On Sunday I went to see the Nets play at my new neighbor, the Barclays Center. Not a bad stadium, if you don’t mind paying $9.75 for four chicken fingers and a few fries and $9 for a draft Budweiser. (Given the long lines at the abundant food stalls, most people didn’t seem to.)

The Nets are, of course, new to Brooklyn, and so the team management was doing everything it could to pump up good spirit in the arena, especially as the game was a clunker, an 84-72 ho-hum over the mediocre Magic. So they trotted out the “Brooklynettes,” a group of female dancers. They had fans on the court for a shooting contest at halftime. They even played loud, fast music while the game was being played, which, call me old-fashioned, is just about the worst thing ever.

But one thing they did was quite nice: During timeouts, cameraguys would pan the seats and find kid fans, who would just go over the moon about being shown on the Jumbotron, dancing up and down and cheering and giving huge smiles. You couldn’t help but feel good about their excitement.

Except for the time when the camera found an adorable little boy sitting with his dad, but no other kids. When the boy saw himself and his father on the big screen, he jumped and waved and smiled—and nudged his dad to show him. They were famous! Then he nudged again, putting his hand on his father’s shoulder. But the father didn’t look up—he was bent over his cell phone, texting. And when he eventually raised his head, it was too late; the camera had moved on. He never got to see the cause of his son’s excitement.

A small thing, yes. And who knows, maybe this is a great dad who just happened to get caught at an unfortunate moment. But to me, it was a microcosm of issues raised by our infatuation with and possible addiction to electronic devices and electronic communication; often we get so wrapped up in them that we neglect the reality, the authentic human interaction, sitting right next to us.

But there may be some good news on this front: The Times reports that, for the first time, text messaging in the United States has declined.

In the third quarter of this year, cellphone owners sent an average of 678 texts a month, down from 696 texts a month in the previous quarter.

The consultant who figured this out thinks that the drop is due to the rise of Internet-based messaging services—in other words, increased competition for your text-like communication.

But I am more optimistic: My hope is that the novelty of texting has worn off, and people are actually choosing more thoughtful means of communication. (678 texts is still a lot, though: how many trivial thoughts can one share in a month?)

I’m not so Luddite that I think texting is entirely terrible; there are perfectly good reasons to text—sometimes.

But I remember that little boy and I keep thinking about what else we could be doing that might be just a little more important when we’re actually just texting.