How many times do you go hang out with a friend and you find
that your friend or you yourself are stuck looking at your phone while you're with them?
It would have been considered incredibly rude not that long ago.
It's not even so much that it's rude as it is that it's bad for us.
I think that one of the things that's so pernicious about phones, social media, the tech ecosphere,
it makes it difficult to remember what the heck it was
that you were doing in the first place when you picked up your phone.
I wear an analog wristwatch because I found that when I was looking at my phone to find out what time it was,
I would frequently fail.
I would pick up the phone, see that I had three new texts and three emails, respond to two of them,
save the others for later, put the phone back and still not know what time it was.
Welcome to the science of happiness.
I'm Dacher Keltner.
These days, we spend upwards of 40% of our waking life online.
Our thoughts, feelings and relationships have been moved into digital spaces.
In theorist Anton Barber Kay's words,
the digital media are a functional medium of consciousness itself and a new way of imagining ourselves in connection to others.
And if we look closely, maybe it's also shaping the way we think about ourselves.
One of the biggest changes I noticed,
I thought that I was reading more slowly and reading fewer books because I was getting older.