My mind echoes a chant: Don’t look at your phone. Whatever you do, don’t look at your phone.

I am sitting on a bench in New York’s Upper East Side. Parents push strollers along the narrow sidewalk, their hands busy scrolling through the feed of a smartphone. A woman jogs through the falling multi-colored leaves. The cord of her headphones strings down to an armband. A boy rolls past on a scooter, his father in tow, head buried in a smartphone app.