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The degree at which one is addicted to their phones varies. Unfortunately, other’s digital substance abuse issues will directly impact people in their contacts lists or their mutuals online, by demanding their time. At the start of the pandemic, I placed a protocol for everyone outside my inner-most circle. This protocol demanded that all communications that were not urgent or related to physically meeting had to be relegated to messaging applications or that of direct messages on a social media platform. The reasoning for this was to keep my SMS/iMessage fields clear of unnecessary notifications, read clutter, for it was being used for medical emergencies, family matters, and for work. Still to this day I keep this protocol alive, and the results go much deeper into illuminating one’s social sphere than just directing the traffic of messages on one’s device.
In a humour article in The New Yorker1 this morning, it was stated that the average human gets around two hundred and seventy text messages a day. Looking at the phones of those around me, some with more than three thousand unread messages, this is not hard to believe.
Whenever a friend or acquaintance would send me a text about something they found interesting, in most cases a new product release or to talk about a hobby we share, I always tell them to use the platforms mentioned above for such matters. What resulted was that it became very clear who was reaching out to me as a friend, and who was reaching out to me as another avenue for them to doom scroll on their phones.
Physically, we are trained to reach for our phone the moment we have any downtime, even if it is for a few seconds. When their feeds provide something fruitful, they share content in group chats. When their feeds are exhausted, they then turn to texts and direct messages.
Over the last half decade, a very clear distinction arose from those who valued my opinion on trivial matters, those who were just looking for a quick giggle while they were between flushes, and those who I consider more than just an acquaintance. Those who were friends, continued to use all the methods of communications to generally catch up as well as talk about whatever they found interesting that day. Those who were interested in simply using me to put aside their boredom as they waited for their eleven-dollar coffee to be prepared by an overqualified barista simply faded from my life. As relationships grow into the digital sphere, there is a vast swath of the population who misconstrues those they share the words “how are you?” with as actual friends. This false evaluation arises out of necessity due to the rise of loneliness as stated by countless other writers. The need to belong to a group and not be lonely is great, and we will go to great measures to fill that void if needed.
There have been more than a few dozen occasions that when I meet such friends for drinks, usually spaced out by several months, they usually saying something along the lines of “man it’s been so long! How is it that we haven’t caught up?” The answer is if either one of us actually cared about catching up, we simply would have.
An example of this occurred a couple of years ago, with a friend who I used to go on photo walks with during the pandemic. At the time, his wife was suffering from a medical condition, and I checked in through SMS on her status on a weekly basis. When she got better, I stopped, but the friendship did not stall. The photo walks continued, and the quality of our conversations when we met went up. Other similar acquaintances who were only interested in trying out a piece of gear I had, like a lens, practically disappeared from my life. And to be honest, good riddance.
If one removes the mechanism of someone reaching out over a meme they found funny, and the entire friendship slowly fades, the friendship was not a strong one to begin with, and you should not be too upset if it disintegrates.
As much as I would like to pretend that this is merely a tactic in filtering out people in my life, it still to this day is done out of necessity. Whether we like to admit it or not, we are placed on a hierarchy of importance by others. Are you someone who they will drop everything for to drive you to your optometrist appointment? If not, please send your inane chatter and musings to their DMs and let them attend to the matters of actual consequence in their life.
Time of writing, November 18th, 2025
- “Automatic-Rely Text Messages”, by Talib Babb, 11/18/25, The New Yorker