“I’m trying to tell you something important.” 

I finally caught the strain in his voice and dropped my phone. Tommy glanced over at me, the bleak December landscape flying past us, shadows filling the car, and looked hurt. 

“I’m actually upset about this.”

“I’m sorry. I’m listening.” My fingers itched to pick the phone back up, that stupid, inconsequential article begging to be finished. “I thought we were done talking about it.”

Did I actually think that? Or had my brain just moved on? Distractible as a dog spotting a cheese cube halfway through dinner. I had picked up the phone without realizing it, read without engaging. And beside me, my husband was trying to tell me something that was visibly affecting him. 

I hate when I do that. I genuinely hate it. But sometimes it still happens. There’s a lot that continues to happen even when I’d rather it stop. 

If you’re an older adult (hey, Mom) or a teenager, you may not remember when Facebook was actually any good. Back in the good old days (2008 for me), Facebook was not a place where you shared recipes that no one else cared about, videos of moms ranting at you from their cars, or articles about double homicides in Alberta. Facebook was the place where you told people what you were doing.

The status update was literally posed as: [Your Name Here] …..

That’s why I have a stash of posts as a sixteen-year-old where I say things like: “Elizabeth Yoder is reading.” Or “Elizabeth Yoder is dancing to Christmas music with her dog.” If you posted a picture, be prepared to get two likes. And if you say something really inane like, “Elizabeth Yoder is hungry” (true story), be prepared to experience no response at all, because that wasn’t the point. 

And yeah, it was dorky, but you got online to see what other people were doing. You didn’t log in to check notifications (I had dozens before my sister reminded me I was supposed to check them). You logged in to see who was online and how they were feeling. 

In the era when I still had to count how many texts I was using in a month, it was absolute gold to see that my best friend was online or that the cute boy in the twelfth grade had forgotten his biology textbook and needed help.

We voraciously read each others’ About Mesections and learned each other’s favorite quotes, movies, books. We filled those out with pride. There were far fewer sexy posts by the Christmas tree and less frequent boasts about how many times we’d seen the Tour d’Eiffel. We weren’t interested in strange political beliefs or the exploitations of free press, we were interested in each other. 

Okay, it wasn’t as great as I’m making it sound. But it’s hard not to miss the days when I didn’t waste hours scrolling (probably because I had sixteen friends but I digress). I spent the currency of time talking to people, reading about them, and sharing pieces of me. 

These days it feels like I can log into a social media tool and scroll for a few minutes before realizing that my brain has kicked into auto-fly and I didn’t see a darn thing that actually enriched my existence on earth. We don’t click on our high school friend’s blog or learn from the perspective of our neighbor who grew up in Malaysia. Instead we click on posts written to be inflammatory and start believing that the man who threw his plastic straw into the ocean is our worst problem. We scroll through a bottomless Instagram, more interested in Lamborghinis and Meghan Markle’s latest outfit than we are about our real world.

Now before you start getting offended, I fully admit that I am a millennial. I grew up in the age of the internet where I got my first email address in the second grade (poobeth@cisinternet.net. Supposed to be Pooh-Beth. Whatever, Dad). Facebook, Instagram, Twitter can be beautiful things, connecting us around the world in ways our grandparents never could have imagined. Tools that increase our awareness of social injustice, keep us in touch with that distant cousin, and alert us to the latest recall on romaine lettuce. 

But as with any human thing, it’s all about how you use it, right? And in a lot of ways, our use of social media drives us further apart rather than closer together. The highlight reel of vacation in the Bahamas becomes pre-eminent over the recent passing of someone’s mother. The funny anecdote about parenthood is buried under the deluge of partisan complaint.

We’ve stopped hearing each other. Stopped noticing that So-and-so sounds kind of depressed or that your own sister is lonely. We post the obligatory “Happy Birthday” and “love” the appropriate posts, without realizing we’re doing it. We can’t see because we aren’t really engaging. We’re just flying through, never touching down.

Maybe it’s just me and you’re reading this wishing I’d leave the choir alone. But as I looked at my husband’s face that day in the car and saw how frustrated he’d grown without me even noticing, I felt the shame Snoop must experience when he’s caught with half his body in the kitchen trash can. 

I’m sorry. I wasn’t paying attention. 

It’s almost a new year, so if there’s any commitment I try to make for January 1^stmaybe it should be this – to be present. To resist the itch to scroll, ignore the desire to pick up my phone just because I’m bored. To pay attention when I am on social media. To celebrate being your friend. To soak up the details that make me alive.

I’ll continue to screw up. Continue to scroll through your pictures when I should be talking to you instead, but I’m going to fight to be aware of it. After all, life is short and there’s nothing to share if you’re not out there living it. Those funny Facebook posts aren’t going to write themselves. 

If you’d like some practical advice to avoid growing old with your Facebook app still open, these tricks have worked for me:

1) Be aware of how much you’re on social media. Most smart phones now have built-in tools or apps that can monitor your usage. Sometimes just seeing the years of life tossed like apple seeds into the vast expanse of the inter-webs can be enough to set you on the straight and narrow.

2) Set limits. Previously for a New Year’s resolution, I’ve limited myself to only opening Facebook three times a day for five minutes at a time and found I was happier with that amount. Self-discipline. We could all use more of it.

3) Keep your brain plugged in. If you feel yourself going slack-jawed over the sheer amount of stupid videos you’re passing, it’s time to shut it down.