SANDRA COLLOPY
ARTS & CULTURE EDITOR

Cell phone use is not only killing the value of face-to-face human interaction, but it’s also ruining the beauty of living in the moment. People are capturing every life moment, big or small, on phones and posting on them social media. How many concerts have you watched on Snapchat or Instagram through other people’s stories? How many Boomerangs of people clinking their drinks together have you swiped through?
It’s hard to retell your experience through words, because everyone’s already seen it on social media. I do it too. I’m one of those girls that takes pictures of her food at dinner with her friends or Instagrams a cappuccino with an intricate design on top. It’s hard not to share these little moments with the world and say isn’t this cool, look what I’m doing. That’s the kind of culture we live in. Where there is little to no privacy and if you put something out there, it will be seen by hundreds of people that you may not even know.
Last spring, when I studied abroad in Florence, Italy, I signed up to get a SIM card with an Italian phone number. So when I got there I could just start using my phone as I had before. Of course with my luck, my card didn’t work. Meaning that I could only use my phone on WiFi that was in my apartment and in my school’s buildings. I quickly became used to only using my phone for its clock and offline downloaded map whenever I wasn’t in my apartment.
It was one of the most refreshing feelings in the world, except for when I walked home from class at night knowing that I couldn’t call anyone if I needed to. But I didn’t miss a beat for those first two months before my card started working. On walks along the winding streets where it was just me and the city, I felt in tune with everything and everyone around me.
There was no buzzing in my pocket from social media notifications and texts from friends back home. It was quiet. What I learned is that there is beauty in the mundane. My walking and thinking became meditative on those Florentine cobblestones. Having no phone made me feel more a part of the life and energy going on around me. If I ignored everyone else with their phones in front of their faces, it felt like stepping back in time.
I’m a quiet, observant, introspective person. So looking and absorbing what’s around me is when I feel most like myself. Constantly checking a phone gets in the way of that kind of thinking, it can damage creativity.
There’s a saying in Italy, il dolce far niente, which means the sweetness of doing nothing or pleasant relaxation in carefree idleness. In their culture, they make time to just exist but in our culture, when we do nothing, we stare at our phones. On the couch with friends when there’s a lull in conversation, everyone goes to their phones to be absorbed into another world. Or when class or a meeting is about to start, a lot of times people are sitting in silence scrolling until the professor walks through the door. Even in the moments when we are doing nothing, we fill that time with screens.
According to Counterpoint Technology Market Research, globally, about one in four smartphone users spend more than seven hours a day on their phones. That adds up. The time we dedicate to our phones could be spent doing so much more.
I’m not saying that phones and social media are bad. They connect people all over the world and can get you in touch with someone in seconds. Always having a camera accessible means capturing more memories. Social media allows people to promote positive messages and share their stories. But they take away from the simplicity of moments of doing nothing and our inclinations to absorb beauty around us.
I urge you to do as the Italians do, and take an hour a day to just exist, do nothing, without a phone for a little while. Order your cappuccino. Admire the barista’s artistry. Look around you and live il dolce far niente.

Sandra Collopy ’18, is an English major and a Media Studies minor.