There’s an attractive woman in her late twenties or early thirties whom I often see at the fitness center, and she has got me thinking about something. We often end up exercising quite close to each other, and sometimes there are only a few other people in the gym, so it’s difficult not to notice her same pattern of behavior repeated over and over. She spends more time looking at her smartphone than anyone I have ever seen in an exercise environment. And I do not mean checking it between sets. I mean constantly. Between sets. During sets. Walking on the treadmill. Sitting down. Standing up. Virtually every spare second. I have also never seen her talk to anyone in the gym. I have never seen her make eye contact with anybody. Not even the staff. If somebody walks past, she often seems to immediately look back down at the screen to avoid eye contact or the possibility of anyone saying hello to her. It just seems excessive to me and not particularly healthy human behavior. Now before anybody jumps on me, I am not claiming to know anything about her. For all I know, she could be perfectly happy, socially active, married with three children, and coordinating a multinational business empire from the hip abduction machine. I have absolutely no idea. What interested me wasn’t her specifically. It was the behavior itself, because it made me wonder whether I could actually date somebody like that. Somebody whose attention always seems to be directed towards a screen rather than the world immediately around them. Perhaps I am showing my age, but I still find eye contact, casual communication, and simply being present in the moment to be fairly important parts of human existence. And I sometimes wonder what happens when an entire generation becomes more comfortable communicating through a device than face to face. It doesn't seem like a good way to go through life. Would somebody like that be just as engaged and connected in a relationship as anyone else? Or does constantly living through a screen eventually change the way people relate to each other? I'm thinking eventually, humans might forget how to interact with each other in person completely. Or maybe this is completely normal for everyone now and I am the outlier. Dunno. But if I was dating an attractive woman who spent more than half her waking life staring into a screen, I honestly think it would be a major turn off. I would definitely find myself wondering whether I was dating a person or merely competing with a six inch screen for their attention. Maybe some people would see it as a positive if they just wanted a partner who was more of a companion, someone who did not talk or engage too much and was happy to simply be at their side, but leave them alone. I suppose there is a time and a place for that, and we probably all appreciate a bit of quiet sometimes. But if someone cannot even focus on the moments when they are doing something that is meant to have their full attention, and instead is focused on a little glass panel emitting blue light, then perhaps we’ve become a bit too attached to the technology that was supposed to make life better.
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