There was a time when mobile phones were called personal digital assistants, or PDAs. If you are old enough to remember that, you will also remember that they had actual, physical buttons. But I digress… for a long time, I thought they should still be called PDAs because of how little we actually used the devices as telephones. These days even PDA does not begin to describe what our phones are to us. In truth, they are much more like digital companions. But does what we call them really matter?

When you think of the device as your phone, you relate to its many functions in a fragmented way. When you are bored, you scroll through Instagram. When you are lost, you get directions to your destination. And, of course, when you want to connect with a friend, you might call or text or reach out through social media. As you do these different things, you focus on each interaction separately, not fully appreciating how they are all part of a larger relationship with the same device. As a result, even if you intellectually know that you spend too much time on your smartphone, on an experiential level, you miss the ways in which this device........

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