Not too long ago I walked into a coffee house.  It was crowded but silent.  Except for the tinkering sounds of the barista behind the counter, there was no sound, no talking.  The silence was broken only by the call of the barista, "Luke, your latte is up!"  At that point, a teenage boy sitting, at a round table with 5 other of his mates, got up to get his coffee.  No one looked up, no one said boo.  After he sat back down, complete silence resumed.  I felt like I'd walked into an episode of the Twilight Zone.  That dates me for sure.  

At any rate, the silence was eery.  I looked around the room, found a chair and a small table and sat down, placing my backpack on the table.  Before I stood to order my own coffee, I sat and observed the room for a minute, maybe two.  Most of the people there were teenagers.  A couple of adults were individually sitting at small tables working on laptops.  All of the teenagers, all 10 of them boys and girls, were on their phones.  Hunched over, rounded shoulders, neck jutting out...you know the posture.  It's not a good one by the way.  All of them dead silent, texting, gaming, who knows what.  I was amazed.  It was the first time I'd ever noticed such a strange scene.  I've since come to find out it's pretty normal.  Kids getting together, not talking, just silently intent on their tiny screens, completely absorbed by tech and not each other.  I see adults do it too.  

On this particular occasion, I had that epiphany moment.  You know when truth hits you like a cold shower, when you finally see what's been under your nose all along.  It all seems so subtle, this furtive agenda, this tech addiction.   I don't know.  I do know when I was young and hanging out in coffee houses with my friends, we were engaged in lively conversations--sometimes for hours on end.   Things have changed. I sound like an old fogy!  Maybe I am.  

When I left the coffee house that day after over an hour there, not much had changed.  Teenagers were still not saying much to each other except for the occasional snicker and share, "Dude check this out," and then back to quiet.  It freaked me out.  That evening, I told my teenage son how odd I thought it was.  I said something like, "I saw the weirdest thing at Ryan Brothers today.  All these kids were together but not really because they were just on their phones the whole time.  Nobody was talking to anyone."  My son said, "Yes they were."  What?  He explained they were texting each other at the table.  My jaw dropped.  Now it was his turn to say, "What?"  To which I said, "Don't you think that's totally insane!"  His response was, "Yeah, I guess so.  But everyone does it."

Yeah, everyone does it.  So now it becomes easily something no one will do anything about even at the expense of our kids not really knowing how to communicate, articulate (even write) very well.  When I was a kid, everyone said too much TV is bad.  Was it?  I don't know.  What I do know is maybe, just maybe, paying more attention to our screens than we do each other is a bad thing.  Kudos to the dad at the park at One Paseo Del Mar yesterday.  No phone in hand, encouraging words given to his youngest, eyes engaged on all his kids, body in position to spot them as they climbed the tree structure.  Kudos to him for sure.  

Anyway, wouldn't it be cool if coffee houses had tech free hours?  Problem is would we go and talk to each other or just be annoyed the WIFI is off?  I really don't know.  Anyway, that's how I see it sometimes--especially today.