Because they don't want your brain to rot
Hello guys :D
I went to Verizon’s Digital Wellness summit last week, hosted by Drew Barrymore and it was kind of amazing.
Day of the Summit
I never thought I’d hear the consumer CEO of Verizon (Sampath) say “Put down your phone” and yet here we are. It’s sort of gorgeous and it’s making me think a lot about hardware versus software and labor.
Tech is very cool. You know that. I love that yes you can consume, but you can also create stuff. I love tech when I’m creating and as Drew Barrymore spoke about how long it took her to learn boundaries, I realize my own obsession with digital boundaries and how becoming what I now realize was a child influencer could also create the same struggle with boundaries in what I’m realizing is the internet, which is also “A Place that you go.”
I’m also thinking of hardware versus software when it comes to consumption, physicality, and labor. We are constantly consuming content, which makes me think of labor and intellect. We are perpetually doing intellectual labor and we are psychologically overwhelmed.
Intellect is no longer memorization or recall because everything is constantly accessible (as long as you have the hardware on you.) It’s almost like: You’re addicted to Instagram, which I’d like to personify as the little monster from gremlins. And he’s fun until you get him wet, or you are doom scrolling at 11 pm sending messages to strangers. So to keep the gremlin at bay, yes put your phone down. Leave it at home. Go just be in the world with your friends. You will be surprised by how fun and bright the world is when you leave it at home.
Amy Nakamoto said something interesting about Neurology and science curriculums—that children are being taught the neurology of screen addiction, which is amazing. I also think that there’s a spiritual component that could be added here that I hope I am doing at least a little for you all when I talk about my belief in God.
The last thing I want to discuss is something that Donna Epps said about dinner table conversations and parents being busy. Parents are busy. Busier than ever and probably under paid and it had to do with tech and labor and payments and abstraction. I’m working through this subject across my business and will have more synthesized thoughts on it soon.
“If you are doing something from the moment you wake up to the moment you go to sleep, you would say ‘that’s too much’.” - Drew Barrymore.
Gosh, this was brilliant. And in true Hailo fashion I came in a vintage pink leather set from Kansas and miu miu boots and strawberry gum and a pink keyboard to take notes with.
I am so happy that conversations like this are happening. And I’m so happy that women are a part of it, because we need more women platformed (and paid in the tech space).
Like me. Hailo. A tech founder I guess, because I do have my own media company, with a large part of that media being digital.
So, as the recipient of the screenshotted texts said to me after a date at Basement “there is a Prince quote that says to use the computer and not let it use you.”
The internet is a place that you go. And you get to leave it at home, like Verizon says.
I am going to put my phone down (like a computer) and and go play these giant games she hasBecause like Drew and Sampath said, for the first five minutes you don’t know what to do (like the first thirty seconds of a cold plunge) but then you start to think of beautiful things and you feel a little younger and you:
PLAY <3
Oh and PS - I heard they are taking these across the country this summer so stay tuned!
A few days later
Now I am finishing this in Princeton New Jersey before going on a run. My phone is dead (I let my phone die a lot, because I know that I never need it), but I wanted to wrap this up by saying that after the giant games, I had a chat with Sampath–the CEO of Verizon– and he was very into Hot Literati. He also implements gorgeous tech-boundaries in his own home, using practices around which rooms/physical spaces phones should be used in. Remember how you used to have to go to your computer in a kitchen or home office? We can recreate that and finally have some digital peace.
You all have so much more power than you think. Over your minds. Over the worlds that we’re in together (both the digital, and the physical).
I believe in you to have healthy boundaries between the two. You need to walk around and do things with other people to build what Sydney Hess of Golin called “the gray matter of relationships.” I am once again thinking about neurology and how we’re building digital networks while we let the physical ones atrophy.
I’m going to find a charger because I know my family gets anxious when I let my phone die, but I’m going to spend most of today, present, with Hailey Cognetti, because when I don’t have my phone, I’m inhabiting the world God made instead of the one we’re trying to. And when I leave my phone at home, I personally find it easiest to hear God.
Xx
Hailo
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