Let’s be honest—screens are everywhere.
They wake us up in the morning, entertain us through lunch, and often stay with us until we fall asleep.
While I’m not anti-tech (I mean, my entire career used to revolve around it), there’s no denying it’s come at a cost.
And no, I’m not talking about the typical “doomscrolling is bad” stuff—we already know that.
What I’m talking about are the small things. The little joys that once added quiet meaning to everyday life, but somehow slipped through the cracks as notifications, feeds, and digital convenience took over.
So here are five simple, beautiful things we’ve lost—or at least misplaced—since the internet became the center of everything.
Let’s dive in.
1. Uninterrupted conversations
Remember talking to someone without checking your phone every five minutes? I do. And honestly, it feels like a different lifetime.
There was a time when we’d meet a friend for coffee and actually just talk—no buzzing phones on the table, no “let me just reply to this real quick.” We were all-in—listening, reacting, laughing in real time.
These days, even the best conversations come with background noise—group chat dings, news alerts, or someone filming the moment instead of living it.
We’ve even coined a word for it: phubbing—snubbing someone in favor of your phone. And according to Healthline, nearly 32 percent of people say they’re phubbed two to three times a day. That’s a lot of missed eye contact and half-finished thoughts.
It’s not about becoming a monk or going off-grid. It’s about remembering what it felt like to be fully present with someone. That’s a kind of joy that’s hard to replicate through a screen.
2. Getting truly lost in a book
This one hits me personally.
There’s a particular magic in getting lost in a good book—the kind where hours pass and you don’t even notice. That deep, immersive reading experience has become a rarity.
These days, I’ll start reading and, within ten minutes, feel the pull to check something: a new email, a calendar reminder, a message from someone I haven’t even talked to in years.
We’re trading full mental immersion for scattered attention. And with that, we lose the joy of being so deep into a story or an idea that the outside world fades.
If you’ve ever finished a chapter and had to sit in silence just to digest it—you know what I’m talking about.
That’s the kind of joy screens have made harder to access.
3. Wandering without a purpose
When was the last time you went on a walk without a podcast in your ears or a step goal to hit?
I’m all for tracking progress—trust me, my old marketing brain still loves metrics—but I miss walking just to walk.
No destination. No playlist. No Instagram-worthy view to capture. Just walking for the sake of wandering.
As a teenager, I’d stroll without a plan and somehow always stumble upon something interesting—a park, a tiny bookstore, a local bakery I never would’ve found otherwise.
Now? I’m checking the route, pulling up Google Maps, and comparing coffee shop ratings. The spontaneity is gone.
We’ve become hyper-optimized even in leisure. And in the process, we’ve lost the joy of the unplanned, the unscheduled, the unexpected.
4. Daydreaming
There was a time when boredom was the gateway to creativity.
Long car rides. Waiting in line. Sitting on the porch. These were moments when our minds would drift. We’d come up with ideas, imagine stories, and reflect on things we hadn’t had time to process.
Now? We reach for a screen the second there’s a lull.
According to some research, the average person spends over four hours a day on their phone—most of it, I’d bet, on apps that offer zero space for reflection.
It seems that we’ve replaced mental wandering with scrolling. And while we might be “entertained,” we’re also a lot more mentally drained.
Some of my best ideas have come from being slightly bored—walking without music, waiting at the dentist, even just staring at the ceiling after waking up.
We’ve lost the mental white space. And with it, the joy of daydreaming for no reason at all.
5. Having nothing to do
Finally, let’s talk about nothing. That beautiful state of having nothing scheduled, nothing expected, nothing productive to be done.
These days, free time has become something we feel we have to fill. Watch something. Read something. Learn something. Post something.
But there was a time when doing nothing was normal. We’d sit. Stare out the window. Watch the clouds move.
And here’s the thing: that nothingness is often where our nervous systems reset.
As noted by award-winning author and wellness scholar, Robyne Hanley-Dafoe Ed.D., “prioritizing rest and time for doing “nothing” enables us to show up more fully for ourselves and others.”
In other words, “nothing” can be deeply nourishing. But now, the moment we sense a pause, we fill it. We don’t give our brains a break. We don’t let life breathe. And that’s a loss.
Putting it all together
This isn’t a call to delete your apps or throw your phone in the ocean. Tech isn’t the enemy.
But unconscious tech use might be.
We didn’t mean to lose these joys. It just happened—slowly, subtly, as screens slid into every spare moment of the day.
But here’s the good news: we can reclaim them.
Leave the phone in your bag during lunch. Pick up a physical book. Go for a walk with no plan. Let yourself be bored for ten minutes.
These aren’t big, life-altering changes. But they unlock something real.
Let’s stop putting off the simple joys. They’re still there. We just have to remember how to notice them.
