A few weeks ago, I was on a late train back from a career fair.
I was tired but couldn’t sleep. The kind of restless where you want to drift off but your body won’t cooperate.
Normally, I’d reach for my phone. Check messages. Read something. Fill the silence. But that night, I didn’t.
I wanted to sleep and didn’t want my brain to be distracted, so I kept the phone in my pocket.
And then I looked up.
What I saw
The train was quiet. Students heading back somewhere. A few families. Some older passengers. Nothing unusual about any of it.
But without my phone as a buffer, I started actually watching people around me. And this is what stopped me cold: almost everyone was on their phone, but nobody was doing anything with it.
Nobody was typing messages. Nobody was reading with any kind of focus. Nobody was in a conversation.
People were just scrolling. Slowly. Passively. Eyes glazed over. Thumbs moving on autopilot.
You know those scenes in movies where a villain hypnotizes an entire room, and everyone just sits there, blank-faced, waiting for commands?
It looked exactly like that.
Families were sitting next to each other and scrolling in silence. A couple across the aisle, her head on his shoulder, both of them staring at separate screens. A student with his thumb dragging down glass. And none of it looked intentional. None of it looked like anyone had decided: “I’m going to spend the next 20 minutes doing this.”
It was just... happening to them. The feed was deciding what they’d see next. One piece of content after another, served up by an algorithm that’s gotten very good at knowing exactly what will keep your thumb moving.
Absent, not addicted
Here’s the thing that rattled me. We talk about phone addiction all the time. But addiction implies craving, compulsion, some kind of desperate need. You picture someone anxiously checking notifications, unable to resist the pull.
This wasn’t that.
This was just an absence. Pure and simple. Bodies were there on the train, but minds were nowhere.
Not pulled toward something irresistible. Just... gone. Surrendered to whatever the algorithm decided to serve next.
That’s a different problem. Addiction, you can fight. You can white-knuckle your way through cravings, lock apps, set timers, or go cold turkey. But how do you fight something you don’t even notice happening? How do you resist a pull you’re not aware you’re feeling?
We’re sleepwalking into this. Handing over our attention so gradually, so quietly, that it became the default.
It is the thing you do when you have nothing to do. The place your mind automatically goes when left unattended for more than thirty seconds.
That’s what I mean by daze. Not confused. Not struggling. Not even particularly unhappy about it. Just not there. Physically present, mentally checked out, living in the scroll.
The pattern you can’t unsee
That train ride didn’t make me delete any apps. I didn’t throw my phone in the river and start journaling by candlelight (I wish I could!).
But something shifted.
The next morning, I caught myself on LinkedIn. I’d been at it for twelve minutes. I couldn’t tell you a single thing I’d seen. I’d told myself I was “checking for work stuff” and “looking for contacts,” but the truth was something else. I was doing exactly what those strangers on the train were doing. Letting the feed pull me along.
The difference now is that I notice. And once you start noticing, you see it everywhere.
The guy at the coffee shop, finger dragging down the screen while his latte goes cold.
Your friend mid-conversation, eyes drifting to their phone, scrolling for three seconds before catching themselves and looking up with a half-smile.
The way your own hand reaches for your pocket the moment you’re waiting for anything, anywhere.
The pattern is everywhere. We just stopped seeing it because it became the air we breathe.
A weird experiment
Here’s something strange to try. Next time you’re on a train or a bus, pick one person and watch their thumb for 60 seconds. Don’t look at their screen. Just the thumb.
You’ll notice something. The movement is rhythmic. Almost mechanical. Scroll, pause, scroll, pause. Like a metronome.
And if you watch their face, there’s usually nothing there. No smile at something funny (maybe a little). No frown at something annoying. No visible reaction at all. Just the thumb, moving passively.
That’s what algorithmic attention looks like from the outside. That’s what the daze looks like when you’re not in it.
Now ask yourself: how often do you do that?
I don’t have a fix for this. I’m not going to tell you to do a digital detox, set screen time limits, or practice mindfulness. This is way deeper and way more complicated than that. Those tactics are probably going to be useless when there are literally billions of dollars in research trying to keep you that way.
But I think the first step is just seeing it. Noticing when you’ve slipped into the scroll without choosing to. Catching yourself in the daze.
That’s all. Just notice.
Podcast timestamps
If you prefer listening, this essay is based on the podcast episode below:
00:00 to 01:40 The train ride and choosing not to reach for the phone
01:40 to 03:50 What passive scrolling actually looks like
03:50 to 06:30 Why this is absence, not addiction
06:30 to 08:45 Noticing the pattern in yourself
08:45 to end Awareness as the only real starting point
