(Originally published on Medium.com)

Is Your Mobile Phone Distracting You?

Have you noticed that everyone and I do mean everyone, seems to be plugged into their phone? Go to Starbucks. Coffee and phones. Go to the mall (if you can still find one), people have their heads down and focused on their phones. The other day I was waiting to check into my hotel, and the customer and the person behind the counter kept checking their phone.

Cell phones are awesome. The technology we carry in our hands gives us more power than the astronauts had on some of the earliest voyages to space. No question, these are fantastic inventions. They have improved our ability to find where we are going easier, listen to that hot new release from our favorite artist, and of course, be available for that important email or phone at a moment’s notice.

But aren’t these marvelous inventions also slowly killing us? No I don’t mean the residual cancer that they will surely be blamed for years from now. I mean killing the human experience of connection by preventing us from participating in real life.

Before Phones

Long before phones, people talked to one another, people looked up when someone new walked into the coffee shop. Before we let phones distract us we had real conversations where people discussed real issues of the day on the subways and bar stools across the land. Before a phone was in our hands there was a sense of community with opportunities abound to play an active role in your community and in essence, in your own life.

Today the majority of us have our heads buried in some electronic device that holds such power over our attention that even attempting to have a real conversation now seems awkward and uncomfortable.

Time to do something different

What if you were to put your phone away for a single day? No seriously, what if you just left that sucker in your back pocket, in your purse or— and I may be cast out for saying this — left it at home for an entire day!

How different might that day go? How many more people might you have an opportunity to engage and meet? Assuming of course they too had left their little electronic leashes at home as well.

People, it’s time to put down your phones. It’s time to start interacting with other people (who aren’t on text, Snapchat or Facebook). It’s time to start living and showing yourself and the world that the phone is just a phone. True it’s a powerful tool but it’s still a tool. It’s time to go start reengaging with the world in a way that doesn’t require checking in, Tweeting about it or Snapping about it.

Turn that sucker off and give life, connection and conversation a chance to make a comeback if only for a day.

Try it, you may just like it.

Ripple On!!!