By David McGinn for The Globe And Mail
A few weeks ago, I spent the day at a beach in Toronto with a friend of mine. It was supposed to be a carefree Saturday afternoon. Instead, we spent most of it on our phones. She was posting photos to her Instagram account. I was checking Facebook and texting friends about being at the beach. “I’m at the beach. What are you up to?” I asked five different friends. Why did I need to know? It’s not like I was going to leave the beach. In what should have been an idyll afternoon I needed to compare schedules.