It’s an odd sensation to feel isolated despite sitting in a restaurant with two of my closest friends. Why do I feel isolated? Because silence hangs over our lunch table as if I am hanging with strangers who I’ve never talked with. I’m ignorant. Both of them keep looking at their cell phones constantly as if like they haven’t touched their phones for months.

Today’s cell phones reduce verbal communication among people. Even when I am talking, I discover that my friends keep texting and avoid looking at me during our entire conversation. They can hardly ignore a notification sound on their mobile, and they always end up texting back in what seems like an endless thumb-to-screen conversation. Sometimes I am so jealous of their online friends because I can’t do anything to make my speaking interesting and make my friends respond to me. At the same time, I looked like a strange person among them without my phone in my hand.

Maybe I’m the only person who says that today’s smartphones are distracting while having lunch with others. But everyone enjoys giving priority to their phones over enjoying the food in the restaurant. It is so annoying to see cell phones flying over the lunch table in restaurants, plus waiting for people to finish taking pictures is frustrating.

Several times, I’ve been a trouble maker for destroying a hundred “like” worthy photos of a lunch table by scooping the food first before the picture was taken. One of my friends will inevitably blurt out “Wait! Let’s take the picture first.” Maybe I should start to say “It can wait” when I’m in the restaurant trying to eat.

Not long ago, I was talking about one movie that I’ve watched in my film class to my mom. My enthusiastic retelling about the story paused for a while when I realized that she wasn’t even responding to me. Then I’m sure that she didn’t hear everything that I’ve said when I discovered her holding the mobile in her hand with a Facebook chat box still open.

Sometimes, I long for the massive cell phones of the 90’s . All they needed was for you to punch the dials in phone and hit the call button. That’s it and nothing more than that. Those cell phones are not offensive to me at all. Before the invention of today’s smart phones, I talked endlessly with my buddies wherever we were at. My movie lover mom listened carefully to me without a blink in her eyes when I was talking about a movie. I cannot go back to those good old times in today’s smartphones era.

People do not even realize that they are becoming a slave to their smart phones, giving recognition to their phones wherever they are at. Also, my classmates do not perceive that using cell phones during class time is not beneficial for themselves, or for the others around them. Having someone texting during the group discussion can reduce focus on material with an awkward image of them silently looking down at their crotch while other group members are engaging in discussion. It is needless to say it must be frustrating for professors to see their students looking down at their cell phones while they are teaching.