Connected but absent

We have a strange way of being together these days. You can have dinner with someone while chatting with someone else on your phone. Work in the same room as your colleagues while being absorbed in a conversation elsewhere. Be on a video call while checking your emails at the same time.

We're physically together, but our attention can be elsewhere.

Digital technology has made this extremely easy: several conversations, several spaces and several people can all remain within reach at the same time.

Being together no longer really guarantees being together

Before smartphones, leaving a conversation usually meant doing something visible: walking away, standing up, picking up another phone, opening a newspaper…

Today, sometimes all it takes is looking down for a few seconds.

The person in front of you doesn't necessarily know what you're looking at. And you can come back to the conversation almost immediately.

But these small shifts in attention can change the way a moment is experienced. A conversation can become less fluid, a meal can be punctuated by micro-interruptions, someone can feel they're talking without having your full attention.

Presence then becomes harder to perceive.

And it works both ways

This isn't necessarily something you do to others.

You can also be the one waiting for someone to put their phone down. You're telling a story and the other person is looking at their screen. You're in a meeting and several participants are replying to their messages.

The feeling of absence can come from your own digital habits, but also from those of the people around you.

The point isn't to single out who is "misusing" their phone. Digital technology has simply made possible a kind of presence shared across several places.

A new kind of presence?

Being with someone no longer necessarily means giving them your full attention.

And that can be perfectly fine in some situations: quickly checking a piece of information, dealing with an emergency, looking at something together…

The problem arises when physical presence remains, but the shared moment gradually loses its place.

That's where digital technology becomes interesting to observe: not just for the time we spend on our screens, but for the place they take up in the moments we share with others.

Key takeaway

Digital technology allows us to be present in several places almost at the same time. But being physically together no longer guarantees that we're truly sharing the same moment. Sometimes, a few seconds of attention elsewhere are enough to change the quality of an interaction.