I once heard a very interesting quote: “the cell phone brings people who are far away closer together, and distances those who are closer.”

It’s a fact that my generation, born in the 90’s, is the cell phone slave generation. We standardize the absurdity of spending hours in front of the cell phone, often without even remembering what we did. We are manipulated into it.

The pandemic has exacerbated the whole scenario. For many people, it was the only thing left as communication to the outside world. In addition, all technology companies, not counting the new ones that emerged during this period, developed products to keep us even more connected.

Several studies link cell phone addiction with loneliness:

ScienceDirect › pdfLoneliness and Mobile Phone National Institutes of Health (.gov) › pmcThe relationship between loneliness and mobile phone addiction among Chinese NOMOPHOBIA: NO MObile PHone PhoBIA - PMC - NCBI

Who has never been to a restaurant and seen an entire family silent, on their cell phones? Or at a party, people on cell phones not interacting with each other?

The subject seems old, I remember talking about it almost 10 years ago with a friend, but lately things seem to be much worse. On the main social networks we have today, such as Instagram and TikTok, the focus is no longer on communication between two people, the focus is on delivering the most generic content possible (created by ourselves) and after three posts it will show you an ad.

Deep down, the cell phone also distances those who are far away.