#Latergram: Put Your Phone Down

Whatever happened to living in the moment?

At Hangout this year, I watched a friend get super frustrated that she couldn’t get a good video of Mumford and Sons on Snapchat. To be fair, she was drunk, but her bad mood from not being able to get amazing footage killed my vibe. I just wanted to jump and dance around to “Little Lion Man”. But to be fair, I’ve be I’ve been that person too. A few weeks ago at Music Midtown, I watched a lot of Bruno Mars’ set through the iPhone screens in front of me. I was trying really hard to record “Versace on the Floor” and “When I Was Your Man”. But all I (and countless others) really got was a low quality version of a performance we could’ve been experiencing.

Why?

Because we’ve become so obsessed with recording our lives. Too many people are too busy “doing it for the ‘Gram” (wait, do people still say that) trying to get likes and followers rather than living in the present. When I finally put my phone down, I danced and sang screeched my way through Bruno’s set.  At the end of the night my feet and back hurt. We kinda lost two of our friends who left to get us water. But I had the time of my life and I enjoyed the hell out of that concert.

Let me share another story with you:

Pulling out the parking lot at Starbucks the other day, I was the witness to a pretty remarkable scene. With the exception of one table, everyone was sitting with a group or at least one other person. However, everyone was on their phone. The next thing I saw was a young woman with a little toddler. Juice box in hand, the little girl stopped at the curb and put her hand out to be held as they walked into the parking lot area. Here’s the thing, her mom/sister/babysitter was too busy looking at her phone to notice the little girl had stopped and extended her hand. I became extremely annoyed with all of those strangers. I don’t know why it bothered me so much that particular day, but I told myself I was being a hypocrite. In that moment I vowed to step back and not partake in this madness (as much) and that I’d put my phone down more. I’m encouraging you to do the same.

You may need to put your phone down if:

• You’ve almost injured yourself because you were walking and looking at your phone.
• If you’re Instagramming your food and not paying attention to your date.
• You’re too busy live-tweeting Scandal you missed most of Olivia’s monument or asterisk monologue.
• You’re in a room full of people and not engaging in the conversation or at the very least doing some people watching.

We’re so involved in this race to capture everything that’s going on around us that we’re only getting a diluted form of the actual experience. So in the next few weeks try to:

• Limit what makes it in your Snapchat story. You don’t need to take a snap of every song during your favorite artists show. At the next concert you attend, maybe take a quick video at the beginning and then put your phone away and enjoy the show.
• Talk to a stranger. Now I’m not saying go find a creep, but have a little social interaction instead of resorting through scrolling through your Instagram feed.
• Enjoy your meal, don’t Instagram it. Look some of your brunch pics are mouthwatering, but bite into that eggs benedict and get all that hollandaise sauce.  Order two baskets of duck fat fries and enjoy. No one has to know you’re on your 3rd cheat meal of the week.
• Do it IRL. Yes, in real life. Instead of browsing through Pinterest for hours, grab a friend and hit up an antique store, craft shop, or mall and browse IRL.

Go have some experiences and if you take a picture or two make it a #latergram and keep living in the moment. Or just put your phone down and make a conscious effort to go screen free because real life is out there waiting for you to experience it.

What about you? Are you good about putting your phone down and getting the full experience? Leave a comment below!