The Art of Paying Attention
A few months ago, I caught myself reaching for my phone while listening to music. Not to change the song or to text someone, but just because sitting still with only the song felt uncomfortable.
A few months ago, I caught myself reaching for my phone while listening to music. Not to change the song or to text someone, but just because sitting still with only the song felt uncomfortable. That scared me a little.
I started noticing how hard it had become to fully stay present with anything. A conversation, a song, a thought. Even moments that were supposed to feel meaningful somehow felt interrupted by the urge to check, scroll, refresh, and consume. I know I am not alone in that feeling.
My generation is growing up inside an economy built around profiting off our attention. Every notification, algorithm, autoplay feature, and infinite scroll is competing for one thing: more time on the screen. Social media platforms are not designed around what makes us feel fulfilled. They are designed around what keeps us engaged, because our attention is what makes these companies money.
And yet, most conversations around digital well-being still focus on restriction. “Delete the apps! Set screen time limits! Put your phone away!” While those things can absolutely help, I don’t think that approach alone gets to the root of the problem. Because if you tell someone to stop doing something, it often makes them want it more. Especially for teenagers.
What I think matters more is replacement. If real life feels empty, lonely, overstimulating, or disconnected, of course we are going to reach for the thing designed to distract us. In some ways, the phone has become what a pack of cigarettes might have been 50 years ago: something ordinary, everywhere, and deeply profitable because it is so hard to put down. When I feel stressed or unsure what to do with myself, my phone offers the easiest way out. It does not help me to process what I am feeling or sit with discomfort long enough to understand where it is coming from.
Creativity asks more of us. For me, creativity is the act of turning what I feel into something real: a song, a movement, a sentence, an image, or even a conversation that actually requires me to listen. It matters because it gives my thoughts somewhere to go instead of letting them stay trapped in my head.
So does a long walk without anything filling the silence. So does sitting with discomfort long enough to understand where it is coming from. These things ask us to be present before they offer relief, which is exactly why they matter. They do not just numb the feeling for a few minutes. They help us move through it.
Creative expression uses attention differently than social media does. Social media fragments our attention into smaller and smaller pieces. Creativity asks us to deepen our focus.
When I am dancing or creating something with other people, I notice time differently. In rehearsal, there are moments when everyone is breathing with the same count, listening for the same shift in the music, and adjusting to each other without needing to say anything out loud. My attention stops scattering because it has somewhere real to land. I am not performing myself from the outside. I am fully inside the moment, connected to my body, the people around me, and the feeling we are creating together.
And research is beginning to reflect what so many people already intuitively feel.
A World Health Organization evidence review on the arts and health found that creative practices can support emotional expression, social connection, and mental well-being. I think part of why creativity can feel so restorative is because it asks something completely different from our attention than social media does.
When I am dancing, I cannot be thinking about ten different things at once. I have to follow the rhythm. I have to stay inside my body. When I am writing or creating with other people, I have to listen closely enough to respond. Creativity almost demands presence from us. Not the performative kind of presence that social media encourages, but actual presence.
I believe that part of the reason so many teens feel drawn back into our phones is because so many real-world “third spaces” are disappearing. Places where people can simply exist together without pressure to buy something, prove something, or become more productive, feel increasingly rare. Creative spaces are some of the last places where people experience real, uncurated connection.
That is also why Jonathan Haidt’s idea in The Anxious Generation that childhood has shifted from being “play-based” to “phone-based” stayed with me so much. Play is not just entertainment. It is how humans develop imagination, resilience, empathy, collaboration, and identity. And a lot of creativity begins in play.
When we lose spaces for boredom, creativity, movement, and real-world connection, we lose more than time. We lose part of what makes us human.
This is why I think conversations about digital well-being need to become more imaginative.
Not just:
“How do we get teens off their phones?”
But:
“What makes real life feel meaningful enough to come back to?”
This is also where I see #HalfTheStory’s mission so clearly. Digital well-being is not just about fear or restriction. It is about helping young people understand the full story of our lives online and offline, and giving us the language, tools, and confidence to make choices that actually support our mental health.
For me, creativity has become one answer to that question.
Not because art magically fixes mental health. Not because phones are inherently evil. But because creative expression gives us something the attention economy often cannot: presence.
When you are making something with another person, you cannot infinitely scroll away from discomfort. You have to listen. You have to pay attention. You have to stay.
And maybe that is part of why creativity matters so much right now.
In a culture that constantly rewards speed, performance, and distraction, choosing to slow down and give our full attention to something real becomes its own kind of resistance.
I don’t think digital well-being should only be about reducing harm. I think it should also be about rebuilding connection to ourselves, to each other, and to the physical world around us.
Because the opposite of distraction is not necessarily discipline.
Sometimes, the opposite of distraction is devotion.
So maybe the question is not only, “How do we spend less time online?” Maybe it is also, “What are we willing to give our attention back to?”