Smartphone Etiquette: Suggestions for Social Interactions
If anyone stopped and asked themselves if they enjoy the current smartphone social etiquette—whereby you could be opening up your soul to a friend in a moment of vulnerability, when suddenly, they feel a buzz and reflexively check their phone to discover an important & urgent message from the McDonald’s app that The McRib is back!—they would probably shake their heads knowing how close to home a situation like this hits.
Every time one of these moments of disconnection happen, a small part of me—the part craving real connection—dies. But it doesn’t have to be this way. I’ve managed to improve my social interactions due to:
Internalizing the emotional impact of checking my phone,
Recognizing how it affects my capacity to think clearly,
Understanding group interactions are better without distractions, and
Creating suggestions to remove phones from social situations (as doing so is in everyone’s best interest).
(1) The emotional impact of disconnection
I don’t blame individuals for lacking the restraint to not check their phones in social contexts. Why? Because there’s thousands of engineers whose full-time job it is to make our technology as addicting “engaging” as possible. As researcher Dr. Anna Lembke notes in her book Dopamine Nation:
We’re living in a time of unprecedented access to high-dopamine stimuli. The smartphone is the modern-day hypodermic needle, delivering digital dopamine 24⁄7. As such, we’ve all become vulnerable to compulsive overconsumption.
Author Nir Eyal wrote the book on how to addict “increase engagement” in users called Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products. So it’s with a combination of sadistic glee and pity when I read about one of Nir’s moments of disconnection with his young daughter[1]:
[Nir was reading a book with his daughter. As she was contemplating a question he asked her, he received a text] and “I started looking at my phone, as opposed to being fully present with her.” When he looked up, she was gone. A childhood is made up of small moments of connection between a child and their parent. If you miss them, you don’t ever get them back. Nir realized with a lurch: “She got the message that whatever was on my phone was more important than she was.”
(2) “Smart” phones are making you dumber
The evidence on task switching does not look good for people who frequently check their phones. In Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention, author Johann Hari reveals that:
Getting emails and texts…caused a drop in a [person’s] IQ by 10 points. That’s twice the knock to your IQ you get when you smoke cannabis.
It also takes on average 25 minutes to resume focus after being distracted.
When I’m speaking with a friend and they check their work email on their phone, their brain is now multitasking between work and me. I’m left speaking with a dumber version of my friend.
(3) Group events without phones are rated as more satisfying
This study asked more than “300 people to go to dinner with friends and family at a restaurant. Participants were randomly assigned to either keep their phones on the table or to put their phones away during the meal. After the meal, they were asked a variety of questions, including how much they enjoyed the experience.”
In a not-so-shocking turn of events, “people who used their devices while out for dinner…enjoyed themselves less than those who did not.”
(4) Suggestions for social interactions
Over the years, I’ve honed my craft at influencing people to remove phones from social situations, when possible[2], which leaves everyone better off.
Funnily enough, I was inspired to challenge existing phone norms by Nir Eyal. Perhaps out of guilt for having written his first book, Hooked, he wrote a sequel called Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life. In it, he promotes a non-combative way to suggest a friend to stop using their phone.
To help keep things cordial, ask “I see you’re on your phone. Is everything okay?” Remember to be sincere—after all, there might really be an emergency.
I love this and use it often. A sophisticated person may recognize the insinuation that if it’s not an emergency, then why are you on your phone?
Depending on the context, I use different lines to encourage social etiquette. All of them prioritize kindness, instead of shaming, as the former is more likely to alter behavior.
One of my favorite tactics to discourage phone usage is to frame it such that they’re doing me a favor by stopping. “You know, I’m someone who is easily distracted. Do you mind putting your phone away for me?”
On a date with a device-distracted person, I’ll say with a teasing tone as I point at their phone, “somewhere else you’d rather be?”😉
When having a conversation with a friend that requires concentration, I explain the −10 IQ fact and request, “I need to speak to the most intelligent, and non-distracted, version of you.”
It’s a suggestion baked in a compliment.
In group settings, mentioning the outcome from the aforementioned dinner study can sometimes be effective at disrupting norms.
If I’m hosting people at my place, then I’ll pair this study with a phone bowl to encourage everyone to disconnect for the night.
I always ask for permission to check my phone, with an accompanying rationale, in one-on-one social situations. Most people say “of course it’s fine to use your phone!” But I ask for permission every time anyway. Why? Because I’m setting a standard for myself and leading by example.
Furthermore, if I’m expecting a text/call during a social interaction, I inform the people I’m currently with ahead of time so as to not appear rude later.
Nuclear option (when nothing else is working): “I would like to feel more connected with you, but I feel lonely when our conversation is interrupted by our phones.”
Even here, I’m minimizing the conflict by using “I/we” language instead of “you” language.
The most precious gift we can offer others is our presence — Thich Nhat Hanh
Thanks so much for writing this, this is a major problem I experience and it’s nice to have a set of really gentle tools to address it.
This sounds like a solution to a problem that I luckily don’t have. People around me simply do not use smartphones when interacting with others. I wonder whether I live in an exceptional bubble.
My wife used smartphone a lot at home, luckily she stopped doing that recently, but even then she stopped using it when we met other people.
It’s probably in part generational, with younger people more influenced by this tech culture. One of my inspirations to write this post was this other LW post: Notifications Received in 30 Minutes of Class.
One very important reason to use your smartphone which isn’t covered here: entertainment while you wait for the people around you to say something worth paying attention to.