I’ve met the Mona Lisa twice though I don’t know her well. I saw her last month in Paris, though I gazed at her enigmatic smile for no more than a minute: To keep the long line moving, a portly security guard shooed away any lingering guests. And yet many of the thronging tourists in the winding, amusement park-style line didn’t see her it all. The reason? When they finally reached Ms. Mona, they turned away and took a selfie. That’s right, people traveled hours by train or plane to reach Paris, paid €17 for a Louvre ticket, stood in line to see one of the great masterworks of Western civilization, then turned their back on it.
There’s a lot of beauty at the Louvre. So why aren’t people looking at it?
This is not an uncommon phenomenon. Frequently in my travels, I see people recording their experiences without truly experiencing them. A few years ago, I was lucky enough to be in Lucerne, Switzerland, and we rode a gondola to snowy Mt. Pilatus for views of the Alps. At the overlook, tourists held selfie sticks like light sabers, smiling stiffly at smartphone screens, oblivious to the scene around them: The yellow-beaked birds swooping above their heads, struggling against the wind; the beautiful, squiggly shadows in the rippled, melting snow; the dot-like boats leaving faint wakes on far-off Lucerne Bay. They came, they selfied, they left.
I’m not anti-selfie. I take them too. But I also try to stop and observe and absorb, and to create, you know, actual memories, whether I’m wandering the Louvre or walking my dogs. Last year, I interviewed Tim Wu, author of The Attention Merchants, for an AARP story on distractions, and he said something that stuck with me: “Your life is what you pay attention to.” Put another way, a rich life requires us to face the world—not turn our backs on it.
For some related reads (and I say this as someone who checks his email and Twitter feed way too frequently), check out this Thrive Global story by a man who’s lived without his phone for two years and a Canadian story about a dad who, yes, took his 18-year-old son on a road trip in Mongolia to break his cell phone addiction.
Ken Budd is the author of The Voluntourist and the host of 650,000 Hours. Sign up here for the monthly 650,000 Hours newsletter!