{"id":630406,"date":"2026-08-10T16:16:18","date_gmt":"2026-08-10T16:16:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/630406\/"},"modified":"2026-08-10T16:16:18","modified_gmt":"2026-08-10T16:16:18","slug":"iphones-make-us-lonely-the-90s-had-a-better-way","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/630406\/","title":{"rendered":"iPhones make us lonely. The \u201990s had a better way."},"content":{"rendered":"

Join us for a six-week time-travel experiment in real-world connection. Sign up to get Party Like It’s 1996<\/a> in your inbox.<\/p>\n

Hi there.<\/p>\n

Have you noticed that even though you are more in touch with friends than ever before, you\u2019re not actually as close to them as you wish you were?<\/p>\n

Have you noticed that even though your every whim\u2014for food, for entertainment, for opinions that match yours\u2014can be satisfied with the tap of a screen, you often feel unsatisfied?<\/p>\n

Have you noticed that the entire world seems to be inside your head all the time, drowning out the people, places, and problems that are actually within your reach?<\/p>\n

You\u2019re living life in the 2020s. We\u2019re all right there with you. But I\u2019ve been thinking a lot about a different time, the decade when, coincidentally, Slate was born: the 1990s. Recently, I\u2019ve been making a concerted effort to spend my leisure time just a little more like I did back then: an era when hardly anyone had a cellphone, when a six-CD changer and premium cable were the peak of entertainment technology, and when the inventors of Partiful were still in elementary school.<\/p>\n

Back in the \u201990s, I was in my 20s, and a lack of connectivity\u2014and a dearth of options\u2014required us all to organize our own fun and embrace serendipity as a kind of plan<\/a>. While plenty of things about the \u201990s sucked\u2014you would not believe how difficult it was to buy hummus\u2014I am firmly convinced that back then I was more connected to my friends and family, the people about whom I cared most, than I am now. And somehow my days and nights were more memorable back when I had to watch whatever was on TV, read whatever was in the newspaper, or go to whatever stupid bar my friends told my answering machine they were at.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m ready to recapture a little bit of that spirit. I\u2019m ready to loosen the iron grip the out-of-control modern world has encouraged me to maintain on my social life and relearn how to go with the flow. It\u2019s going to feel so good.<\/p>\n

You can join me and feel this way too! Welcome to Party Like It\u2019s 1996<\/strong>, a six-week time-travel challenge in honor of Slate\u2019s 30th anniversary. If you\u2019ve recently been paralyzed by choice, felt overconnected but underinvested in your friendships, or simply been looking for a reason to wear your new tortoiseshell headband<\/a>, then this series is for you.<\/p>\n

If you sign up by Aug.\u00a014<\/strong> and are among the first 100 people to complete the challenges along with me, we\u2019ll send you some fun stuff in the mail<\/a>! (If you\u2019re tied up then, you can still sign up anytime afterward and do the challenges at your leisure.)<\/p>\n

And no matter when you sign up, we have a gift for you: You can join Slate Plus for a special price of just $19.96 for the first six months<\/a>. You\u2019ll get even more of what Slate has to offer, plus members-only Party Like It\u2019s 1996 perks, like secret Spotify playlists and games.<\/p>\n

For six weeks, you\u2019re going to receive an email every Monday offering you a challenge<\/strong> designed to bring a touch of that incandescent golden age to your cool-LED life. Together, we\u2019re going to go out, stay in, hang out, keep in touch, and road-trip like it\u2019s 1996. And we\u2019re going to develop some practical strategies for incorporating all these techniques into your everyday, to make you more present in your own life and in the lives of the people you love.<\/p>\n

Before we get started, though: a word about phones and their role in this newsletter series. While of course many of the contemporary ills we\u2019re trying to address\u2014frictionless satisfaction, shallow connections, the overwhelming sense that the world itself is crushing you at every single moment\u2014are connected to (or even derived from) our smartphones, I am not really anti-phone. At no point in these newsletters am I going to urge you to throw your phone into the sea, for any number of reasons. For example, how would you find your way back home from the sea without GPS?<\/p>\n

Cellphones are inextricably tied to our modern world, and I am not going to argue that they don\u2019t make our lives better in many ways. I like being able to text my kids! Sometimes you gotta pay for ParkMobile, or call a Lyft, or Venmo a friend. But while engaging with the challenges in Party Like It\u2019s 1996, I\u2019d urge you to be conscious of when you look to your phone\u2014and how you use it.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. \n <\/p>\n

    It Seems Impossible. It Can Kill You. Come Along With Me as I Try It\u2014Because You Should, Too.
    \n <\/a>\n <\/li>\n

  2. \n
    \n This Content is Available for Slate Plus members only<\/p>\n

    It Might Be the Best Thing a Corporation Has Ever Done. It\u2019s Finally Back.
    \n <\/a>\n <\/li>\n

  3. \n
    \n This Content is Available for Slate Plus members only<\/p>\n

    Bartenders Everywhere Are Swooning Over a New Cocktail Ingredient. I\u2019m Not Sure You\u2019re Going to Like It.
    \n <\/a>\n <\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    So often, the ease a smartphone offers is in direct opposition to the exact kind of connection we\u2019re all craving so desperately. It\u2019s great to listen to a podcast while you\u2019re out on a walk. But what if, sometimes, you took a walk with a friend instead, and talked to them? It\u2019s great to use Shazam to identify the artist whose song is playing at Chili\u2019s. But what if, instead, you asked the person sitting next to you at the bar who it is? (It is Supertramp.) Getting directions, depositing a check, playing a game, watching a video: For the next six weeks, when you think about reaching for your phone, I\u2019d urge you to consider, Is there a less efficient, more connected way to accomplish this task? If so, pursue that.<\/p>\n

    And remember: Your phone is a wonderful tool, but it also always represents the alternative. I don\u2019t mean only that it\u2019s distracting. I mean that your phone opens a portal to all the other things in the world you could be doing rather than what you\u2019re doing now. But those things aren\u2019t useful to you! You\u2019re not doing them. You\u2019re doing what you are doing now, so do it.<\/p>\n

    And do it with friends! Because these challenges are all social in nature, my first recommendation is that you find a few friends or family members who might want to embark on this journey with you<\/strong>. Everything you\u2019re about to do will be more fun in a group!<\/p>\n

    If you sign up now, I\u2019ll email you tomorrow with Challenge No.\u00a01<\/strong>. In the meantime, drop me a line! I\u2019d love to hear what you remember about life in the \u201990s\u2014or, if you\u2019re too young to remember it, how you imagine it. What are you looking forward to about these challenges? And what are you dubious about? Email me at 1996@slate.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

    Smell you later,<\/p>\n

    Dan<\/p>\n

    Six challenges to help you bring back the lost art of hanging out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Join us for a six-week time-travel experiment in real-world connection. Sign up to get Party Like It’s 1996…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":630407,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[257],"tags":[18,3695,19,17,279,266346,266345,3700,82],"class_list":["post-630406","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mobile","tag-eire","tag-friendship","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-mobile","tag-newsletter-exclusive","tag-party-like-its-1996","tag-relationships","tag-technology"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/117072114380731466","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/630406","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=630406"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/630406\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/630407"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=630406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=630406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=630406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}