Lose Your Phone, Lose Yourself
In an age where ever-growing home television screens are rapidly approaching the experience you get in a movie theater, I often think about my continued desire to go to the movies. It’s certainly not the over-priced food and drinks that lure me (though the theaters with adult beverages are most-welcomed). It’s definitely not the often-distracting gimmick that is 3D. And while some people like the notion of film being a social experience, best viewed with an audience, I am not one of those people.
Instead, what I like about going to the movies these days is much more simple: escapism. True escapism.
In the old days — meaning, basically, pre–2000s — escapism in a theater simply meant “losing yourself” in a movie. Forgetting your troubles for a couple hours, suspending disbelief, getting lost in a world probably wholly different than your own.
But these days, I feel like it means more than that.
People talk a lot about the always-on, always-connected world destroying the ability to be alone with our thoughts — myself included. But just as important, and just as lost in my view, is the escapism described above.
Now, when many of us watch a movie at home, it’s with phone or tablet in hand. Same is true with sports, both at home and in the arena/stadium. Even reading is increasingly done on devices where distraction is just a click (or push notification) away. At best, we’re often half paying attention to what we’re doing. The primary entertainment is now just background noise.
So, again, that’s why I like going to the movies. You’re still warned not to use your device before the film starts, and the darkened theater illuminates violators, quite literally. So what you have once again is two hours to get completely lost in something.
I remember this whenever I’m watching a movie at home and pull out my phone. My suspension of disbelief is immediately suspended itself. But it’s not disbelief that rushes back in, it’s the real world and all its distractions. And while in my head, I know that watching a movie start-to-finish uninterrupted is a thousand times better of an experience than with a phone in hand, I’m still guilty of this during basically every movie I watch at home. It’s just too tempting, and increasingly too “normal” to watch with device in hand.
I was thinking about this as well recently at the TED conference in Vancouver. It’s one of the few conferences that forbids the use of devices when talks are going on in the main theater.¹ What at first is uncomfortable, quickly turns refreshing. You’re actually listening, wholly focused on something other than your phone, and in a moment of peak presence, you can get lost…
The same basic notion is what I love about writing. I simply cannot do it while distracted, so I sequester myself and go down rabbit holes of ideas.
Yes, it sounds like I have a problem with focus and restraint. But I’m not ashamed to admit that. So many of us do, and I think it’s important that we all recognize this. Because it’s not just about being distracted. It’s about not being able to lose yourself and what we’re losing as a result of that.
¹ Which seems almost suicidal for a conference in the age of real-time buzz. Yet, buzz persists. And is maybe even amplified as a result of this ban.
