The phone shouldn’t eat first

A few years ago, I unexpectedly lost most of my childhood photos that my mother had taken with her first iPhone, and I was devastated. As you can imagine, that was a lot of photos (the average person has 2,795 photos on their phone). But I’ve learned that I don’t need nearly as many photos as I thought to remember my life.

As smartphones became more popular and made it easier to take and share photos, people started over-documenting things. This habit of constantly taking photos and videos gave rise to the phrase “the phone eats first” on the Internet, a reminder to take a photo of the meal before eating to immortalize it in the camera roll. But what use are these digital leftovers? You certainly can’t reheat them.

I’m sure many of us have observed this behavior at concerts when you look into the crowd and see a sea of ​​phones. Or when you travel to a popular place and people spend more time with their noses in their phones instead of enjoying the view. Even a slightly pink sky is enough to make you stop and take a photo. The average American takes six photos a day.

The argument for taking lots of photos is that they help us better remember a moment and even relive it. However, research shows that taking too many photos actually has the opposite effect – it actually makes us less likely to remember things, due to the photo impairment effect.

When you take a photo you are, consciously or unconsciously, trying to produce something and this adds pressure which reduces your ability to relax and enjoy the moment. Your brain is also interrupted in processing what it sees in front of you. You will be distracted by adjusting the screen in front of you and your other senses, such as smell and hearing, which help form memory, will be less engaged.

Recording things also allows the phone to remember for you, a form of cognitive relief. You give your brain permission to forget and free up space, trusting that digital evidence will trigger the memory. I still remember what some of the photos I lost looked like, but nothing about the moment or day they were taken.

Russell Banks, an American poet and novelist, summed it up well when he wrote that taking photographs while traveling serves to “reduce and domesticate your experience and ultimately kill it.”

When I went on a class trip to Iceland in high school, my teacher told me he would confiscate our phones if he caught us looking at them instead of our surroundings. At the time, I thought he was being too strict and showing his age by denying the benefits of technology. But now I realize that he was trying to make the experience better and more memorable for us. I rarely look back on the pictures I have from Iceland because the memory of actually being at the waterfalls or glaciers is sharper and more satisfying.

Too often I see people my age staring at their phone screens. Their motivation is not only the desire to remember, but also the desire to share their experiences on social media. “Photo dumps” on Instagram have become very popular, with users posting a series of up to 15 photos to share experiences over a period of time. This is another reason why people, especially Generation Z, are motivated to take lots of photos.

But a lack of awareness of your surroundings and lack of concentration on a device can have deadly consequences. According to the Journal of Family Medicine and Primary Care, there were 259 deaths related to taking selfies between 2011 and 2017.

I’m not saying to stop taking photos, but pay attention to your surroundings and put the camera away to be present in the moment. We should not experience the world through the lens of a camera or the screen of a device.