I am guilty of all the smartphone sins—in essence, staring at the phone when you should be staring at life. It’s possible that the act of taking a picture has such appeal because it manages to do several opposing things at once—I am allowed to pet the phone, to let the phone flatter me with its news, to let the phone mediate reality for me, and also to see what is going on around me and bear witness to a moment in my children’s lives, even if I am seeing it on-screen. To mitigate this, I often shoot blind, like firing a gun at the hip while I look directly at the action. Am I deceiving myself?