Smartphones Steal Our Lives

While mobile technology was supposed to liberate us from our desks, Rebecca Traister notes that they now make us feel like we never have any free time. “We have created a monster that is consuming us,” writes Traister. “And I don’t mean that “the Internet is bad” in that hypocritical and falsely ascetic way. I mean that we, along with the phones that travel with us, the texts we type in movie theaters, the instant messages we receive now even on some planes, the social media many of us are expected to participate in on behalf of our jobs, and the complexes and work ethics we have all inherited from our diverse array of guilt-generating forebears, have bubbled together into a frenzy of ceaseless professional engagement that is boiling us dry.”