This has been the year of the phone fightback (as in trying to wean us off our phones for limited periods of time). A few years ago, we thought this was a problem exclusive to millennials and young people who had never experienced a landlines-only world. Now, we know it is all of us, and we are in just as deep as the generation brought up on Peppa Pig.
Phones in meetings
In the new world of face-to-face meetings, it is normal to have parallel conversations conducted on phones. This is the reason you have your phone in a meeting in the first place. You might need to text a colleague or answer a question raised by the boss. It is part of the speedy “I’m on it now” culture. That’s as may be, but we all know that if you have a phone anywhere within arm’s reach, you are sooner or later going to be tempted to browse Ikea headboards, check the name of Jeremy Allen White’s estranged wife, and WhatsApp your brother to remind him to turn off the heating.
Meanwhile, the CEO texting while one of his employees is talking is the equivalent of him looking at his watch and then gazing out the window. It says, at best, “We already know this,” and at worst, “Your contribution is meaningless.” In a work situation, texting is crushing and demoralizing. In the marital bed, it is not great, either, but at least you can say, “Put that f***ing thing away before I stuff it in my water glass.”
Worst phone crime: Texting when a colleague is talking, especially with a small, secret smile on your face.
How to stop it: Say, “Sorry, you’ve obviously got some emergency. I’ll pause until you’re ready.”
Phones in front of the TV
Maybe you haven’t been in a work meeting recently, but you have probably been on the sofa, with your partner or wider family, watching a film together and… Ah. For some reason, someone has to have a quick check of their phone at a critical moment in the drama. During the countdown to missile interception launch, say (A House of Dynamite, edge-of-your-seat gripping), someone sees fit to check their texts. And that person could even be you, without thinking about it. And here’s the thing. In the old days, you might have jumped up to put the kettle on and driven your fellow viewers nuts, but the phone check is infinitely more damaging than any other distraction. Everyone else watching with you knows you are not really committed to this joint venture. You are outside it, cheating on everyone with your stupid phone.
Something else that people do (even worse): ten minutes after you have all started watching a film, they might start watching an alternative film or sporting event on their phone without for a moment considering that the flickering of their screen plus the sighing and sniggering are extremely disruptive.
Worst phone crime: Texting, “Did you decide to take those boots back in the end?” to your friend while watching a documentary about Gaza.
How to stop it: Put your phone in another room. On second thought, put it on another floor, because if it’s too easy to get to, it may just lead to more bathroom breaks.
Phones in bed
There is a lot of intimacy avoidance connected to this phone use, surely? That and laziness (easier to scroll than have sex) are both are big enemies of fun times in the marital bedroom.
Still, as a long-term, last-thing-at-night phone checker—something that infuriates my husband—I would like to plead just the basic desire to sign off at night with a clean slate. I can go a whole dinner without needing to look. I hardly glance at my phone when I’m shopping. I went on a walk yesterday and never touched the phone in my pocket once (although it was sort of a personal test), but you need to check it just before bed, don’t you? So you can nod off in the certainty that nothing is outstanding and no one’s messaged to say, “I’m locked out! Be at yours in an hour!” And, yes, that checking may lead to a racing brain and possibly getting up and trying to find your passport, but is it intimacy avoidance? Don’t think so.
Still, I appreciate that the action of reaching for your phone last thing at night is a bit like putting on a face mask, eye mask, chin hammock and earplugs. What with that and the dog now getting all your spare attention, we’re talking about a roughly 89 percent reduction in intimacy opportunities. Plus, let’s face it, it’s all a bit more of an effort these days, so if, on top of that, when one of you is feeling frisky and has to ask the other one to get off their phone (“Hang on a minute. I just have to tell Janet it’s postponed to Tuesday…”), it’s not helpful.
Worst phone crime: He would say doomscrolling even if actually looking at Pooky lampshades. I would say not switching off your alerts and having the brightness setting on “lost at sea” mode.
How to stop it: Get an alarm clock and put the phone in a drawer on the other side of the room.
Phones in restaurants
Let’s go out to dinner à deux and put our phones next to our side plates. Now there’s us and everyone we have ever met plus Google and AI, so that feels better. Let’s ask AI whether there’s a sister restaurant to this one in Bristol. Let’s Vivino the wine. Let’s look up the collective noun for penguins and when exactly the last episode of Friends aired. Or let’s just check our phones one more time in case we missed something.
This isn’t us, of course. No, no, we’re not that bad. It is other people in restaurants, but their phone use directly affects our experience. The whole point of restaurants is soaking up the atmosphere and talking to each other. It doesn’t work if the walls are white-tiled and the place is strip-lit. And it doesn’t work if people are on their phones. The couple who haven’t raised their eyes from their screens for ten minutes; the one who is talking to her sister on FaceTime and showing her the starter; the table of four men, two of whom are having an intense text-off (“Sorry, guys, I’m just dealing with this new moron in comms”)… It’s all destroying the mood like a fire alarm going off in the background. Even if the phones are not in your face, you get peripheral phone anxiety. It’s like giving up smoking and then going to sit on a smoking terrace.
Worst phone crime: I can’t believe it’s come to this, but the obvious one—FaceTiming at high volume with no earphones.
How to stop it: Ask the management to seat you in a phone-free zone, and if there’s no phone-free zone, just to reseat you. They will be getting one soon.
Phones at a dinner party
Do you need your phone at a dinner party is the only question. Are you a doctor on call? Are you waiting to hear good news from the babysitter? Or do you just feel like checking it every so often? If so, you need to accept there will be consequences.
Twenty minutes into the dinner party, Geoff starts looking at his phone. Now he’s broken the social contract and we wouldn’t mind knowing the Strictly results, so what the hell? Might as well have a quick phone check ourselves. Suddenly, it’s a very different party.
To be clear, if Geoff is a pediatric surgeon or one of those people who have to get to the crisis room fast in the event of a Korean missile launch (you have to watch A House of Dynamite; it stays with you), then we want him checking his phone every two minutes. He can have his phone dangling in front of his eyes, suspended from a Tom-Cruise-in-Mission: Impossible-style headset for all we care. Otherwise, the correct amount of phone contact is zero.
Worst phone crime: Tucking your phone next to you on the sofa and surreptitiously tilting it, face up, to check it every so often.
How to stop it: Move the phone-using offender to a place where they can’t hide it, then send in a very chatty guest who will not be deflected.
Phones at home with family
Here’s what I can’t handle, and I think I speak for most mothers or stepmothers of children. They are not just on their phones; they feel no obligation to stop looking at their phones should you try to engage them in conversation. They certainly don’t count refusing to raise their eyes from the screen when someone is talking to them as rude. They can still talk to you—they are talking to you— so what’s the problem? It’s multitasking. It’s modern life and bad luck us for not having got the memo. Phone beats conversation with family is the bottom line. Occasionally, they will give you a window of their full attention, and then you know their No. 1 priority is plugged in somewhere and charging.
Worst phone crime: Family members who have not seen each other for weeks sitting in a room together and everyone is On Their Phone.
How to stop it: Stand in the doorway and shout, “Right, I’m having those phones now,” and hope it scares them into pocketing their phones temporarily.
Phones in the car
The phone-in-the-car thing saddens me. Before phones, a medium to long car journey was the one occasion when passenger and driver were almost guaranteed to have a really good talk. What else was there to do? Well, now any passenger considers a car journey to be the perfect time for catching up on stuff On Their Phone. On goes the seatbelt, in go the AirPods. No one talks in cars any more. One person drives like the lonely Amazon delivery man while their passenger works their phone like Meghan Markle’s PA.
Worst phone crime: Catching up on making phone calls, leaving the driver feeling like an actual Uber driver.
How to stop it: Try talking. Or at least scroll and read the gossip highlights out loud for everyone to hear.
Phones in the cinema
Why go to the cinema and text after the lights have gone down when you can see the film at home and text all you like? But it’s a thing. We have all seen it done and it is infuriating, not just because it’s distracting (the light from one phone seems to reduce the darkness in the cinema by about 20 percent), but also because it is an example of the new “suits me, so screw you” attitude. Is cinema texting the highbrow equivalent of loudly FaceTiming on the top deck of the bus about the sex you had last night?
Worst phone crime: Texting with your light on bright setting and rustling food wrappers at the same time.
How to stop it: Same rules as for cinema talkers. Clear your throat, hiss, “Stop texting,” or send the young one over to ask them if they’d consider switching off their phone. Come to think of it, when did you last switch off your phone?
Shane Watson is a U.K.-based journalist
