Put your phone down or die

Put your phone down, or die - The Alps have a very effective digital detox programme

I’m in the Alps this week.

Walking. Mountain biking. Reading. Eating too much.

I’m here with my wife and our three children. Five people sharing bedrooms, meals, cable cars, mountain paths and strongly held opinions about where we should stop for lunch.

It’s beautiful.

It’s also surprisingly dangerous.

The hiking involves narrow paths, steep drops and loose rocks. The mountain biking involves travelling downhill at speeds that feel exciting right up until they don't.

Several times a day, I find myself thinking:

“This is probably fine.”

Followed shortly by:

“This might be how I die.”

It turns out that sliding down the side of a mountain on two wheels demands your full attention.

You can’t doomscroll when a momentary lapse in concentration might result in a slide down the mountain on your arse followed by a swift death.

The mountains have a very effective screen-time policy.

Put your phone away.

Or die.

The Accidental Digital Detox

None of this was planned.

We didn’t come here for a digital detox.

There was no family meeting where we agreed to become more present. We didn’t sign a contract promising to reconnect with nature, and each other.

We just thought walking and mountain biking sounded fun.

And they are (mostly.)

There are occasional moments when I question the definition of “fun”, particularly while walking uphill in 30-degree heat because somebody described the route as “moderate.”

Moderate, it turns out, is an Alpine word meaning “you may cry.”

The lack of phone use has simply been a side effect.

Most of what we’re doing can’t be done with a phone in your hand. Your hands are busy holding handlebars, opening water bottles or pointing at yet another magnificent view.

And something has happened.

We’ve started talking.

A lot.

We’ve Been Talking Nonsense

I don’t mean we’ve been having profound conversations. We haven’t discussed our deepest fears and I haven't started sharing carefully prepared life lessons.

We’ve mostly been talking nonsense.

The conversation wanders.

One person says something stupid. Somebody else makes it worse. A joke runs for three hours. It disappears. Then it comes back at dinner.

There is teasing. There are impressions. There are arguments about events that everyone remembers differently.

Nobody announces a topic.

Nobody says, “Let’s have some quality family time.”

We’re just together.

And because we’re together, without disappearing into separate digital worlds, conversation happens.

It fills the space.

And it’s wonderful.

Conversation Needs Empty Space

I’ve been thinking about why this feels so unusual.

We talk at home, obviously. We have meals together. We drive places. We spend time in the same rooms.

Yet being physically close to someone is no guarantee that you’re actually with them these days.

A family can sit around one table while occupying five completely different worlds.

One person is watching a video.

Another is answering a message.

Someone is checking the football score.

Someone else is pretending to listen while reading an email (definitely not me).

We’ve become incredibly skilled at being together and elsewhere at the same time.

Phones don’t always interrupt conversations. The effect is more subtle.

They remove the empty space from which conversation grows.

The pause before someone says something.
The moment of boredom that produces a ridiculous question.
The shared observation.
The joke that starts because there's nothing else happening.

Every spare second can now be filled.

Even watching television now requires a second, smaller television in your hand.

We’ve eliminated boredom. And in doing so, we may have eliminated many of the moments when people naturally connect.

The Phone Always Has Something Better

The problem is that your phone is extremely good at being interesting.

It contains every news story, argument, joke, video, song, message and minor celebrity controversy happening anywhere in the world.

Your family can’t compete with that.

Your wife may be telling you about her day, but your phone has breaking news.

Your child may be explaining a complicated relationship dispute, but your phone has a video of a dog riding a skateboard.

Your friend may be trying to say something important, but somewhere online, a stranger has expressed an opinion you strongly disagree with.

How can real life possibly compete?

It’s slower.

It repeats itself.

It doesn’t have captions.

There is no algorithm removing the boring parts.

Real conversation requires patience. You have to stay through the uninteresting sentence to reach the revealing one. You have to listen to the badly told story. You have to allow people to get to the point in their own time.

Sometimes there isn’t even a point.

That’s part of the pleasure.

We Keep Trying to Engineer Connection

Naturally, my response to all this has been to start wondering how I can create more of it at home.

This is what I do.

I have a nice experience and immediately try to turn it into a system. I started to wonder whether perhaps we needed a family technology policy? Because nothing encourages a spontaneous family conversation like a mandatory agenda.

The real joy of this week, though, is that none of it has felt forced.

We didn’t set out to communicate better. We set out to ride bikes and avoid falling off mountains.

The connection came indirectly.

And I think that matters.

Perhaps you don’t create better relationships by scheduling more meaningful conversations.

Perhaps you create the conditions in which conversation becomes more likely?

Design the Conditions, Not the Conversation

We tend to focus on individual behaviour.

Use your phone less.
Be more present.
Listen properly.
Make time for people.

All sensible advice.

All surprisingly difficult to follow when your environment is working against you.

Your phone is beside you. It lights up. It vibrates. It offers novelty, reassurance and distraction. Every app has been designed by very clever people to pull your attention away from whatever is happening nearby.

Willpower doesn’t stand much of a chance.

The Alps solved this problem without any motivational speech.

They made holding a phone a life or death decision.

The environment did the work.

I’m not suggesting you need to move your family to a mountain.

That would be expensive. And the cheese intake alone would be medically irresponsible.

But perhaps we need more activities that naturally occupy our hands, eyes and attention.

Walk somewhere?
Cook together?
Ride bikes?
Play cards?

Do something that makes looking at a screen awkward.

The goal isn’t to force everyone to talk.

The goal is to stop preventing them from talking.

Banter Is Not Wasted Time

There’s another part of this I don’t want to miss.

Most of our conversations this week have achieved nothing. By most standards, it has been very unproductive.

And yet, this pointless chatter is doing something important.

It is building the private language of our family. The repeated jokes. The stories we’ll tell again. The phrases that will make us laugh months from now for reasons nobody else understands.

This is how we get to know each other. Through thousands of small, forgettable exchanges.

The nonsense matters.

You don’t always know which ordinary afternoon will become a memory. You don’t know which walk will become part of the story they tell about growing up.

But I do know that a good life is not made entirely from significant moments.

Most of it is filler.

The trick is being there for it.

The People Around You Are the Point

Our phones constantly suggest that something more important is happening somewhere else.

It nearly always is.

Meanwhile, your actual life is happening in front of you. None of it looks important enough to post.

It doesn’t need to. It’s your life.

Perhaps the people around you are not interrupting your access to the world.

Perhaps they are your world.

What I’m Taking Home

I’m not going to return from the Alps and ban phones. So this week, try something simple.

Just put yourself in the same place as someone you care about and remove the easiest route of escape. Then see what happens.

You may talk about life.

You may talk complete nonsense.

Both count.

Until next time,

Jon “just trying to stay alive” Kaye

Choosing to live more deliberately

P.S.

If you’re reading this on your phone while somebody you love is sitting beside you, put it down.

You’ve reached the end anyway.