DMs Are Great. So Is Dinner.
On balancing digital connection with real-world presence.
In Eating alone in the age of connection, Gloria Mark reflects on the growing trend of people eating alone—or, rather, in the sole company of their smartphones.
The ritual of shared meals, long a touchstone of human connection, now competes with the distraction of screens. > The smartphone is the silent, omnipresent companion.
But, Gloria argues, this comes at the expense of our quality of life:
The tradition of commensality—sharing meals together—has long been revered across cultures. It is more than just a means of sustenance; > it’s a marker of community, a statement that life is richer when shared.
Sharing meals and drinks is a tradition that dates back many thousands of years. In A History of the World in 6 Glasses, Tom Standage traces the ritual of sharing a drink as far back as the third millennium AD.
From the start, it seems that beer had an important function as a social drink. Sumerian depictions of beer from the third millennium BCE generally show two people drinking through straws from a shared vessel. By the Sumerian period, however, it was possible to filter the grains, chaff, and other debris from beer, and the advent of pottery meant it could just as easily have been served in individual cups. That beer drinkers are, nonetheless, so widely depicted using straws suggests that it was a ritual that persisted even when straws were no longer necessary.
The most likely explanation for this preference is that, unlike food, beverages can genuinely be shared. When several people drink beer from the same vessel, they are all consuming the same liquid; when cutting up a piece of meat, in contrast, some parts are usually deemed to be more desirable than others. As a result, sharing a drink with someone is a universal symbol of hospitality and friendship.
As our working environments become increasingly remote and distributed, it can be tempting to focus on online relationships, especially for introverts. After all, it’s more likely to find job opportunities and people with similar interests online.
The new online relationships can be deep, useful, and satisfying, but in growing them we shouldn’t neglect the offline relationships that ground us. We still need real, in-person connections.
And it’s the same technology that some attack as the culprit for the erosion of in-person connections that creates the opportunity to spend more time together. Take remote work, for example. If a company operates in a truly distributed way, employees have plenty of flexibility for coffee or lunch dates with friends
And while most job opportunities are likely to come from your online network, there’s much more that can come from nourishing offline relationships with people you can actually share a space with. Which is why, by the way, remote companies invest in bringing distributed teams together in the same location throughout the year.
Looking into a smartphone during a meal can keep you connected to faraway friends—which is wonderful, as long as it doesn’t disconnect you from those right in front of you. It’s all about finding the ratio that works for you.
When we use our time and devices intentionally, we can build strong online networks and deepen real-world bonds.