Pico Iyer Quotes

[W]e spend so much time staring at our phones and screens, texting and tweeting about how busy we are, we no longer have the time to consume any primary material. We rely instead on the casual observations of our “friends” or the people we “follow” […].

Technology is cool, but you've got to use it as opposed to letting it use you.

In an odd way, it is refreshing to be around people who aren't attention-starved and media-addicted.

If I could throw my phone away, I would probably do it. It's always on silent, and I don't like when it rings and people are calling. We could live without those things in the past when we just had a phone on the street somewhere, on the corner or at the house. I have no interest in telling all the people what I do every day and where I am.

With technology, there is so much isolation with people now, that there are very few places where you can connect.

We have more media than ever and more technology in our lives. It's supposed to help us communicate, but it has the opposite effect of isolating us.

The more we elaborate our means of communication, the less we communicate.

Kids have so much screen time, and it's a concern. I know how overloaded I can feel sometimes.

With Google I'm starting to burn out on knowing the answer to everything. People in the year 2020 are going to be nostalgic for the sensation of feeling clueless.

We live in a technological universe in which we are always communicating. And yet we have sacrificed conversation for mere connection.

I'm not one of those guys who walks around with a flip phone who doesn't want to be connected. There are times when I'm tech-friendly, and there are times when I personally do want to shut everything off because I'm more creative when I shut off.

There are plenty of reasons to put our cellphones down now and then, not least the fact that incessantly checking them takes us out of the present moment and disrupts family dinners around the globe.

You have to turn the noise off a little bit. Fortunately, I'm not really on social media. I've been able to live in a bit of a black hole.

I've been reading a lot about what the Internet does to our brains.

The kids are fixing their eyes on social media, and the stories they're looking at may not be the most important things. I'm guilty of that, too. Do you want to look at Instagram or the news? It's a difficult, and weird, situation.

I'm hardly a smartphone addict. I rarely look at social media.

I don't think its good for the soul to invest too much of yourself in technology.

I'm never on my phone, really.

I don't go on social media.

I see some kids whose social media is their whole world, and I actually think it's good to disconnect from that.

But it wasn't until I deleted Twitter that everything changed for me and I slowly started to feel normal again.

I find that I have to just kind of avoid the Internet as much as possible. And even more so, when I go and look at it, I remember why I should be avoiding it.

I don't exclusively talk to people on social media; I don't meet people through Tinder. I try to keep it face-to-face, and to be aware if my phone is sucking me away from the rest of the world.

Sometimes you should just put down the computer, the phone, and walk away.

The biggest thing I try to do is to unplug and give myself time away from social media and the Internet.