Magazine Relics

Last week I was at the doctor’s office and I sat in the waiting room until they called me back. Normally in this situation, I’d scroll on my phone. In fact, when I looked around, everyone else in the waiting room was scrolling on their phones. My fingers twitched as they hovered above the screen while I decided which app to open.

Do I check email? Send a text? Check to see if my brother played his turn in our very tight game of Crossplay? Cruise Instagram to discover what my algorithm had for me that hour?

Every single person in that room hunched over a phone. I scanned the tops of their heads. No one noticed me watching them. No one even looked up.

And then I did something outrageous.

I dropped my phone into my purse and grabbed a magazine from a stack on the coffee table and started paging through it.

Magazines. Remember those?

I couldn’t recall the last time I held one in my hands. Does anyone even subscribe to magazines anymore? Clearly this doctor’s office doesn’t because the one on the top of the pile was dated June 2024.

I skimmed it, flipping through the articles and photos.

And I realized how much I missed a physical experience like reading a magazine. I wasn’t paying much attention to what I was reading (not super interested in Busy Philips updates from two years ago), but more to the act of turning the pages.

I do so many things via a screen. I read on a Kindle. I look at photos on my phone. I grocery shop via delivery apps. I journal on my iPad. I read the news online.

All in the name of ease.

Why pick my own apples when I can just order them on my phone?

Why walk out to my driveway for a newspaper when I can just read it on my phone?

Why lug around a hardback book when I can read it on my phone?

Why use pen and paper when I have this great app on my phone?

Why make a photo album when my phone already does it for me?

Why write a thank you note when I can just send a text on my phone?

Everything we need is in and on our little handheld supercomputers.

Maybe one day we won’t need things at all.

I never really thought about the slow disappearance of physical things and experiences. We hear a lot about all the ways technology has impacted communication and connection. But it has also impacted the ways we experience the physical world around us.

Instead of holding things, we hold the phone that holds the things.

And it’s not the same.

And as I paged through that magazine, I realized what I missed.

Tactility.

Tangibility.

Gripping something real.

Things offer us so many beautiful and interesting textures.

I really hope we don’t lose them along the way.

Interested in object-based storytelling? My memoir, Piece by Piece: A Life Remembered through Things Lost, is available here. 📖💙