Amy was sitting on a flight when she noticed the man next to her scrolling through his phone. He appeared to be around sixty, an older white man with a wedding ring, probably a grandfather. At first, he seemed perfectly normal, just another passenger passing the time. But then she realized every account he visited was full of young women, predominantly Asian, striking poses or performing dance moves. He was swiping through them quickly, almost as if he didn’t even realize she could see his screen. Amy felt an immediate mix of surprise and disgust. It wasn’t illegal, she knew that, but the sheer openness and speed with which he flipped through the content was unsettling.
She couldn’t stop thinking about it. It was one thing to like someone online privately, but sitting there on a plane, unselfconscious and entirely public, made it feel different. She compared it to her own feed and the other show members. When she pulled up her own phone to check, her feed was full of cooking videos, celebrity news, sports updates, and random life hacks, mostly harmless content with very few videos of women, and none remotely like what the man was scrolling through. Even when she looked at her friends’ feeds, the contrast was stark. While his algorithm seemed obsessed with young women performing, hers and her friends’ feeds were a mixture of practical, entertaining, and often educational content.
Amy reflected on the experience and realized it was a good reminder: in public, people can see your phone. And depending on what you’re scrolling through, that could say a lot about you, intentionally or not. She couldn’t help but think that the man sitting next to her, openly swiping through profiles of young women while clearly in public, had no awareness of how it appeared. It was a small, awkward, and uncomfortable observation, but it stuck with her for the rest of the flight.
From Amy’s perspective, the lesson was simple: be mindful of what you’re doing on your phone, especially when in public. People are probably watching, and sometimes, they’re judging, even if just silently.
