As I walked down 90th and Broadway, I noticed a man in a classic blue and orange Mets t-shirt. As a diehard Mets fan who happened to lose track of their 162-game schedule, my first instinct was to ask this dad-sandal-wearing, middle-aged man if he knew what time today’s game was. Yet as I proceeded closer it struck me, “What am I doing? This is a ten-second Google search.” I swerved away from my Mets buddy and dumped my curiosities into my phone. The game was at 7:10.  

Afterwards, I wondered what memorable interaction I might have just missed out on. Maybe my question would have bloomed into a 20-minute conversation about the nuances of Mets baseball (nuanced indeed), or maybe our chat would have steered away entirely from the realm of sports. All I know is that within the solace of my phone, I lost out on something important: human connection.

Before 24/7 accessible cell phones, you had to seek out someone physically. You would knock on a friend’s door if you had a question or a quick story, or you would stop a stranger on the street if you wanted to know where the subway was. Even at the computer’s inception, when the MacBook was just a clunky Macintosh, internet use was a communal activity. If you had a question, you would go to the family room and dial up. While you browsed the world wide web, your siblings were probably hanging around antagonizing you or just chatting amongst themselves.

In losing this opportunity to socialize and communicate, we are losing a crucial part of what it means to be human. In a study conducted by the American Perspectives Survey, by 2019, the hours Americans spent with friends per week dropped from six-and-a-half hours to four. Since 1990, the percentage of American adults with no close friends has quadrupled to 12 percent. Additionally, 15-to-24-year-olds spend an extra two hours a day at home compared to numbers from 2006.

While there is a clear sign of social regression occurring as a result of phones, we are also feeling the absence of socialization on a biological level. Research shows that auditory signals from familiar voices (such as a parent) catalyze the release of oxytocin, a calming hormone triggered by a maternal environment, while also decreasing levels of salivary cortisol, a hormone released during stressful social situations. Such hormonal secretion does not occur in response to written word because it lacks the emotional, prosodic component of speech.

This shortage of talking also impacts the people around you, specifically children. I’m sure we’ve all seen those grubby kids in restaurants tapping away at their bulky iPads and thought it was a sad sight. But what is particularly depressing about this scene is the amount of verbal stimulus the child is missing because they’re so engrossed in Cocomelon, or even because their parents themselves are spellbound to screens.

Studies show that language development is positively correlated with parent-child interaction, this development stemming back as far as prenatal. Indeed, by around the third trimester, the child begins to recognize speech patterns and cadence. After the child is born, they are more familiar with speech patterns that later contribute to the acquisition of a first language.

However, children with linguistic delay are shown to demonstrate more behavioral problems than children who have more frequent interaction with speech (whose mothers spoke to them while in and out of the womb). For example, an important part of behavior is impulse control, and impulses can be inhibited through self-speech (speaking to oneself to guide their actions). However, children who lack the ability to form these thoughts and communicate with themselves are more likely to rebel or react to problems physically rather than verbally.

Speech and socialization are crucial parts of human development and happiness, stemming back to the womb. So put down the phone, put down Google and tell that old lady on the street that you like her polka-dot shirt, ask that Mets guy what time the game is on, go knock on your friend’s door to tell her about your nightmare hookup story and talk to your kid instead of shoving a crusty iPad in their face.

Sally Mendelsohn can be reached at [email protected].