Are We Still Experiencing Life Together?

“What’s wrong with everyone today?” Tyler asked me during a break. “Why aren’t people interacting anymore?”

I paused for a moment, letting my mind wander through a trail of thoughts—somehow landing briefly on the story of the Tower of Babel. In that moment in history, people united with incredible energy to build a city and a tower reaching toward heaven, determined to make a name for themselves. We all know how that story ended. Realizing I had drifted a little far from Tyler’s question, he brought the conversation back with a simple memory.

One of his favorite moments came from when he first moved away for college. Like many poor college students, he and his roommates didn’t have much—just a small 16-inch TV with a built-in VHS player and no internet. But one evening stands out in his mind. The roommates sat elbow to elbow on the floor, huddled around that tiny screen watching a random movie from the 1970s. The movie itself was good, but that wasn’t the point. What made it memorable was the shared experience—the laughter, the closeness, the simple joy of being together.

Moments like that seem harder to find today.

Three-hour movies and long conversations have slowly been replaced by sixty-second clips, quick reels, and endless scrolling. Our screens have grown larger—80-inch 8K televisions that can be viewed from across the room—but somehow our shared experiences have grown smaller. In many cases, we’ve traded gathering together for consuming media alone, each person absorbed in their own phone.

Tyler remembered visiting a coworker one evening who was deeply focused on his phone. He talked to him for about fifteen minutes before realizing he hadn’t responded to anything he had said. Finally, Tyler stopped and asked, “Hey—what did I just say?”

The friend looked up only after he repeated the question and said, “What?”

He hadn’t heard a word.

These stories make us wonder: how has technology changed our relationships? Has it reshaped the way we experience life together? Or is this simply the natural evolution of how we connect?

Maybe the real question isn’t whether technology is good or bad—but what it’s replacing.

We’d love to invite you into the conversation.

How has modern media—and the many ways we consume it—changed your shared experiences with others?