Do you know that one person who is constantly scrolling on their phone?  They think they can have a conversation while doing so, but it almost feels like you are talking to yourself?  And then -- when they finally do say something --  it has NOTHING to do with the conversation?  I know you know a person like this, and I sincerely hope that you are not that person while talking to your friends.

Isn’t it obvious why this annoys me?  As people, we only have so much time each day to interact with those others and people choose to waste those precious moments on Instagram or TikTok.  These social media platforms are not completely and utterly pointless, but they come pretty close.  I mean, it is one’s own life to use as they see fit, but choosing to waste it on improving their status that is stored in just a few bytes of data rather than their real-life just doesn’t make sense.

Sometimes, over the course of a weekend, I’ll ask one of my brothers (who already spent the entire morning playing Clash of Clans or Brawl Stars) if they want to play a board game, go outside to bike, or help make something in the garage, and they will be too engrossed in their little tiny avatar to even respond to me.  Yes, this is fairly trivial; I could go biking alone, play a game of solitaire, or code by myself, but I want to be with others!  It is significantly more fun to go on a group ride, play a game of Monopoly, or build a robot with others than doing any of these things alone.  The fact that they could not even spare the two seconds to respond to me just drives me crazy!

Other times, between classes, I’ll be “talking” to a friend.  I wouldn’t really call it talking because, while it might sound like a conversation to someone just passing by, all of their attention is diverted towards their phone and the obnoxious posts that they are scrolling through.  What shocks me about this is that when they only have four minutes to talk with friends in the middle of the day, they are choosing to zone out and ignore me in favor of the Instagram posts of a famous person that they do not even know!

Although it drives me insane that people even consider being on their phone while talking to their friends, it does give them an opportunity to decompress and relax while scrolling through posts.