I first heard the term phone world from a book called Modern Romance by Aziz Ansari. I’m fascinated by modern dating and would say I’ve spent more time than the average person thinking about and spending time on dating apps.

But this post isn’t about dating. Rather, it’s about how we’ve become farther from each other despite becoming more connected.

We’ve all been in the presence of a phone party. There’s multiple people standing around, sitting around, but there’s nothing happening. Everyone is plugged into their phone, engrossed in their phone world. This isn’t a new phenomenon, as we’ve seen commuters ignore each other since the dawn of commuting.

This isn’t the first time I’ve mentioned the term phone world. It’s one of the primary forces of loneliness in our Western world. Unlike distractions of the past, our phones persist with us throughout our lives, spanning several years of time now. Contacts, photos, and social media have created an inseparable bond between us and our phones, allowing us to always return to our comfortable world whenever we desire.

The ability to always return home is one of our first metaverse abilities. It is the ability to center or ground ourselves in digital space and reliably express ourselves. Unfortunately until our phone worlds connect, that is the end of our current state of the metaverse and it is why the best way to socially enjoy a phone party is to stand next to each and show each other what each individual phone is displaying.

Until we have the ability to enjoy an in-person live experience of our phones connecting, they will primarily be seen as a force of escape. Escape is necessary, but to have it be the only option seems disappointing. As technology develops, our connections with each other should slowly adopt a more in-person touch. We can see this from looking up directions on our PCs and printing out MapQuest, to using digital maps, to using live data, to soon asking AI.

Conceptually, it is easier to refine processes like looking up directions than it is to counter-disrupt what our phones have done to our social exchanges. Our phones and apps do try to talk to each other, and they’ll become better at it over time. The question is, do we try to talk to each other, and will we become better at it as our technology divides us?