Freed: Adult phone-a-holics need a law to protect us, too

Montreal Gazette

12-07-2025

I was waiting for my tennis partner at a west-end park last week, so I pulled out my phone to catch up on the newest news.
But a well-dressed 50-something man on the next bench said sternly: 'Sorry, no phones in the park. Show some courtesy, please.'
'Huh,' I said with surprise, as nowadays that's practically like asking someone not to breathe.
'No phones in the park,' he repeated. 'It's a park tradition. Phones are anti-social. Courtesy, please.'
Looking at his fixed gaze, I knew I had two choices: walk away to use my phone elsewhere, or engage with him.
So I engaged, saying: 'You know, I've sat here for years beside dozens of people and no one's ever mentioned that, uh, park 'tradition.' You must be an unusual person.'
'Indeed, I am,' he said.
Then we had an engaging 15-minute chat about phones, courtesy, tennis and life.
Our conversation proved his point, because we wound up being more social than if I'd stuck to my phone.
But the fact his initial demand startled me shows how far we've come in our addiction to the tiny know-it-alls in our pockets.
Just 10 years ago, I would tell our son how rude it was to look at a phone when others were talking. But now that's just how most people act, typing while talking to you and murmuring: 'Sorry. I'm just texting back my grandson' (or accountant or masseur or cat).
We are in an abusive relationship with a six-inch glass and metal rectangle that buzzes us all day.
Quebec just adopted regulations banning phones in schools because kids are watching their phones, not their profs.
'When there are no cellphones, young people talk,' said Quebec Education Minister Bernard Drainville.
Let's hope the law helps the young, but what about us adults? We, too, are phone-a-holics who need a law to protect us — from ourselves.
The average person now spends 88 days a year on the phone; that's nine years of our lives staring at a small screen, let alone a big one. We're living through a phonedemic.
We all know our phones are making us less social, sleepier, dumber and lonelier, according to countless studies. But we cling to them obsessively because they are amazing magic wands that constantly entertain and distract us.
Stand by a bus stop, supermarket line or even a busy red light and everyone's looking down, not at the traffic.
People walk into revolving doors or other people while reading Instagram posts on mindfulness.
Bored during a highrise elevator ride, we refresh our messages 11 times, because who knows what may have happened between floors?
We're all on message alert like surgeons on call, although our most urgent text will be 'get some milk.'
Many people now sleep with their phones. Some probably get buried with them in case they get calls in the afterlife.
It's a particularly noticeable problem for many phone-addicted teens who get more lonely the more online friends they have.
It's easy not to chat with others at gatherings (or in a park) when you can always chat on social media or text/emoji the person three seats down.
It's easier not to engage when you look totally absorbed in your screen, like you're receiving urgent messages from the prime minister.
Yet studies show people are less social and more lonely since the spread of social media. The information age is also the isolation age.
I always compare cellphone addiction to cigarettes in their heyday. Like people did with cigarettes, we take our phones out any time we're anxious, bored, fidgety or just crave a hit.
In restaurants we lay them conveniently on the table like people did their cigarette packs, when you could still smoke in restaurants.
Like cigarette companies, phone companies target the young and addict them for life. But instead of nicotine addiction, we're addicted to the dopamine of each ding!
After sex, I'll bet way more people reach for cellphones than cigarettes.
Obviously, cigarettes are far more deadly than phones, with few pluses. I can't recall any cigarette pack that had a portable flashlight, GPS, music app, heart-rate monitor and the World Wide Web.
But phones are far more distracting and disabling than cigarettes ever were.
The irony is phones let us connect with the whole planet. But many people are losing their connections with other people.
Lately, some are trying to break up with their phones, or at least cool the toxic part of the relationship.
There are countless apps that let us monitor our screen time and buzz us when we're OD-ing.
But that often means looking at your phone by taking it out of your pocket and diving in again.
I suspect that 20 years from now we may look back at this phonedemic era like we do the cigarette's heyday, surprised we allowed something so mentally harmful to seem so utterly pleasurable.
By then, there may be lots more people like my park guy saying 'no phones, courtesy, please' than people like me staring at them.
Until then, it has been nice talking, but my phone is buzzing.
It must be the prime minister.