The Beauty of Being Unreachable
Constant connectivity has quietly stolen our focus, our solitude, and our ability to truly be present with one another. Stepping away might be the most radical thing our generation can do.
Is it good that we have access to nearly everything at our fingertips?
One of my professors posed this question during a casual group conversation during our final class of winter quarter. Many were quick to say yes, as if the answer was obvious. So much of our lives depend on technology, and it is difficult to imagine our daily existence without a phone or a laptop. We are able to reach anyone in the world at any time of day via call or text, we can receive an answer to any question in seconds, and we can squelch boredom with short-form content and online games. The world is quite literally in our pocket contained in a smartphone.
However, the question stands. Is this actually good for us? I found myself to be the class contrarian, as I believe that this accessibility is not good.
As technology has grown more advanced and more integral to society, the average attention span has dropped, especially with short form content on social media. Attention span statistics have shown that over the past two decades, the average human attention span has reached a low of forty-seven seconds, the decline directly correlating to an increase in short-form content, reliance on smartphones, and the interruptions phones cause through push notifications. The average Gen Zer has a challenging time sitting for longer than an hour without pulling their phone out to check notifications or scroll on social media. Technology has killed discipline and focus to the point where most teenagers and young adults cannot sit through a whole movie without digital distraction, or even go to the gym without scrolling in-between sets.
Our modern reliance on technology introduces another issue: We are always reachable. Roughly thirty years ago, the only ways to reach someone were through writing them a letter, calling them on the phone, or seeing them in person. Now, we are able to reach people through direct calls, various text and messaging platforms, email, and social media apps. You can virtually reach anyone, at any time, anywhere.
This ability to digitally communicate with people has not only made each of us constantly accessible, but it has also caused our generation especially to overthink online interactions. I would venture to say that we are all guilty of analyzing messages down to the punctuation (or lack thereof) and of wondering why someone has not responded to a message, since ‘everyone is always on their phone.’
Reliance on technology to communicate has also significantly impacted our ability to have meaningful in-person interactions with others. Increases in technology as a means to connect and have conversation with others has resulted in a stunting of the growth in cognitive and social skills required for real, face-to-face conversation. Gen Z has become the most antisocial and lonely generation yet, and our generation’s exposure to social media has certainly played a role in this. Every day at Stanford, I see countless people ‘phubbing’ as they sit together at tables and are each sucked into their own worlds on their phones, not exchanging a single word with each other.
Our methods of communication have been shifted out of the physical world and into the digital world. Writing letters has become a lost art, not being constantly attached to a device causes others to think you’re angry with them, and “conversations” have to be specified as being “in-person” because so many people only talk to each other online.
With my decision to delete social media, I realized that “friendships” that were completely based upon my posts would disappear, and I was afraid I was going to miss them. Instead, it has allowed my true friendships to grow and deepen. It has been freeing both emotionally and physically to leave my phone behind, to turn my phone off, and to be okay with disconnecting. I am not being constantly bombarded with notifications, and being selectively unreachable has been one of the healthiest choices I have made this year.
So, when my professor asked whether having everything at our fingertips is actually good for us, and my classmates answered with an easy yes, I understood why. Technology is so woven into our lives that questioning it almost feels radical. But that is precisely the problem. We have stopped asking the question at all. We have traded depth for convenience and presence for connectivity, and we have done it so gradually that most of us never noticed. My answer was, and remains, no. Not because technology is inherently evil, but because unchecked access to everything has quietly cost us our focus, our solitude, and our ability to simply be with one another.
The most countercultural thing a person can do today might just be to put the phone down, and mean it.
Founded in 2025, Reconnect Stanford is a Stanford student-led movement & non-profit dedicated to helping people step away from addictive platforms and toward meaningful connection, time, and attention. We build community around social media sobriety through stories, support for students who delete, peer-to-peer mentorship with middle and high schoolers, and events where peers disconnect together.
To learn more and support our cause, visit reconnectstanford.org. To submit a guest piece, email reconnectstanford@gmail.com.
About the author: Raised in Maryland, Sloane Wehman is a second-year pre-law philosophy student at Stanford University. She deleted her social media accounts in 2026.
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