The paparazzi bench

Last year, my daughter finished second grade. Well, “graduated” is too big a word for it. She was moving from second to third in kindergarten. Still, the school had put together a whole end-of-year show. Songs, dances, the works. It was adorable.

And our school has this wonderful tradition: the paparazzi bench. Right in front of the stage, parents of the kids who are performing get called up to sit there. No one in front of you, no straining to see your child from a distance. It’s an amazing little detail, and it makes the experience so much more intimate.

So there I was, sitting on the bench, waiting for my kid’s act. Ready to watch. Ready to connect. And then I looked around.

Every single parent had a phone out. Every one.

When my kid came on stage, he spotted me right away. He saw me looking directly at him. He saw me smiling, enjoying him. We made eye contact, and in that tiny look, we connected. He was performing, I was watching, and we were sharing the moment. That doesn’t happen when you’re behind a phone screen.

I know, because I used to do it too. Film the whole performance, thinking I’d want to rewatch it. But the truth? We almost never do. Maybe once. Maybe twice. And then the video just sits on your phone. Meanwhile, while you were filming, you weren’t fully there. You weren’t really present.

These days I take one photo. Just enough to remember the day. If I really wanted a full video, I could ask another parent to share theirs. But honestly, I rarely do, because watching it back just isn’t the same.

And yet, at that event, all I could see was a sea of parents watching through their phones. Not through their eyes. Not with their whole presence. And I can’t help but think: at what point did we all stop experiencing?

Because there is a difference. When you’re there fully. When you’re watching with nothing between you and the person in front of you. All of your attention, all of your senses are tuned into the moment. When you’re holding a phone, even just a little part of your energy shifts elsewhere. Am I filming it right? Is it in frame? Will it look okay? It might only be 5% of your attention. Maybe 10%. But it’s not nothing.

And that 5% is exactly the part that makes the difference.

Because what your child sees when they look out isn’t a sea of faces. It’s a wall of phones. They don’t see eyes. They don’t see expressions. They don’t see you.

Can you imagine being a baby, reaching out for your mother, and the first thing you see is a phone lens? Not her face. Not her smile. Just the device she’s holding in front of you. It’s the same here. My son’s eyes landed on me, and he could actually see me. And I think, I hope, that meant something.

I worry about what happens if we keep losing those direct connections. I worry we’re training our kids to accept it as normal. That they’ll grow up thinking a parent’s face belongs behind a screen. That connection can be recorded instead of lived.

It’s about how we, as a society, are shaping ourselves. We are teaching our children that moments exist to be recorded, not lived. That presence is something you can outsource to a device. That connection can be substituted with content.

And it’s not just about children. It’s about all of us. We’ve already started accepting this as normal. The phone between us and the world. The filter instead of the direct experience.

I hope we find our way back. To a society where not everything needs to be captured, where some things are allowed to just exist, unrecorded. Where connection matters more than proof.

Photo by Jim Nyamao on Unsplash