This highlights what bothers me most about today's [mobile] culture. There are reams of other things to say about the damage being done (I'd recommend Johann Hari's book <i>Stolen Focus</i> [0] for a great, if severely worrying, overview) - but to me the ability to spend time doing nothing, being with oneself, being alone, living with one's thoughts - this is a hugely important thing.<p>Other people on the thread point out that "not much happens" when they spend time alone - to which I'd say: that's the point. Your brain needs time to process, to chew through, to formulate, to make sense of... all the things it has been spending time doing. So yeh, sometimes ideas happen in these spaces (ideas certainly <i>don't</i> happen where there's <i>no</i> space!), but sometimes nothing at all "happens". And...that's important.<p>As well as that, the constant-always-filled-always-on culture created by mobile devices takes you away from the present moment. It's like the least mindful thing you can be doing, and given the quantities of evidence around happiness, flow, focus, etc - just <i>being in the world</i> is a critically important thing.<p>The other angle is about the ego in all of this. One of the strange things that comes out of a meditation practice is that (and bear with me here, it sounds weird) - when you spend more time with yourself, focusing on what your inner voice is saying, without constant distraction, you actually become very much better at being empathetic in the world. Because you understand more about who you are (and, ultimately, who your "self" isn't...), you get to understand more about other people and who <i>they</i> are. I wouldn't be at all surprised if being good at being alone also boosted this sense of empathy for others. It sounds counter-intuitive, but I suspect it's true.<p>[0] <a href="https://stolenfocusbook.com/" rel="nofollow">https://stolenfocusbook.com/</a>