I Forgot My Phone – YouTube: Written by/Starring Charlene deGuzman and directed by Miles Crawford.

This video shows me. And probably lots of us.

Far too often, I find myself absorbed in the action of a 4-inch screen instead of seeing the real world unfolding around me. I’m not going to throw the phone away or retire it when my contract is up, but this video has inspired me to try to put it away when there are others around.

The girl in the video is visibly frustrated when her friends are paying attention to their phones instead of to her, but there is no evidence that she is more interesting than what her friends are looking at. The first step to fixing this problem it to put the phone away. The second is to surround yourself with people more interesting than your phone (and to be more interesting than your friends’ phones).

There is a time and a place for reading and exploring the universe from a tiny screen and a time to find it in its physical form. Occasionally forgetting my phone at home will help.