Is anyone paying attention?

Is anyone paying attention?

There are ghosts everywhere. Do you see them? Are you terrified, too?

They’re at the park. Sitting across from each other in the coffee shop. Strolling down the street.

They’re lurking, lingering, a shell of their former selves.

They’re not like the ghosts that have been depicted in the media. There are no billowing, white sheets.

They’re wearing clothes. Like me and you.

Suits.

Dresses.

Sweatpants.

And they’re holding phones – screens – 10 inches down from their eyes, in front of their heart.

Or the place where their heart once was, before they left their body.

Before they left their lives. Before they exited their kids’ childhood, their coffee date, their stroll down the street.

Ghosts.

Not the kind that come back to haunt us, but the kind that are still alive but somewhat dead.

I watch them, recognizing the potential of fading into my phone myself.

I want to scream something in their direction, something to wake them from their unconscious slumber.

I want to point – to jump up and down while waving my arms – in the direction of their life unfolding in front of their eyes but outside of their vision.

They’re missing the magic. The mundane. The literal point of coming to Earth. To be here. To experience LIFE.

I took my two-year-old son and five-year-old daughter to the park today to do what kids do: play. They ran in jubilation around the primary-colored play structures, giggling, shouting, biting at bids for connection with each other and eagerly gazing at the adults for their engagement, too.

Except no one returned what they had served.

Because the park was full of ghosts. Insatiable ghosts, scrolling, consuming, lost in someone else’s life while their own unfolded right in front of them.

I exhaled sharply to move my frustration through. I live in an affluent city in Southern Californnia. I’m no stranger to disconnection. I’m parenting inside of a parenting paradigm that is hyperfocused on productivity, performance, and profit.

But so are you. Even if you’re not in Southern California, you’re likely reading this from somewhere in the developed, Westernized, colonized world.

Maybe you’re even reading it at a park, on your phone.

My sharp exhalation wasn’t laced with judgment. I shook my hands out, too, to release the energy.

The energy I’m struggling to put into words. Anger with a side of sadness, maybe.

Despair.

Yes, it’s despair.

I noticed the desire to yell, again. To use my throat chakra to release the energy of despair, not unlike an animal might if being dragged to its death.

“DON’T YOU SEE WHAT’S HAPPENING?!” I screamed silently in my mind while watching my kids swing merrily.

Despair.

I wondered if I’m witnessing the deevolution of humanity in real-time. The atrophy of our empathy circuitry; of the parts of our brain that wire us for connection and interdependence.

The dragging to our own death.

I wondered if in twenty generations’ time, our necks will be unrecognizable. Shortened. Tucked, to accommodate constantly looking down.

I wondered if we’d still be able to look up and see the sky. Or look out over the horizon at the orange and fushia sunset.

Maybe we wouldn’t need to. We’d have everything we need in the palm of our hands. Or by that point, via virtual reality through chips installed in our heads.

I wondered if we’d exist at all.

Because to be human is to be in connection. To be in relationship.

And our phones are taking us out of relationship. Out of connection. Out of our lives. Out of our humanity.

My thought experiment was interrupted by someone else’s toddler climbing up the slide. He wasn’t sure he had it, and no one was watching.

I moved a few steps closer, dancing the awkward dance of approaching someone else’s child to ensure their safety when the parents aren’t watching.

Another step.

Another step, while I wondered if I had overstepped.

The boy with the T-Rex shirt made it up the slide, smiled so big I could see his tonsils, and immediately looked around for his people.

Nothing.

He stared into a void. He blinked. He stopped. Immobilized, it seemed.

They were right there. Maybe 20 feet away. Sitting under a pepper tree, staring down at their phones.

They didn’t see his slide-climb, which probably sounds silly given the several hundred slide-climbs they’ve surely witnessed before, but it wasn’t the slide-climb that mattered, really.

It was the triumph. The look of glory on his face. Of pride, accomplishment, and JOY that turned almost instantly into nothingness when he realized there was no one to reciprocate his happiness.

“YOU DID IT!!!” I exclaimed, with the ear-splitting, slightly annoying enthusiasm of a well-rehearsed park-mom.

He stared back blankly. I think the sadness – the disappointment of not being seen by those he desires to see him – was too great for my false enthusiasm.

It’s pretty basic common sense that kids need to feel seen, loved, and cared for, but in case we’ve somehow convinced ourselves that this park scene doesn’t really matter, may I remind you that we are living amidst a mental health crisis?

A converging multicrisis?

And we wonder why. Or do we? Maybe we’re all internally screaming, like me.

Or maybe we’re so crushed by capitalism, by the candy we’re tossed to keep us salivating for more, more, more, that we’re not even able to see anymore.

We’ve convinced ourselves that a sea of park-parents-on-screens is normal.

Or “fine”.

Or “no big deal”.

In case you haven’t heard of Dr. Brandon McDaniel’s term “technoference” yet, let me acquaint you:

I’m not going to define it for you because…hello…but let’s explore where the burgeoning science is, since apparently common sense isn’t enough to convince any of us to put our damn phones down (see, anger – I told you!).

Sure, technoference has been linked to lower parental responsiveness and sensitivity to a child’s bids for connection, like the situation like I described above, but this isn’t just observational. Or philosophical.

It’s shifting biology. It’s biological.

A study conducted at Tilburg University in the Netherlands last June (as part of the Brains in Sync Study) had mother-infant dyads undergo a modified Still-Face Paradigm to try and understand the effects of technoference. The results (measured using EEG) found that brain-to-brain synchrony (the real-time-but-invisible neural “conversation” between mother and baby) measurably dropped the moment the mother became distracted by her phone.

The connection didn’t just “seem” interrupted; it was neurologically interrupted, captured in real time at the level of the dyad’s brain activity.

We’re not just missing mundane park moments. We’re falling out of sync. Out of the consciousness that makes us human.

We’re falling out of connection.

And it is literally connection — the delighting in each other’s existence, in each other’s slide-climbs and knowing gazes — that over the entire arc of a relationship affects the development of secure attachment.

That combines to create a human being’s sense of safety and self. These moments, stacked on top of each other, repeated thousands of times, form the literal foundation of a child’s socio-emotional development.

Of their mental health.

Attunement, sensitivity, responsiveness (the underpinnings of secure attachment and therefore mental, physical, emotional, relational health) cannot possibly be present if we’re lost in the metaverse, scrolling through TikTok videos.

The dopamine trap is real. I know no one wants to spend more time on their phone than IN THEIR LIVES.

But we’ve got to save ourselves. We’ve got to break the addiction.

We’ve got to free ourselves.

Don’t let the technocrats steal your humanness. Don’t leave your body.

Stay. Stay in it. Stay in your life.

We need you. Your kids need you. My kids need you, too.

They need to look up from their jumping and their joy and be met with kind, observant eyes and a humorous remark.

They need to be asked what their name is and what their favorite color is and what they like most about summer.

But instead they’re met with the top of people’s heads.

Lost connection. Missed connection.

Ghosts.

The kids need us. Don’t leave your body.

Stay.