

Grabbing a bottle of wine from the kitchen, I take up the living room couch to myself and flip the TV onto the trashiest show I can find. Then, I proceed to drink half the bottle and scroll through my phone, paying no attention to the show that’s playing.

When nothing exciting is going on, we might get bored, distracted, separated from the moment. So we look for new entertainment, surf channels, flip through magazines. If caught in these rhythms, we are like tiny current-bound surface fish, floating along in a two-dimensional world without any sense for the gorgeous abyss below." – Josh Waitzkin, The Art Of Learning

Aza [Raskin] said: 'For instance, Facebook tomorrow could start batching your notifications, so you only get one push notification a day ... They could do that tomorrow.' ....So instead of getting 'this constant drip of behavioural cocaine,' telling you every few minutes that somebody liked your picture, commented on your post, has a birthday tomorrow, and on and on - you would get one daily update, like a newspaper, summarising it all. You'd be pushed to look once a day, instead of being interrupted several times an hour. 'Here's another one,' he said 'Infinite scroll. ...it's catching your impulses before your brain has a chance to really get involved and make a decision.' Facebook and Instagram and the others could simply turn off infinite scroll - so that when you get to the bottom of the screen, you have to make a conscious decision to carry on scrolling. Similarly, these sites could simply switch off the things that have been shown to most polarise people politically, stealing our ability to pay collective attention. Since there's evidence YouTube's recommendation engine is radicalising people, Tristan [Harris] told one interviewer: 'Just turn it off. They can turn it off in a heartbeat.' It's not as if, he points out, the day before recommendations were introduced, people were lost and clamouring for somebody to tell them what to watch next. Once the most obvious forms of mental pollution have been stopped, they said, we can begin to look deeper, at how these sites could be redesigned to make it easier for you to restrain yourself and think about your longer-term goals. ...there could be a button that says 'here are all your friends who are nearby and are indicating they'd like to meet up today.' You click it, you connect, you put down your phone and hang out with them. Instead of being a vacuum sucking up your attention and keeping it away from the outside world, social media would become a trampoline, sending you back into that world as efficiently as possible, matched with the people you want to see. Similarly, when you set up (say) a Facebook account, it could ask you how much time you want to spend per day or per week on the site. ...then the website could help you to achieve your goal. One way could be that when you hit that limit, the website could radically slow down. In tests, Amazon found that even 100 milliseconds of delay in the pace at which a page loads results in a substantial drop-off in people sticking around to buy the product. Aza said: 'It just gives your brain a chance to catch up to your impulse and [ask] - do I really want to be here? No.' In addition, Facebook could ask you at regular intervals - what changes do you want to make to your life? ...then match you up with other people nearby... who say they also want to make that change and have indicated they are looking for the equivalent of gym buddies. ...A battery of scientific evidence shows that if you want to succeed in changing something, you should meet up with groups of people doing the same. At the moment, they said, social media is designed to grab your attention and sell it to the highest bidder, but it could be designed to understand your intentions and to better help you achieve them. Tristan and Aza told me that it's just as easy to design and program this life-affirming Facebook as the life-draining Facebook we currently have. I think that most people, if you stopped them in the street and painted them a vision of these two Facebooks, would say they wanted the one that serves your intentions. So why isn't it happened? It comes back... to the business model.

I noticed that before patients even reached the door at the end of the session, they’d grab their phones and start scrolling through their messages. Wouldn’t their time have been better spent allowing themselves just one more minute to reflect on what we had just talked about or to mentally reset and transition back to the world outside? The second people felt alone, I noticed, usually in the space between things — leaving a therapy session, at a red light, standing in a checkout line, riding the elevator — they picked up devices and ran away from that feeling. In a state of perpetual distraction, they seemed to be losing the ability to be with others and losing their ability to be with themselves. The therapy room seemed to be one of the only places left where two people sit in a room together for an uninterrupted 50 minutes

I can't think of a worse way to start my day than a text from my work, a glance at email, a quick (sure...) scroll through social media, and a news alert about that day's outrage. That is a surefire recipe for anger, not love. Misery, not joy. And definitely not peace. Listen: do not let your phone set your emotional equilibrium and your news feed set your view of the world.

Newspapers had different sections you didn’t want to read, like sport or overseas news, and stuff you did, like the word “jumble” and Fred Basset. You “scrolled” to the bit you wanted by putting the bits you didn’t want in the bin, which is bad for the planet. Luckily now we can get exactly the parts of a newspaper that we want delivered straight to our phone, though it has made painting a shelf harder because you can’t put the Daily Mail Sidebar Of Shame underneath to stop your table getting painty like you could with the family supplement. And it’s impossible to start a fire using the Guardian app. Which is good for the planet too. Some of the most famous newspapers such as The Times and TV Quick started in coffee shops in the 1800th century and by Victorian times they could be seen everywhere. Holding that day’s newspaper was a sign that you were keeping up with events. Either that or you were helping your kidnapper prove to the police that you weren’t dead yet. Newspapers made ordinary people feel part of big events, whether it was the sinking of the Titanic, men pretending to land on the Moon, the death of Lady Diana or Kinga off Big Brother sticking a wine bottle up her growler. Without newspapers we would never have heard of Piers Morgan, Rupert Murdoch or Jeremy Clarkson, so it’s understandable that in the 21st century the average person no longer buys a daily paper, in an attempt to stop it happening again.

Within five minutes she had picked up her phone and was scrolling through various apps and articles, her concentration fractured into a million glittering shards, none of them reflecting anything worth notice.

and it was unclear what would happen to her after that but probably more good stuff! Better and better! And the woman in her seventies, well, nobody except the doctor knew—or could even conceive of—what was going on between her legs, though I tried and saw gray labia, long and loose, ball sacks emptied of their balls. How did it feel to still be dragging your pussy into this same office, decades after all the reproductive fanfare? She was scrolling on her phone, seemingly unbothered or unaware that she had nothing to look forward to, cunt-wise.

I sit in the darkness of Andrew’s small studio apartment, rereading my text conversations with Gianna, scrolling through old photos, watching the videos on my phone of us play-fighting. In one clip I chased her down my hallway and blocked the doorway so she wouldn’t go home. I wish I could teleport back to that moment and live there for the rest of my life.

We scroll, we click, we swipe, racing through digital static, each distraction a fleeting sedative, numbing the quiet dread gnawing at the edges of our withering hearts. We remain distant, mere spectators to our own lives, as the hours slip like grains of sand through the hourglass, and only now, in the suffocating silence, do we sense the weight of all that’s slowly slipping away.

If you scroll long enough, your phone will become your grave. In the name of telecommunication, algorithms generate the new stoneage.

I’m only doing one more,” Ruby said, scrolling through her phone. “Nobody likes a day-drunk hussie.” “Hey, give yourself some credit. You’ll be a really cute day- drunk hussie.

Never be an artist that starts worshiping yourself or believe your little group is better than anyone outside of it. For, you are nothing more than a grain of sand on a hillside in this world of ours. Even Da Vinci’s work is only glanced at then scrolled past on a phone or computer these days. Climb down off your throne and become humble once more.

I take my phone out of my pocket and scroll to Sky’s number. It’s late, but I want to hear her voice. It’s stupid, I know. But it is what it is. “Hello,” she says, her voice hesitant. I lean against the building because my knees wobble when I talk to her. It makes me giddy. “Hi,” I say quietly. “Hi,” she breathes back. “Were you asleep?” “No, I was just thinking.” “About what?” “You,” she admits. My heart starts to beat harder. “Good thoughts?” I ask. I can almost hear her smile through the phone. “Very good.” “I just wanted to say good night.” It sounds stupid aloud. “I’m glad you called,” she replies. “Really glad.” “Can I call you tomorrow?” She laughs. “You better.” “Good night, Sky,” I say. “’Night, Matt.” I disconnect the call and put my phone in my pocket. No one is up when I get home. I’m not even sure if Paul is home. I go into my bedroom and get ready for bed. Just as I slide between the sheets, my phone rings. I see that it’s her number. “Sky?” “Yeah,” she admits. “You okay?” “I just wanted to tell you good night,” she says quietly. “I think you already did that.” But inside, my heart is beating like a tattoo gun. “Oh,” she says quietly. She laughs. “Sorry.” “You tired?” I ask. “Not at all.” So we talk late into the night. We talk until my eyes are droopy, and I still don’t want to hang up the phone.

I scrolled up through the history of our text messages. Only a few bubbles above, she’d written ‘I love you, my only. Come back soon.’ She must still love me, I thought. The human heart can’t have a shorter memory than a phone.

As I turn on my computer: Come to Me, I want to connect with you. As I make a phone call to talk through my stress with a friend: Call on Me! As I scroll through Facebook: Don’t follow them, follow Me. As I open up Instagram: Come to Me, open up to Me. As I binge watch another late-night TV show: Come. To. Me. As I start a text, complaining to a friend about my day: Delete that; don’t complain to her, come to Me. As I link over to Amazon Prime for a little retail therapy: Come to Me, I’m a Wonderful Counselor. As I run in to Starbucks for something sweet: My words are sweet as honey. Come to me. As I turn to comfort food: Come to Me, I’m the Great Comforter.

Store photos of strategies and tools on your phone. You can make a folder with images of tools you find helpful, for example noise cancelling headphones, eye mask, weighted blanket, something to do with a special interest. When stressed, just scroll through the photos in the folder to give yourself ideas about what tools to use. It’s likely that as soon as you see the tool that will work for you, you will know it. You can make different folders for different activities, such as ‘Quick Calm Plan for Home’, ‘Quick Calm Plan for Work’ etc. If you scroll through the images before you go out, it will help you not to forget any tools you want to bring with you.

Focus, Johnny. Remember. I scrolled through my contacts with the intention of calling her to apologize, only to slump in dismay when I remembered that I didn’t have her number. And even if I did, I couldn’t call her. Because her father took her phone. My father. My father. What was I missing here?

I wonder how he’s feeling. I wonder if he knows what he’s doing. I wonder if he’ll regret changing his life for me. And the weight of that is downright crushing. I don’t go to my next appointment. I don’t think I can handle looking at another dining room and wondering about Beau. What I want is to crawl into bed with him and have him hold me. I don’t text him. I just drive back to the fire hall, prepared to wait for him if I have to. But I don’t have to. When I pull up, he’s seated on a bench in the sun, knees slung open, phone held low while he scrolls the screen. You’d think for a tier one operator he would notice me across the street, but he doesn’t. So I watch him. He smiles and his shoulders vibrate on a laugh. I wonder what he’s watching. I wonder how his interview went. I wonder how long he’s been waiting. I wonder if he’s hungry or if he ate lunch. I wonder if he’d be okay with me coming to sit beside him. It feels like my brain is just an ode to Beau Eaton. I think about him all the fucking time. Worry about him. Crave him.

That’s another side of him few people get to see. And I think I like that about him too. He doesn’t give his attention away willy-nilly. He doesn’t absently hum along to what you’re saying while scrolling on his phone. If you have Jasper Gervais’s attention, you’ve got it all, and that’s because he wants you to have it. He doesn’t just listen to me. He hears me. He sees me.

I wonder how he’s feeling. I wonder if he knows what he’s doing. I wonder if he’ll regret changing his life for me. And the weight of that is downright crushing. I don’t go to my next appointment. I don’t think I can handle looking at another dining room and wondering about Beau. What I want is to crawl into bed with him and have him hold me. I don’t text him. I just drive back to the fire hall, prepared to wait for him if I have to. But I don’t have to. When I pull up, he’s seated on a bench in the sun, knees slung open, phone held low while he scrolls the screen. You’d think for a tier one operator he would notice me across the street, but he doesn’t. So I watch him. He smiles and his shoulders vibrate on a laugh. I wonder what he’s watching. I wonder how his interview went. I wonder how long he’s been waiting. I wonder if he’s hungry or if he ate lunch. I wonder if he’d be okay with me coming to sit beside him. It

She felt lonely and pathetic, but she knew that all across the city there were girls just like her who had spent their saturday nights waiting for something to happen, nursing a drink or reading a paperback in a coffee shop or scrolling endlessly on their phones, alone and biding their time until their real l ife would begin.

He has a stupid, ugly face,” I grumble as I scroll to the top of the page to get away from him. “Looks pretty hot to me,” she announces. I toss my phone three feet in front of me and almost pee myself. “Jesus Christ,” I swear at her. “Sienna Richler, actually,” she says with a grin, “but you can call me Jesus if you want.

She felt lonely and pathetic, but she knew that all across the city there were girls just like her who had spent their Saturday nights waiting for something to happen, nursing a drink or reading a paperback in a coffee shop or scrolling endlessly on their phones, alone and biding their time until their real life would begin.

As she is about to reverse out of her parking space, her phone pings. And again. And again. Responses to her Instagram post. Daisy cannot resist taking a quick peek. She craves the dopamine hit. Those little hearts of approval, the validation. She needs it. She grabs her phone, does a fast scroll through the comments: OMG how do you look so good? What’s your secret? Spill, girl! Love that jacket! Awesome photo. Love love love Vancouver. A month and a half to go! We’re counting down with you. A contented, connected feeling swells through Daisy’s body. Her followers adore her photo. They approve of her life. Of her. She feels less alone. Less overweight. Less unattractive.

(On doom-scrolling) the problem of it all is, it's simply much easier to sit on your phone and scroll through/down as the world worsens, then actually doing anything to fix that world, because the problems of the world, even when they interfere directly with us, seem bigger than us, and somehow removed from us...when they are immediately impacting us.

I could find a hundred different ways to tell her I care enough to choose her, but none of them matter unless I find a way to show her. Pro: She could find my list romantic. Con: She may reject me anyway after I reveal one of my biggest secrets. Shut up and show her. I pull out my phone and open the note-taking app. “Here.” She grabs it from me and reads over the first few lines of text. “You’ve been working on a pro-con list about me?” I nod. “Pro: She sucks at chess. Seriously?” Her nose scrunches. “Not my fault you started every single game with the queen’s pawn opening. Change it up every now and then.” She returns to the list. “Pro: I like her enough to attend Stanford too.” She looks at me for a few seconds without blinking. “You chose Stanford because of me?” “Yes. You liked California, and I liked you, so it made sense.” She shakes her head in disbelief. “How long have you been working on this?” “Since sometime after you started competing for the Strawberry Sweetheart pageant.” She blinks. “That was over a decade ago.” “I’m aware.” “But why?” “Informed decision-making is my thing.” She scrolls through the list while mumbling to herself. “There are things listed here that I don’t do anymore.” I know.Unfortunately, I inherited my appreciation for nostalgia from my mother, and I have never been able to outgrow it, which is the only reason why I could never delete the list no matter how many times I tried. After a few more minutes, she reaches the bottom of the note. “You only have one negative.” Con: She may never love me back. “Little by little, your cons annoyingly started making their way over to the pros column.” Her laugh comes out like a half sob. “That’s ridiculous.” “No, Dahlia, that’s love.

Your phone can be your sidekick or your worst enemy—choose wisely! It's a gadget that can keep you connected, help you learn, and organize your life, but it can also pull you into a black hole of mindless scrolling and endless notifications. Be careful how you wield that power! Your phone should be a tool, not a trap. Use it to level up, not to lose hours to memes and drama. Remember, you’re in control of your screen time—don’t let your phone turn into your digital overlord!

We look around at other women and want little pieces of their stories. We want their successes. Their giftings, their looks, their accomplishments. Their eyelashes, their knowledge, their passion. And let’s be honest. Social media as a whole doesn’t make it easy on us. Every time we open our phones and scroll, we are bombarded with images and beauty and stories of other women living their (what seem to be) perfect and pulled-together and amazing lives. We see everyone’s fashion attire, homes, mothering, homeschooling, after-school sports, family lives, and careers on display. Even though we get only a glimpse, we can easily feel like we’re being bombarded with others’ stories that can cause us to feel less than, unable, failing, and missing the mark of being the ideal woman. But friend, you are not her.

He used to love newsrooms: the ones he had visited when his father was alive, the ones where he had interned when he was starting out—AP and UPI wire machines buzzing and clicking; typewriters clacking; reporters on phones, conducting interviews, badgering sources; heated arguments about politics in the commissary and by the vending machines. But entering the Tomorrow building was like walking into a war-torn city after a neutron bomb had gone off. Half the offices were empty or filled with their downsized occupants’ detritus. Eerie silence predominated; cubicles were occupied by beaten-down millennials scrolling Twitter, listening to music through headphones, surreptitiously filling out job applications or updating their CVs on LinkedIn. People barely talked, just messaged each other on Slack.

The idea of asking Joe for help makes me wince. It's humiliating. It's opening old wounds. It's my worst option. But it's my only option. Slowly, I draw my phone out of my pocket. I scroll down to Joe's number. And I send him a text. It's very short and to the point. In fact, it just reads: Hi.

Take for another example the case of distraction caused by the most notorious of modern-day diversions—the mobile phone. While you’re at your desk, typing away on your computer for a soon-due report—or attempting to, more like—your phone sits just beside your keyboard. This arrangement makes it oh-so-easy for your hand to alight on your phone whenever you pause to think what to type next, and the next thing you know, you’re trapped in an endless cycle of scrolling through Facebook memes, bingeing on YouTube videos, and chatting with your friends over WhatsApp. When you attempt to concentrate on a task with your phone just within sight and reach, buzzing on every notification, you are practically depleting your willpower to resist temptations with every second that passes. To remedy the situation, disable your phone’s sound and vibration features for notifications, then keep your phone in your bag or drawer. You may even opt to go the extra mile by locking your drawer or putting your phone in a locker across the room. The extra effort and time it would take for you to check your phone whenever your attention drifts off is usually enough to deter you from pursuing that distraction, and it allows you the chance to refocus your efforts on the task at hand. Ultimately, you want to create an environment for yourself that is clear of distractions and obvious temptations.

The Spellbinder calls the phenomenon pervading commerce these days ‘The Collective De-Professionalization of Business,’” noted the billionaire. “People who should be working, delighting customers, showcasing extraordinary skills, unlocking otherworldly value for their organizations so both they and their firms experience success are watching inane videos on their phones, shopping online for shoes or scrolling through their social feeds. I’ve never seen people so disengaged at work, so checked out and so exhausted. And I’ve never seen people making so many mistakes.