Get Off Your Damn Phone

A call for a universal social norm of actually socializing.

Photo by Mika Baumeister on Unsplas

For the past five weeks, I’ve been away from home, first in various parts of Kenya and then in various parts of South Africa. I’m lucky that my job requires me to travel; I also dedicate a significant chunk of my own income to spending time on the road (#DINK life). Part of the joy of travel is in seeing how people in different places do things differently, for better or worse. And part of the joy of my job, which requires talking to lots of different kinds of people, is seeing how fundamentally similar human beings are, all over the world. Most of us want the same things: Physical safety and our basic needs met; people around us who love us and who we love in return; a life that feels purposeful.

But with the increased ubiquity of smartphones, many of us have also developed the same obnoxious, anti-social habit: Putting a screen in between us and other people — and, worse, forcing anyone within earshot to listen to whatever it is we are distracting ourselves with.

In a 24-hour period in Cape Town, I watched a visiting British family enter a busy restaurant at dinnertime, prop up an iPad in front of two previously perfectly-behaved children, turn on Boss Baby at full volume, and then proceed to shout at each other over the din they created — that is, when the parents weren’t scrolling away on their own phones, while the grandparents tried to interact with the movie-watching grandchildren. The next morning, out at a popular brunch place, I watched the woman sitting next to me stare at her date for a solid hour while he scrolled through his phone, played TikTok videos out loud for his own amusement, and took a few calls on speaker.

These profoundly anti-social behaviors — the screen in your face, but also the insistence that everyone around you be subjected to whatever it is you want to listen to — have popped up everywhere. I’m not sure I’ve taken a flight in the last few years where upon landing, someone didn’t immediately take a call on speakerphone or FaceTime. From the subway in New York City to the hallways of the Louvre to the Holocaust memorial in Berlin to coffee shops in Nairobi to spas in Shanghai, I’ve seen (and, most irritatingly, heard) people using their phones, volume up, without any regard for those around them. This was a problem pre-Covid, but the pandemic sent it into overdrive.

Enough.

It’s difficult for me to understand how anyone can be so totally indifferent to others in public — how one could ever get the idea that whatever one is watching or listening to should take precedence over everyone else. And yet this total self-absorption seems to span cultures and continents. The only answer, I think, is to establish clear social norms around phone usage, and to socially enforce them — that is, to say something to friends and family members who don’t abide by them in public, and, where it feels safe to do so, to feel empowered to say something to strangers, too.

Smartphones are a part of most Americans’ lives. They are increasingly in the pockets of people all over the globe. They are wonderful, enabling us to communicate like never before, and to have a universe of information at our fingertips. And they are terrible, enabling us to retreat from real life like never before, and designed specifically to capture our attention without us even fully noticing.

With new technologies must come new norms. Tight now, the norm of being a loud asshole is taking over. We have to push back.

And so: A proposed short list of how to behave in public with a smartphone.

1. No volume. Never. Not if you forgot your headphones; not if your kid wants to play a game; not if you really want to show your friend a hilarious TikTok video. Headphones up or mute. (Exceptions allowed for having your ringer on for acute medical emergencies, like being at work when you know your wife will go into labor any day. But when you pick up the phone, no speakerphone).

2. Put your phone away when you’re sitting down for a meal with other people. Barring the very very *very* occasional work, personal, or medical emergency that requires you to be on call (or if you’re, say, a doctor), your phone needs to be in your pocket or in your bag if you’re out with others. You don’t need to check Instagram when you’re living your actual life.

3. Parents should decide for themselves and their families whether they want to allow screens for their children, and in which contexts, and no one else gets to say anything if an iPad is keeping a child calm on an airplane or at a restaurant. However: Volume rules apply. No playing the volume out loud. The kids wear headphones, or it’s a silent screen.

4. Some folks have sensory issues or get overwhelmed when overstimulated, and the phone is a comfort or a distraction. Wonderful — technology is amazing, and people are different. But wear headphones, or keep the volume off.

5. No screens on, and obviously no volume on, in the movies, at plays / ballets / operas, and in other dark spaces where you are collectively watching a performance or a work of art, and where the dark room is necessary to see the show. (Exceptions made for the kind of concerts where it’s standard for everyone to have their phones out, so, I dunno, Taylor Swift, but put it away in a movie theater).

6. Look up when you’re walking if you’re in a busy area. Yeah, I know you think *you* are fully capable of looking at your phone while you walk. I have bad news: You aren’t. Eyes up if other people are around. (If you’re wandering through an empty field, feel free to stare at your screen).

I realize I sound like a very old crank, when in fact I am only a medium-aged crank. But we live in a beautiful and interesting world, and our phones have been invented by some of the smartest people in it to suck up our attention and distract us from what’s around us. There is loads of evidence out there about what makes people feel happy, and I promise you it’s not Twitter — it’s in-person connection, a balance between familiar and novel experiences, and being present in your own life.

I spend too much time on my phone, too. I have also caught myself looking at my email instead of focusing on a dinner companion, or scrolling through Instagram when I’m physically in a beautiful and interesting place. Many of us are addicts, and how we navigate our relationship with screens is something most of us should consider.

But individual considerations shouldn’t dictate social norms — the most pro-social norms should dictate social norms. And our social norms around screens, to the extent that they exist, are vastly insufficient. Some people are wildly selfish jerks, but a lot of people are simply mildly inconsiderate. Others have had their brains so broken by smartphones + Covid that they don’t even realize that their behavior is incredibly antisocial and really really irritating to those around them. Others operate according to what they believe should be a norm of ubiquitous phone usage — and unless those of us who don’t want to live in a world of ubiquitous phone usage contest it, we’re going to wind up living in a world of ubiquitous phone usage.

We don’t have to give in — we don’t have to be a world in which dinner tables are occupied by adults scrolling through social media instead of speaking to each other, only looking up long enough to capture a photo for Instagram that other people can envy while they’re ignoring their friends in favor of their Instagram feed; we don’t have to be a world in which public spaces are full of people on their own, loud audio journeys, barely looking up as they barrel forward. But that means staking out our ground: Refusing the temptation to give into antisocial smartphone use; asking our friends and loved ones and perhaps even acquaintances to refrain when they do so.

The world is wonderful. Look up at it occasionally.

xx Jill

p.s. I would love to hear from you: What do you think should be the social norms around smartphones? Leave your thoughts in the comments…