Picture preparing for a long awaited party: shopping for nice clothes, finding a ride, and completing every necessary preparation. Then, you arrive and find everyone glued to their phones doing nothing productive. This is the reality of the current era of technology. Daily life becomes severely underwhelming and boring mundane from hiding behind a screen the entire day. In contrast, deciding to keep the phone off during social events opens up a guaranteed world of excitement. This is observed by experiences, studies, and articles.

Whether at mass in-person gatherings or a simple one-on-one hangout, people should always try to spend less time on their phones. Being chronically online may cause people to be less social with others ly active in person. Spending endless hours behind a screen easily causes one to become get detached from society.

A study written by cinematographer Jake Burgess shows that increasing screen time leads to less human-contact and more increases feelings of loneliness. Only Online communication online makes some people feel that in-person communication social interaction has become useless. On one hand, believing this makes taking part in social events feel increasingly useless and amplifies people’s introverted characteristics. On the other hand, choosing to put down the phone is one of the easiest solutions to making novel memories.

According to a New York Times article by Jancee Dunn, the more an event is documented, the easier it is to become a distant memory. Focusing on taking pictures and putting them on stories turns possibly great memories into merely another online picture. Choosing to live in the moment and staying away from phones creates a sense of being carefree with nothing to worry about except the current conversation.

However, some might say argue that having access to phones during social events may help extend the conversation by finding new topics to talk about. This may be true if the people using the phones already have experience with spending long times without their phone. At the same time, the internet easily traps people into their own bubble for long periods of time. Someone frequently checking their device easily becomes isolated from the conversation and begins an endless cycle of doom-scrolling.

During in person gatherings, or even a two person meeting, keeping the phone away from arm’s reach always improves the experience. If you are still feeling the urge to reach for your phone, try Well’s summer challenge: “For the next month, go outside for 20 minutes daily without your phone, just with nature.”