Most of us know that checking your phone in a theater is unacceptable, verging on the immoral. Now we have the data to back up that assertion. Today the Pew Research Center released its study on "Americans' Views on Mobile Etiquette," and it shows a general emerging consensus on the social rules around phone use.
The key graph is this one:
What it shows is the general consensus of the moment: It's not rude to use a phone on a bus. It's not rude to use it on the street. It is rude to use it at the dinner table. It is rude to use it at church. The appropriate social space of the telephone has completely reversed over the course of two generations. Talking on the phone used to be a private activity. It happened in booths or at home. Now it is only appropriate on the street. It's inappropriate in intimate spaces.
That may well be simply because we're inseparable from our phones. They have become more connected to our identities than any other product in history. Thirty-nine percent of Americans between the ages of 30 and 49 never turn their phones off. Only four percent do so frequently. And those numbers are generally consistent across age cohorts.
Only one battleground remains, which we haven't quite worked out: the restaurant. According to Pew, 62 percent of Americans think it's "generally not OK" to use your phone at a restaurant, while 38 percent think it's "generally OK." Here age does matter: "Younger age groups are much more likely to say phone use is acceptable relative to older adults: Though 50 percent of young adults say it is generally acceptable to use cellphones at a restaurant, less than half of older adults—including just 26 percent of those 65 and older—say that this is generally acceptable."
Time will solve that conflict as it has solved the others. The phones will eventually be acceptable in every public space, including restaurants. They will then provide a very simple way of telling whether the dinner is intimate or not. The new research shows another new rule: If you care about somebody, the phone is off.
