Get Off Your Gross Little Phone

We need a new civil etiquette for devices.

Friends invited us for dinner to celebrate my husband’s birthday last week. They prepared an incredible meal, but the best part was that we all sat around the dining table, talking and telling stories, and not one person looked at a smartphone for the entire time. In fact, there were no phones in sight. For several hours, we inhabited a warm, cozy bubble in which we were entirely attuned to each other—and it felt wonderful, the best birthday gift of all. We drove home in the darkness afterward, our hearts as full as our stomachs.

Reflecting on it, my satisfaction gave way to other emotions—sadness that a truly phone-free gathering is such a rarity in our world these days, and disappointment that it’s something we could so easily change but for whatever reason choose not to. Perhaps it’s because I’m getting older, watching my kids grow up, and realizing that relationships matter more than anything else, or because I spend so much time steeped in research about the deleterious effects of excessive digital media use, but I’m getting increasingly fed up with the relentless intrusion of smartphones in our lives.

That’s the diplomatic way of saying it. What I really mean is, I’m sick and tired of people looking at their phones when they should be paying attention to whoever and whatever is around them. It is unbelievably rude and inconsiderate, and I’ve had enough. I’m no longer willing to sit quietly or “politely” on the sidelines, allowing people to treat me and others as objects to be ignored at will, whenever a more tempting call arrives in the form of a smartphone or smartwatch notification.

For years, I gave people the benefit of the doubt (partly to assuage my own sense of hypocrisy and participation in the shift, since I was guilty of doing the same at times). The technology was new, shiny, exciting, irresistible, but surely the novelty would wear off, and we’d go back to paying attention to the people around us, right? That never happened.

Not only are we more hooked than ever, thanks to tech that gets ever more adept at capturing our attention, but the lack of protest has resulted in cultural norms that would horrify time travellers from bygone times. We’ve lost perspective, unable (or unwilling?) to see what we do. It has sneaked up on us, this notion that it is somehow acceptable to break focus in the middle of face-to-face conversations to engage in communication with other invisible people at the very same time.

I’m so over it, and I’m done with enabling it. I now make a point to stop talking as soon as someone looks at their phone. Often they will look up, surprised, and say, “It’s OK, you can keep talking. I’m listening,” to which I respond, “No, I’ll wait till you’re done.” Of course, they immediately put away their phone and try to return to the conversation, but it’s not the same conversation anymore because I’m mad, they’re sheepish, and the magic of the moment has been destroyed.

But I’ve reached a point of wanting to go even further. I want to say, “What are you doing? Stop looking at your phone. That’s rude!” Because it is—it’s vulgar and obnoxious—and I wish we’d all stop pretending it isn’t and denying how it makes us feel.

In The Extinction of Experience (read it!), Christine Rosen describes a study where a woman walked around a college campus and, whenever she encountered a stranger, did one of three things—made eye contact, made eye contact and smiled, or looked through the person as if they did not exist. A few minutes later, a researcher caught up to the unsuspecting stranger and asked how the interaction made them feel. People who had been acknowledged with eye contact or a smile “felt less disconnected than passersby in the air-gaze condition.” The researchers concluded that humans have evolved to detect the slightest cues of inclusion or exclusion.

Looking at a phone or smartwatch mid-conversation is an overt cue of exclusion. It says, “This other thing matters more than you,” and it feels awful to be on the receiving end of that. There are very rare occasions when taking a call or reading a text mid-conversation is important, but those are a handful of times in a lifetime, like “Your son just broke his arm and needs to go to the hospital” or “My water broke and I’m going into labour” or “Your house is on fire.” The rest of the time, we are sacrificing meaningful human connection for relatively unimportant information that could wait a few minutes. And if it is one of those once-in-a-lifetime calls, guaranteed they’ll keep calling till you pick up.

A New Civil Etiquette

The time has come for a new way of handling our personal devices in social settings. I’m calling for a new civil etiquette, the creation of clear standards that guide our interactions in ways that allow for coexistence between the humans and the machines, while ensuring that we are the ones in control.

Cal Newport has written about the concept of “techno-selectionism,” which is choosing carefully which technologies to adopt and integrate into our lives and not being afraid to reject certain ones that do not add value. I love that phrase and use it frequently in talks, but this new civil etiquette I’m envisioning goes beyond the technologies themselves. It’s about how we engage with each other and the need to fiercely defend our in-person interactions. To quote Rosen, “Defending reality is not a privilege. It is crucial to ensure a flourishing human future.” So, what needs to change?

Acknowledge Others

Stop looking at your phone as you go through the grocery store checkout line. Take the five or 10 seconds required to make eye contact with the cashier, interacting with them a little bit longer than is necessary to be polite. Smile. Say something. Ask a question. Make them realize, even if it’s only subconsciously, that you are fully present for that tiny interaction, short though it may be.

Do the same wherever you go in the public world. As far as I’m concerned, you do not have the right to refuse to talk or look at other people if you have chosen to leave your house. We do not wish to live in a world of a**holes, so do not be one. Be a civilized human who acknowledges the presence of others, even if it feels “inconvenient” to you. Get over it. Get used to it. It gets easier with practice. This means you look around the elevator and nod politely. You say hello to the person sitting on a park bench, opening a door, seated beside you on a plane. It’s not a long-term commitment; it’s a simple gesture of respect.

Show Up

I will never forget the advice offered by Celeste Headlee in her great book, We Need to Talk. She said, “Be present or be gone.” If you can’t commit fully to a conversation, leave that conversation. Do it properly or don’t do it at all. Even if you have to do it explicitly, saying, “I’m sorry but I just can’t focus on this right now,” that’s a kinder gesture than imposing your distraction, your pathetic half-focus, on a person who does not deserve it. Again, it doesn’t have to take a long time; an attentive two-minute conversation is much better distracted 20-minute one.

This is so important for our kids, too. Always give kids your full attention when they want to talk; there will come a day when you’ll wish they’d talk to you. Keep the 4T rule in mind: No talking, texting, tapping (on a phone), or TV when in the presence of others. Choose presence, always.

Put It Down

If aliens arrived on Earth today, they’d assume that every human is born with a small glass-and-metal rectangle embedded in their palm. It’s more normal to see a person with a phone in their hand than not. It has become a weird, aberrant extension of our physiology—and that needs to change. Our kids need to grow up not thinking that adulthood is synonymous with clutching and caressing a pocket computer hundreds of times a day.

In order to normalize phonelessness, we have to start leaving our phones behind, setting them to the side, hiding them from view. I’m not saying get rid of them, just don’t hold onto them all the time. I loved this analogy from Robinson Meyer:

Phones are a lot like shoes: they are peerless devices for navigating the physical world beyond one’s front door, they have a lot of brand value, and they can get pretty dirty in the outside world. In civilized households, it’s seen as gross to wear your shoes past the entryway, so people take them off. We should start treating phones the same way. Perhaps we should get landlines again and leave the smartphone by the door.

Meyer says pulling out a phone in a room with other people should be viewed as “callous and self-centered.” No one wants to see your phone out at a party, in a restaurant, at a concert or the gym, at a wedding, on a hike or coffee date. The vast majority of people do not want to take selfies or be in your selfie. Put the gross little thing away and leave it there. Let your descriptive words, your body language, your scintillating personality shine instead. Save the device for when you’re alone, then go nuts, if that’s what you want.

Hold Back

Resist the urge to live out your entire life online because that can look sad, insecure, and even pathetic to viewers. It smacks of a lonely hunger for validation. At risk of sounding like the wettest blanket in the world (I assure you I’m a lot more fun in real life!), I suspect that oversharing on social media platforms makes many viewers feel deeply uncomfortable. The poster might be doing it with the best of intentions, striving for “authenticity” and “transparency”, but this backfires.

Perceived as a “pornography of the self,” such posts are ripe for judgment by the very people who spend time looking at their post (ironic, of course). It sounds harsh, but I suspect that many viewers, upon seeing an overly personal post, do not think, “Wow, they’re so brave for sharing!” Instead, they feel uneasy and think, “Ugh, please don’t do that to yourself. Don’t put that on Instagram. Call a therapist. Go for a walk. Get a new hobby.”

Stop performing for people online who don’t even care and will likely forget your efforts, even if they expended energy mocking them. Ditch the idea that certain things aren’t worth doing if they lack potential for virality or can’t be posted. Get used to bearing life’s ups and down without public proclamations—not alone, but with real-life support from the people who are genuinely invested in your well-being.

If you don’t want to leave the social media party entirely, consider some rules to guide your posting habits. Mary Harrington came up with the useful concept of “digital modesty”, which she defines as “a general disposition to avoid any form of online self-presentation that veers into spectacle.” For her, that means posting no selfies, no pictures of her husband or kids, and no discussion of any interpersonal relationship without express permission from the other person involved. This is valuable advice.

Make Plans

Phones have made us lazy. Knowing that we can text anyone anytime about anything, we have forgotten the value of making plans, lists, schedules in advance. But if we got back to doing this, we’d rely less on the instant communication that disrupts our days constantly. I’m talking about boring, ordinary things like pick-up and drop-off schedules, grocery lists, meal planning, to-do lists, gym workouts, meeting times and locations, etc.

My family has an informal check-in most mornings to go over where everyone needs to be that day—and then there is next to no communication throughout the day. We all know where we need to be and who’s taking who where. It works decently well; my son has only missed his piano lesson once.

This list of ideas is far from comprehensive, but it’s clear that something has to change. If we’re going to change the societal norm, then we need to start calling others out on their phone-handling habits, kindly but firmly, while also holding ourselves accountable. It’s not an easy shift—habit changes never are—but the rewards will be rich and fulfilling.

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