Host a ’90s-style hangout
Welcome to week three of our monthlong summer challenge! If you’ve been with us so far, you’ve been taking device-free walks for 20 minutes daily (keep at it!), and you’ve put your phone away 30 minutes before bed. This week, we’re hosting a get-together — and phones aren’t invited. It may be 2026, but ’90s nostalgia is strong. Interest kicked off with “Love Story,” the TV series about the relationship between John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette, and hasn’t stopped. This summer, TLC is touring with Salt-N-Pepa and En Vogue. “Practical Magic 2” hits theaters in the fall. Tae Bo is back. But it’s not just the fashion or the music that fuels this longing: The ’90s were the last era before smartphones were everywhere. There was little texting, no selfies, no posting on social media, no GPS at your fingertips and no phubbing (i.e., snubbing someone for your phone). We weren’t leaving our phones on the table at lunch, “just in case.” Now our phones are with us at all times, and that comes with downsides. In a 2020 study of cellphone use and social gatherings, researchers found that one reason people looked at their phones was to “avoid conversations with others.” And there’s even research to suggest that phones actually make our quality time with others less enjoyable by making us feel more distracted and less connected. We can now create a “full archaeological record” of our time with friends, said Pamela Pavliscak, author of the new book “All the Feels: How to Stay Human in the Digital World.” On any given night, she explained, we have “the group selfie, the ‘thanks for dinner’ Venmo note, followed by the blurry Story someone posts the next morning.” “But the irony is that the more we document the experience, the easier it becomes to drift away” while it’s happening, she said. So your challenge this week is to make plans with someone you want to see — and propose a ’90s-style hangout without your phones. (And leave a comment to let me know how it goes.)
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