All of my relationships live, at least in part, in my phone, where they are forced to share space with everything else that happens there. Lately, the feeling creeping up on me is that the pieces of my relationships that exist on that screen seem less and less distinguishable from all the other content I consume there.

A lot happens inside my phone. It’s always trying to sell me stuff. Sometimes, it tries to scam me. It has games, videos, TV shows, movies, news, health trackers, podcasts, books, music, shopping, maps, work software, regular old internet browsing, and an app I was forced to download in order to use my doorbell. And, of course, it contains all of my social interactions that are not face-to-face or via snail mail. (Even face-to-face interactions, unless I bump into someone on the street, were probably planned via smartphone.)

So when my phone does its little mating calls of pings and buzzes, it could be bringing me updates from people I love, or showing me alerts I never asked for from corporations hungry for my attention. When I pull it out, content and communication appear in similar forms—notifications, social-media posts, vertical video—and they blur together. As interactions with loved ones converge with all the other kinds of media on smartphones, Samuel Hardman Taylor, a professor who studies social media at the University of Illinois at Chicago, told me, “our relationships are becoming a part of that consumption behavior.” When the phone becomes more of an entertainment hub, using it for social interaction can feel more optional.