Nepal, Oct. 28 -- As I sat at a cafe near Kathmandu Durbar Square, waiting for my friend to arrive, my gaze fell upon a young student in her college uniform sitting at the next table. Her glasses reflected the soft glow of her phone in her hands. Between sips of milk tea, she switched from TikTok to Instagram, paused to answer a message, then checked the notifications from her recent Facebook post. Sitting next to her, her friend scrolled through a news headline, read the first paragraph, and clicked to another link before finishing. As I looked around, the cafe was filled with sounds of notifications, reels, laughter, and someone recording a story for their followers.

It was an everyday scene for a cafe, yet it reflected the story of a ...