Diners should stop making a meal of their mobiles

It's a familiar scenario: a couple is out for a meal and one of them is glued to their smartphone. It might be an intense, fevered tapping at the BlackBerry or it could be a series of short furtive glances at the glowing touchscreen, but the phone is there throughout, like a third person at the table.

It's not just couples. In fact, it's easier in a group, when the conversation temporarily excludes you, to check out of the meal and check in with the virtual world on your phone. I've done it many times myself and perhaps you have too.

The only question used to be about whether one should answer a mobile phone call or text message during dinner. The rise of the smartphone, over the last five or six years, has brought many more options for distraction: checking email, browsing the web, playing a quick round of a game or even watching online video of the football highlights.

Debrett's, the etiquette authority, recommends switching off your phone entirely in all social situations. "People in the flesh deserve more attention than a gadget," Debrett's says in its Mobile Manners guide.

It adds: "Don't put your phone on the dining table, or glance at it longingly mid-conversation."

That sounds eminently sensible but some people need a little more encouragement. Eva, a restaurant in Los Angeles, is offering a discount to diners who leave their smartphone at the door. Mark Gold, the chef and owner of Eva, said: "It’s about two people sitting together and just connecting, without the distraction of a phone."

Gold isn't the first to try to enforce a 'no smartphones at the table' policy. While he is trying to bring about smartphone-free dining through incentives, the 'Phone Stack' game uses the prospect of punishment to encourage people to do the right thing.

The Phone Stack has been growing in popularity in the US for some time. It's very simple: at the start of the meal everyone places their mobile phone in the centre of the table, face down. The first person to pick up their phone pays the bill for everyone.

Whether it's carrot or stick, the 'no-phone' movement has to contend with the fact that many of us - four out of 10 according to a recent survey - see nothing wrong with using a smartphone at the table. Worse, lots of us feel a constant pressure to check just once more.

It's not just the trivia - have I had a Facebook message? Did I get a reply on Twitter? - but it's work too. Companies know that many employees have computers in their pockets at all times and take it for granted that they can email them out of hours. That kicks off an anxious cycle of replying to an important work message and then checking your phone every five minutes for an answer.

Last year, Volkswagen agreed to switch off work emails before 7am and after 6.16pm. The chief executive of technology company Atos, meanwhile, plans to ban all internal email by 2014.

It's easy to blame all this on the devices but the real issue is what behaviour we're willing to accept. Future generations might see nothing wrong with being plugged into their devices at dinner. But perhaps some of us need to exercise a little more willpower.

An article by Shane Richmond in The Telegraph 23 August 2012