Hang Up and Hang Out!
Stop the screenagers—by focusing on face-to-face interactions, we can build a stronger campus community.
The next time you walk to class, take a moment to watch what your peers are doing. More often than not, they have their heads sucked into their phones—no matter the day, no matter the time, no matter the weather. Even on a beautiful day, an astonishing number of students are looking down at their screens instead of looking around or striking up conversation.
When you arrive to class early, you may notice the same thing—awkward silence fills the room, and the only thing breaking the silence is not the sound of conversation but the clicking of keyboards and soft tapping of phone screens.
Classroom awkwardness and walking with our heads down are just two of many moments at Columbia when we trade social connection for technological isolation. It’s evidence that we have become far too dependent on our phones, even in the presence of peers who yearn to form bonds with us but are too intimidated to do so in the moment. Every time we turn to our devices instead of talking to our neighbors, we damage, even sever, our social connections, and our college’s sense of community takes a hit.
After all, we are social creatures who desire connection (hello, Aristotle from the CC syllabus!), and there is no better place than college to meet new and unexpected people. So why, when we are presented with multiple opportunities a day to meet and interact with our fellow students, do many of us retreat to the safe and familiar screens on our devices?
This issue requires us to understand the difference between relying on devices in private versus in public. When we use our devices privately, it’s a personal choice. We’re relaxing, or we need to use our phones and laptops for homework assignments, communication, and so on.
However, when we use our phones publicly—whether we’re walking to class with both AirPods in, scrolling through TikTok before a lecture starts, or checking Instagram while navigating the Hamilton stairs—it becomes a social issue. We may do this to distract ourselves or escape potential interactions, but these individual choices denigrate the sense of community on campus. When we isolate ourselves in public spaces, we create a barrier to spontaneous connection; when a large number of students choose isolation, the entire campus climate becomes filled with these barriers.
Undergraduates spend on average nearly seven hours a day on phones, according to a 2023 study on student smartphone usage. When a culture of tech addiction infiltrates student life, it fractures the already existing sense of community that we have on campus—a community that, on certain occasions, is very much alive and well. Think NSOP, Homecoming, or Bacchanal. Think of a warm September or April evening when the lawns and steps are filled with leisuring students. In these moments, campus has a different buzz, a sense of life.
Why is that? It is because people are interacting face-to-face. They are having fun together. They are open to talking to people they may not usually converse with.
In his 2024 book The Anxious Generation, NYU social psychologist Jonathan Haidt largely attributes the significant increase in Gen Z’s anxiety and mental illness to the time our generation spent on phones during childhood. In particular, ADHD diagnoses among undergraduates are up 72 percent since 2010. Anxiety and depression diagnoses are up a dizzying 134 percent and 106 percent respectively. Self-harm and suicide rates have also increased. There is more at stake here than just a sense of campus community: The public health crisis driven by our smartphone usage has created an entire generation of young adults who are socially hindered.
Part of the problem also stems from a need for instant communication and predictability in our lives. It’s especially tempting to overplan and overschedule our lives, whether it be a party on the weekend, a coffee chat, or a dinner with friends. Everyone knows the phrases: “Let me see if I can fit you into my GCal,” or “I’ll send you a GCal invite.”
But do we need this extreme sense of structure in our lives, micromanaging our day-to-day experiences down to the minute? College, after all, is the best place for spontaneity, for exploring. When else will we all eat, work, sleep, and play in the same space with our closest friends? While we are living on a college campus, we can choose not to become dependent on the constant communication and planning our technology enables.
Of course, it’s unrealistic to throw our phones away in the modern world. It is realistic, however, to practice discipline with electronic devices and better connect with people in the physical world.
Leaving phones in backpacks during class or leaving them at the front desk near the professor has been shown to improve course comprehension, improve attention levels in class, and lower anxiety. Setting screen time limits is another exceedingly simple way to reduce screen time, or at the very least, keep us mindful about how much time we are spending on our phones.
For graduating seniors, our time at this university with many of our best friends is dwindling, whether we have admitted it or not. Many of us are striving to become closer with our classmates and friends before we move to places that do not have the level of intrinsic connection a college campus provides.
For underclassmen, the implications are the same—the beauty of in-person social interaction is that its rewards compound over time. First-year students are beginning to form connections with their classmates that will grow over the next four years. Imagine walking to a class and seeing two, five, if not 10 of your friends—even if you don’t know them on a closer level, you still know of them and know who they are. We should recognize that seeing familiar faces is mentally rewarding, and developing habits that emphasize non-digital, personal interaction will strengthen the future culture of Columbia.
So, let’s hang up and hang out. Talk to someone new before class starts, strike up a conversation in the Hamilton staircase, and resist the urge to fall into the dangerous comfort of the digital world.
If we’re successful, at the end of our time in Morningside Heights when we walk the stage in our Commencement regalia, we’ll all look into the crowd and recognize so many more smiling faces sitting in the audience. Who doesn’t want that?
Mr. Ketcher is a senior at Columbia College studying economics and German literature and cultural history. He is a staff editor for Sundial.