Editor’s letter

Michael Cera is living my dream life. To be clear, I’m not envious of his Hollywood success or his status as the go-to Millennial for oddball acting roles. What I’m really jealous of is his ability to exist without a smartphone (see People, p.10). Cera, 35, has been a conscientious phone objector since the BlackBerry era, when the sight of friends writing endless emails during meals out—and ignoring the people around them—left him feeling lonely and worried that he’d lose control of his “waking life” if he owned a device. So now Cera exists in a world slightly removed from the rest of us. He has no social media, no Google Maps to help him get from A to B, no search engine to instantly look up forgotten facts. If he has a quiet moment, he won’t whip out his smartphone for entertainment. Instead, Cera says, “I’ll just be bored.”

As an admitted smartphone addict, I’m rarely bored. But I am painfully aware that this glowing rectangle and the dopamine hits it delivers are stealing my attention from the physical world. I spend more time mindlessly watching Instagram videos from guitar influencers than I do playing my actual guitar. If I go on a hike with the aim of soaking up the joys of nature, I’ll likely use a trail app to guide me through the woods, which means I’ll be checking my phone—and its notification-littered home screen— every few minutes. Recognizing that our iPhone habits are probably engraved deep in our temporal lobes, my wife and I have turned our anti-screen efforts toward our 7- and 10-year-old. No iPads are allowed in the car, so the kids must endure the boredom and endless games of I spy that characterized our childhood road trips. We’ve bought them old-fashioned boomboxes, complete with cassette players, so that they can listen to music in their bedrooms without their tablets—and without the temptation to click on YouTube or Roblox. I’m sure they’ll get hooked by smartphones eventually, but for a few glorious years at least, they’ll be living in the real world.