Together Alone
What roaming charges reminded me about being a better partner
Eight PM in the dying embers of August. It’s still 31 °C (88 °F) outside and still the restaurants along Sarigerme’s strip, in southern Turkey, are heaving with Brits abroad.
A few tables away from us, a holidaymaker in her 30s pushes a forlorn kofte around her plate. With her fork, she pats at the remains of an obligatory side-serving of rice, salad and chips. Again, she reaches for her phone. After a few perfunctory flicks with her thumb, again she discards it on the table.
She’s dining alone. And yet, sitting opposite her engrossed in her own device, her mother seems not to notice.
“Social media generation”, I think, congratulating myself on keeping my own phone in my pocket. Conveniently forgetting all those times friends have thrown the same accusation at me in the pub. In a restaurant. Wherever.
I start to recall something I read four years ago while researching an article. What was the book again?
I’m just about to look it up — Billy the Kid would have marvelled at my phone-slinging skills — when I remember I decided not to pay for roaming charges. £8.45 a day? No, thank you, ma’am. Mighty obliged that I am.
Ignoring the mirror being held up to me, I rejoin the conversation at my table.
It’s easy to spot inattention in others. Much harder to acknowledge it in ourselves. (Est-ce que il y a une appli pour ça?)
A few weeks later, I’m sitting on the sofa at home watching the new series of The Great British Bake Off on TV with my partner.
Except I’m not.
Not for the first time, I miss the instructions for the Signature Bake … The Technical Bake … the Showstopper Bake. And I couldn’t say who was baking what, who was doing well, or whether judge Paul Hollywood had given out any ‘Hollywood Handshakes’.
Joe: “He’s in trouble this week.”
Me: “Who is?”
Joe: “John.”
Me: “Oh yes.”
Me: “Which one’s John again?”
Social media generation? I could get all defensive and baulk at the charge. “I’m reading my Kindle.” “I’m working on a draft.” “I’m catching up on the news (from the border terriers of Instagram, obvs).”
It doesn’t matter. Whatever I’m doing, what I’m communicating to my partner is, I’m somewhere else. This programme that we both enjoy, that gives us and the friends and family in our Bake Off WhatsApp group chat a reason to connect for the next ten weeks or so, holds less interest than whatever is going on in a small, aluminium rectangle.
I’m engaged in exactly that vice that neuroscientist Dr Adam Gazzaley and psychologist Dr Larry D. Rosen diagnose in their book The Distracted Mind: Ancient Brains in a High-Tech World1:
We see it all around us. Friends sit “alone together” absorbed by the virtual world inside their smartphones and paying little attention to those in their real world. Parents take their children to the park only to spend the entire time reacting to alerts and notifications on their phone instead of engaging with their children in all-important free-play activities. Spouses, who used to watch television together and discuss what they saw and learned, now use a second screen while they attempt to divide their attention between their tablet, phone, or laptop, the content of the television and their loved one.
The reflection in the mirror comes sharply into focus.
Am I any different from the mother and daughter dining alone together at the restaurant in Sarigerme?
There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with using your phone in company. You could argue it’s no different to reading a book or a magazine. To the person you’re with, however, there’s a black box quality. It can make them feel that you’d rather be elsewhere. That you’re not really sharing in your shared activity. That while you might be with them physically, mentally you’re more interested in what’s going on over in the virtual world.
What does it mean to “spend quality time” with someone?
To spend is to give something of value. Yet, the phrase suggests it’s quality time you are giving up. It’s perhaps better to think of investing in quality time. This is an investment that is directly proportional to the attention you pay.
Roaming charges were an unexpected gift. Choosing not to pay them, and deciding not to seek out WiFi passwords away from our hotel, helped create an environment in which it was easier to be more present.
But what if both you and your partner are scrolling on your phones while watching TV? A common occurrence in casa nostra (SP casa, definitely not Cosa). Where’s the harm?
I remember something else I learnt from The Distracted Mind:
Multitasking is a myth.
Particularly when it comes to demanding tasks, our brains simply aren’t capable of multitasking. When we attempt to multitask, what’s actually going on neurologically is ‘task switching’. Our attention is divided and our ability to concentrate diminishes as a result.
I know this from my own TV-watching habits. Ask me for my all-time favourite TV dramas and I guarantee at least three of them will be Nordic noir. Borgen. The Bridge. The Killing. Tak, Denmark. Tack, Sweden. I loved them all.
Why?
The subtitles.
I’m sure the acting is top notch and the drama is gripping in its own right, but the real reason these programmes stand out for me is because I was fully focused when I watched them. To keep up with the subtitles, I had to be. Otherwise I wouldn’t have had a clue what was going on.
So are subtitles the answer? The reverse roaming charges for the small screen? No, I don’t think so. For a start, not everyone wants to watch foreign language thrillers.
But I know something else to be true. When I choose to concentrate on a TV programme, be it something you can’t take your eyes off, like Slow Horses or Guilt, or something more take-it-or-leave-it, like Taskmaster or Queer Eye, I end up enjoying it far more. It feels like 50 minutes well spent.
For watching TV, substitute any activity. Anything you think you can do while at the same time jumping on an app. Whatever the situation, whether it’s playing rope tug with your dog, listening to a podcast in your partner’s car, or watching Horrible Histories with your nine-year-old niece, give yourself the gift of giving it your full attention.
Being present is a wonderful present. For you and whoever you’re with.
This is a critical distinction about being present with people we care about that I've never heard anyone identify Simon. "To spend is to give something of value. Yet, the phrase suggests it’s quality time you are giving up. It’s perhaps better to think of investing in quality time. This is an investment that is directly proportional to the attention you pay."
I mean, if you’re chatting up GBBO on the phone while watching with loved ones that counts as a technical challenge, if not a showstopper? 😏
Jokes aside, this was a great read. It highlights a serious matter but does it with equal parts sincerity and levity. I’ll remember this post far more vividly than scientific data on the impacts of phone usage on the brain, attention span. Might just be me but I care more about what phone usage does to folks’ hearts than their minds.