“One in a crowd of people …”: The viral post was followed by the magic of the missing conversations with strangers amid addiction on smartphones

In an era in which smartphones are overwhelmed with endless notifications and cheap data, nourishing digital feeding without stopping, many people find themselves more and more than ever. Although it is constantly connected to social media, news and entertainment, real conversations are face to fade in the background.

The gatherings turn into silent scroll sessions, conversations are broken with constant sounds, and the exact art of listening slides away. The result is a paradox: a world that overflows with digital relationships, but it is starving from the true human relationship.

Shedding light on this growing separation, a Reddit user asked a simple question: “Anyone else misses this type of reaction?”

“Every time I travel on the metro, I noticed the same thing – everyone’s eyes are glued to their phones. R buts, shorts, random pass. Even when people wait somewhere – at a restaurant, outside the clinic, whatever – at the moment they get a few minutes, the phone comes out. It was not so.”

“I remember 10 years ago, you will already see people talking to strangers. Sharing ideas, controversy about politics, and discussing the random things of life. There was a curiosity, a small spark in people to find out what the other person said. This really hit me yesterday. I was in a restaurant waiting for an unexpected thing.

When sharing a personal story, the user wrote, “An old man-perhaps in the early 1970s-he asked me to sit next to him. He was reading financial times. We started with some informal chat … Then we went deeply.

“He made me wonder … when was the last time I saw strangers speaking like this? Just talking – without screens, without deviations. Do not try to persuade or argument, just exchange ideas. I feel we lost that culture. – This mentality has killed curiosity.”

“But a man … this conversation yesterday remained with me,” he said.