To the left of me sit a father and son. The father, a work badge around his neck, loosely cradles his phone and drifts in and out of sleep as the Metro train stops and starts.

Out of the commuter silence, his pre-school-aged son roars and grabs for his father’s device.

The father jolts awake and brushes the child’s hand away, but the child is persistent, and screeches and writhes in his seat.

“No!” says the dad more forcefully after another insistent reach.

That’s when, in a packed Metro car, the child begins whacking his father repeatedly and wailing with his hands and arms flailing in extreme agitation.

The father, struggling to keep his eyelids open, engages in an epic battle through a few stations. He manages not to give in to the child or to the out-of-the-corner-of-the-eye stares from the commuters, but he finally gives in and promptly shuts his eyes.

Immediately, the child is still and silent. For the rest of the ride, they greedily consume the YouTube algorithm.

I walk out of the Metro train that day feeling shell-shocked to have witnessed so vividly the effectiveness of the “modern-day pacifier.”

Here is the photo I took of that moment:

Photographing Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation

Since 2016, I have been photographing people using technology in everyday environments. Last year, I published fifteen photos from my first portfolio publicly on my blog, which you can view here.

Throughout 2025, I continued the photography project, which I plan to do indefinitely. It’s the longest-running photo documentary of its kind that I know of, and this year, it turns 10 years old. One of the biggest changes to the project in 2025 is that all photos are now in black and white. I found color distracting. Black and white better captures the tone of the project.

When selecting my favorite photos from 2025, ‘67’ popped into my consciousness (as it wiggled into so many of our brains), and so it felt fitting to select 67 photos from 2025. If you don’t know what the hell I’m talking about, I envy your ignorance. There’s no real significance to ‘67’, just another social media trend exposing how reality no longer makes rational sense.

So here are the 67 standout photos from 2025 (I think they’re my best yet):

This is a Project of iHuman

iHuman is a series of creative projects, including photography, writing, and other mediums, that explores how emerging technologies like the iPhone, social media, and ChatGPT impact human connection, culture, and our common humanity.

This post is part of iHuman’s first project: Photographing Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation, Anthony’s decade-long photography endeavor.

Learn more at anthonysartori.com.