Modern Romance Read Online Free PDF Page B

higher than the numbers in most European countries, where people spend “only” 5 to 7 hours per day with screens, yet it’s not nearly enough to put the United States in the top five nations: China, Brazil, Vietnam, the Philippines, and, in first place, Indonesia, where people spend 9 hours per day staring at a screen. 8
    That 7.5 hours number is really high, but I charted my own use and it doesn’t seem too implausible. Today is a fairly normal Sunday morning in Los Angeles for me. I woke up and spent a while texting with my friends Nick and Chelsea about a potential brunch destination. I then hopped on my laptop to research the suggested restaurants. I went on Yelp and the restaurant pages to peep the menus and did random browsing in between (reading whatever silly headlines caught my eye on Reddit * and watching highlights from the previous night’s
Saturday Night Live
), then eventually, after about twenty back-and-forths that lasted an hour and seven minutes, Chelsea and Nick decided they just wanted to go to a casual diner nearby. I didn’t feel like going there. We didn’t even end up getting brunch together.
    Instead I went to another place, Canelé, with another brunch crew. During that brunch, a Nelly song came on and I researched the Nelly Wikipedia page, as one must do anytime Nelly-related questions plague one’s mind. After brunch, on the way home, I texted with a few other people about potential dinner plans. * And now I’m at home on a laptop again, typing out stuff for this chapter that you are reading right now, possibly on a screen as well!
    The way I spent the day trying to plan brunch is remarkably similar to how my tenure in the single world went as well: making or attempting to make plans on my phone with whoever was in my dating orbit at the time. Like my brunch with Chelsea and Nick, many times these plans would eventually fall through. And in the same way I cautiously researched these restaurants, young singles are researching one another—on dating sites or social media sites or even just doing general Googling to get a better sense of a potential date.
    As I’ve come to see it, we’re spending so much time with our digital devices because we’ve all developed our own personal “phone worlds.”
    Through our phone world we are connected to anyone and everyone in our lives, from our parents to a casual acquaintance whom we friend on Facebook. For younger generations, their social lives play out through social media sites like Instagram, Twitter, Tinder, and Facebook as much as through campuses, cafés, and clubs. But in recent years, as more and more adults have begun spending more and more time on their own digital devices, just about everybody with the means to buy a device and a data plan has become a hyperengaged participant in their phone world.
    Phone world is the place you go when you want to find someone to see a movie with. It’s where you go to decide what movie to go see. It’s where you buy the tickets. It’s where you let your friend know you have arrived at the theater. It’s where your friend tells you, “Shit, I’m at the wrong theater,” and where you say, “What the fuck, man? You always do this. Fine. I’m off to see
G.I. Joe: Retaliation
alone, AGAIN.”
    And now that our phone worlds are integral to even the most mundane of tasks, of course, they are also a big part of where we live our romantic lives.
     • • • 
    Today, if you own a smartphone, you’re carrying a 24-7 singles bar in your pocket. Press a few buttons at any time of the day, and you’re instantly immersed in an ocean of romantic possibilities.
    At first, swimming through that ocean may seem amazing. But most modern singles quickly realize that it takes a ton of effort to stay afloat, and even more to find the right person and get to shore together.
    There’s so much going on in those waters, so many quick decisions and difficult moves to make. And of all the challenges, there’s