Social Experiment

Last weekend I went to dinner with my sister and her two friends for her one friend's birthday. While we were waiting (30 minutes, ugh....not good for a pregnant mama!) in the bar area shoveling in peanuts and popcorn (which easily could have accounted for dinner by the time we were done!) I noticed something.

Instead of truly conversing with one another we were all on our phones. I was scrolling through my newsfeed, and the three others were sending snaps and checking winks or whatever it is the youngin's are doing these days. Compared to all of them I feel old. Facebook is old news in the social media world. Or so they tell me.

Anyway, sure we were chatting here and there but we weren't truly THERE.

It made me think about my last post and one of the goals I have for myself.

Put.Down.The.Phone.

Ironically then,  I happened upon this meme as I scrolled through my feed:



  

I have seen before and am pretty sure I have it pinned too. My mom and brother and I tried it once last summer but we gave up (well, my brother and I did) and we didn't take it seriously.

Have you ever done this? I told the group I had an idea for a game we could play during dinner but wanted them to agree without knowing what it was. Andrea agreed right away, assuming we were going to act weird in public or something. My sis figured out what it was and agreed, and CJ was in as long he would win. I told them either one of us would lose, or all of us would win! I told them it just involves us and our willpower!

I showed them the picture above and Andrea, a self-admitted phone addict immediately said she knew she'd lose. I said, well since it's your birthday it's more incentive to not have to buy us dinner! We were all excited and also nervous. I was totally in, after all, I have to work on my goal of less phone time, but wanted to make sure my ringer was on with a special ringtone for Hubs in case he called with an emergency. But still, we were in! Andrea had to turn off her phone because it gave her such anxiety. But after a few minutes we all realized that she was defeating the purpose! So we turned it on and stacked our phones in the center of the table.

I wish I had a picture but I couldn't use my phone! Just shows how much we rely on our phones every minute.

For the first few minutes we giggled and laughed about how hard it was going to be and then the amazing happened.

We stopped talking about our phones and conversed.

Truly conversed with one another for almost three hours!!!

I got to know Andrea and CJ a lot better, which was really cool. I found out so much about them that I didn't know. I realized that my sister picks some pretty good people to be around. 

We talked about careers, schools, parenting, my little one, nieces and nephews, pregnancy, pedicures (we had all gotten them that afternoon) the weather in Buffalo, how delicious our food was, etc. etc. etc. It was the first time in (I'm embarrassed to admit) I can't even tell you how long that I truly sat down and was present with the people I was with and wasn't distracted by my phone. I think it was the same for the company I was with as well.

By the time the bill was delivered, we were all paying for our own meals. No one had touched their phones and we all agreed it needs to be something that people do much more often. For the betterment of society.

And then we all opened the iPhone calculator to figure out the tip.

Such is life! 

Try it sometime. You will feel as liberated as we did, I promise.

Love and Laughs,

Danielle