It was a social experiment. Nothing more.

We were in an elevator. Me and Bill. Bill is an academic researcher, dealing in human behavior. Also rats. He knows a lot about rats. Whereas I am a redhead.

It was a large elevator. There were maybe 14 passengers. The supermarket downtown is swanky. The big elevator carries you from the parking garage to the main level.

“Pay attention,” said Bill, as we boarded the sardine can.

“What do you see?” he whispered into the redhead’s ear.

For starters, almost everyone in the elevator was young. And by “young” I mean the oldest among them was probably early 20s.

“That’s because this supermarket is located near the college,” said Bill.

The elevator stopped. More people got on. All young people. The lift stopped at another floor. Another young group shuffled aboard.

There might have been 20 of us now. Everyone was a baby compared to Bill and me, who are both old enough to remember when Lawrence Welk officially went off the air.

“Are you paying attention?” Bill asked.

I nodded.

Although, I wish I hadn’t been. Because I was immediately struck with an eerie feeling in this elevator. Namely, because everyone was staring at a device. And I mean everyone.

Nobody made eye contact. Nobody seemed to WANT to make eye contact. Nobody offered the quick, polite social smiles our mothers taught us to give others. Nobody acknowledged boarding elevator passengers with warm looks and brief nods.

Nobody seemed aware of anything. They just stood there. Numb. Head craned downward. Staring at the iridescent blue, opiate glow of their touchscreens.

The elevator doors opened. We were on the main level now. The elevator emptied.

“Follow and observe,” said Bill.

Together, we sort of followed the young people around the store. At at distance.

The kids were awkward. Their interactions were awkward. Sometimes it was downright cringy. Like the kids didn’t know how to deal with people. The extreme air of discomfort in their person-to-person exchanges made everything feel so weird.

I asked Bill why this is.

“Simple,” he said. “An ordinary American college student spends about eight to 10 hours per day looking at a screen.”

“That much?”

“Sometimes more. Screen time outweighs in-person time. They just haven’t learned how to interact.”

We watched from afar as students shopped for groceries, averting eye contact. Many still staring at phones, zombie-like, as they mindlessly grabbed items off the shelves.

When it came time to checkout, most chose the self-checkout lane. Their entire shopping process had been reduced to an entirely human-less transaction.

“Now,” said Bill to the redhead. “Let’s try again.”

We began in the elevator once more. A crowded elevator, just like before. Lots of kids aboard. Late teens, early 20s.

Bill made a remark about the weather.

“Man,” he said, “it’s getting cold out there. Does anyone know what the temperature is?”

This was followed by kids momentarily looking up from their phones. They had the proverbial “antlered-mammal in the headlights look.”

But, amazingly, several kids helpfully used their weather apps to give us the current temperature. Some even delivered the weather forecast. (We love you James Spann.)

Then, Bill followed up this interaction with a joke. I mean, it wasn’t a great joke. I’ve heard better. But it was enough to loosen things up.

In only moments, the atmosphere of the elevator changed. The weather remark. The joke. Everything felt different somehow, socially.

People actually laughed. One of the kids in the back of the elevator made a humorous follow-up remark. Everyone in the group sort of chuckled again. Then someone else joined in. We all fake laughed in harmony. It was really quite nice.

At this point, for some reason, almost all on the elevator had unwittingly put their devices away. I only counted three passengers on their phones.

The doors opened.

We followed at a distance, observing students in their supermarket habitat. Almost none were on phones as they shopped. Several were even half-smiling and seemed slightly less awkward. Some passengers were actually talking to other customers and employees.

“I don’t understand,” I asked Bill. “What exactly does this experiment prove?”

“Elementary, my dear redhead,” he said. “We have more power to change the world than we think.”