It is painful to watch children trying to show off for parents who are engrossed in their cell phones. Children are nostalgic for the 'good old days' when parents used to read to them without the cell phone by their side or watch football games or Disney movies without having the BlackBerry handy.

I love sharing photographs and websites, I'm for all of these things. I'm for Facebook. But to say that this is sociability? We begin to define things in terms of what technology enables and technology allows.

It used to be that we imagined that our mobile phones would be for us to talk to each other. Now, our mobile phones are there to talk to us.

Loneliness is failed solitude.

When you're addicted to heroin, there is only one thing you can do - go off heroin. But we're not going to throw away these phones, we're not going to throw away our technology.

If we don't teach kids how to be alone, they will end up only lonely.

We all really need to listen to each other, including to the boring bits.