Am I really traveling if I'm looking at my phone the whole time?

It is a truth universally acknowledged that if you ever want a concentrated hit of cortisol, you should pull up the Screen Time app (or whatever it’s called on non-Apple phones) and see how much of your one precious life you’re pouring into an electronic device. 

I’d argue that any amount over, say, 45 minutes per day is sobering. (45 minutes per day is about 274 hours over the course of the year. Which is twenty-two waking days. Nearly a full month.)

But most of us spend far more time than that on our phone—the national average is 4 hours and 47 minutes per day. (And lest you think I’m preaching to anyone other than myself: today, I’m already to 2 hours.)

But this is old news, bemoaned constantly in numerous outlets and articles, and there are hundreds of phone addiction recovery apps and etcetera, and if you were going to care about these stats, you probably already did.

I’m here to talk about a very particular and personal phone use travesty: What my smartphone is doing to me when I travel.

On my recent trip to New Mexico, I had breakfast at The Shop in Albuquerque, a very cool breakfast-lunch-only restaurant which serves up a mean plate of hash. It’s a happy place inside, decorated in quirky greens, the polar opposite of a chain place. On weekends, there’s a perpetual line out front. It’s terrific. 

While waiting for my food, I was super tempted to pick up my phone. I almost did. Then it occurred to me that if I did pick up my phone—and subsequently stare at it for the next twenty minutes—there would be absolutely zero point in having breakfast at The Shop in Albuquerque. 

Why bother? If I spent that time looking at my phone, the world would look exactly the same as it had back home. I may as well have “traveled” to the McDonald’s on High Street in Columbus, OH and foregone the expense, hassle, and carbon of a cross-continental trip.

Okay! I put the phone down and looked around instead. I looked at the rock posters on the wall; I saw a guy in dingy shorts feed scrambled egg to his little dog, who barked at me indignantly when I waved at him; I watched steaming plates of food approach me and then get carried by and, yeah, I felt myself get legitimately hungry in a way I definitely wanted to distract myself from.

To be clear: Feeling Hungry in a Dark Green Restaurant with a Little Dog was not an especially transformative experience. But it was certainly an experience I’d never had before—and it made me feel more awake to my life and more awake to the world, which is—surprise!—exactly what you’re supposed to feel when you travel. 

So I finished my duck hash and then wrote down my epiphany, which is:

My phone is a homogenizing device. Wherever I go, it looks exactly the same. It makes the world feel the same. And when I reach for it while traveling, I am de facto deciding to revert to a reality of comfortable, manageable sameness.

It makes perfect sense that my brain likes this strategy. Brains like old, comfortable stuff, because old, comfortable stuff takes less energy to process. My brain likes sleeping and, when awoken, to be in a place where it feels more or less in control. 

And my phone screen is a place where I have the luxury of near-complete control.

But luxury, as legendary travel writer Paul Theroux puts it, is "the enemy of observation, a costly indulgence that induces such a good feeling that you notice nothing."

The thing about using one's phone too much is that it's a luxury that doesn't feel luxurious. It's just plain dull—a "Medium Place" where life is circumscribed by a 5.78" x 2.82" aluminum boundary, and where nothing exciting happens but nothing horrible either. There's a limit to the awfulness but also the joy.

Using one's phone too much is a luxury that doesn't feel luxurious. It's just plain dull—a "Medium Place" where life is circumscribed by a 5.78" x 2.82" aluminum boundary, and where nothing exciting happens but nothing horrible either. There's a limit to the awfulness but also the joy.

Which is to say: When I retreat to my phone, I'm retreating to comfort, to the repetition of something I already know. I’m asking to stay asleep to my life and to whatever new things might be requested of me.

All of this, to be clear, is the polar opposite of what I want—or what I say I want—when I go someplace new. 

So I have many questions about this habit of retreat:

Why am I telling myself I need to travel and then stepping back from the experience when I get there?

What am I trying to avoid when I homogenize the world?

And the real doozy: Do I really want to travel—or do I just want to be free of obligation, observation, and responsibility so I can make myself more comfortable?

Of course, all of these questions are just situational reframes of the thing I've asked myself most over the past decade: What stories am I telling myself to avoid reality?

I don't know that a full answer to that question is ever possible, but I sure as hell never want to retreat from asking it.