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A young couple walked into a restaurant. They chatted briefly as they approaching the table. They sat down and chatted a little bit more and made their orders from the menu. The girl then pulled out a smart phone and began surfing the web and the guy turned quiet. Conversation seemed to be ended at that point. After few minutes the guy pulled out his, and interaction between the two was now totally ceased. Although they were physically together but they were far away from each other’s company mentally and emotionally speaking. Throughout the meal there were sporadic remarks, giggles and broken conversations when they decided to share few funny things they saw on the internet, but essentially they were on their own doing their own things. They were both connected to the other end of the internet cable instead of each other in the restaurant.
Call me old school but that is not a healthy way to have and maintain a relationship. It seems to me that people nowadays are far more obsessed with what is happening to others in cyber space than real people they are with in the actual physical space. Are you one of them? Is your relationship with your significant other positively or negatively affected by the use of smart phone? Share your thoughts, stories or personal experience, please.
How do you know they were a couple?
maybe they were friends, relatives or coworkers.
Or maybe one of them was deaf or hard of hearing and they were texting each other to communicate.
I don't mind the phone out if its to look something up together.
if he pulls his phone out and ignores me I have a huge problem with that.
I am not a phone person, and would rather interact with people I am with than choose online socialization over interacting with people around me.
Most of my peers do not identify with this.
I am not a technophobe, have no problem with using technology to communicate, and utilize online communities like this one during time I have to myself. But if I am with others, I would rather be interacting with them than with others online. A phone is just a tool, to me. Online socialization for me is a substitute when I have downtime, not a replacement for a life offline. Constant texting is not my thing, either. Again, if I'm with people, my attention is on them, not my devices. Devices are fine for downtime.
I do think it's weird when I see people at restaurants sitting across the table from one another and not interacting at all. People would think it's weird if, on a date, two people pulled out books or newspapers and had quiet alone time without talking to the other person, but nobody bats an eye when it's a handheld device.
Friend, whatever...if you pull out your phone and begin playing with it when we are supposed to be having dinner together, you are a rude SOB and you a dead meat for one-on-one socializing from that point on.
If you are a doctor checking your calls. OK. But that is it.
I tend to get annoyed with things like this, but maybe because I am a bit older and there were no smartphones when I was in my 20's. Now my husband and I might pull our phones out on occasion when we are out, but our relationship is healthy and established, so if we are out and use our phones for a few minutes while waiting on our food, our relationship isn't going to suffer. If I was on say, a 2nd date with someone and he was on his phone the whole time I'd likely not go out with him again. I was once on a date with a guy in a movie theatre, he checked his phone (when cells were relatively new) in the theatre, yes! every 20 minutes. I found this to be really rude. No, he was not expecting some emergency call, etc.
I agree with Tabula. If you go out with someone, you aren't going to sit there and ignore them to read a book, but yet for a phone nobody bats an eye. I think it's odd that people can't put down the phone for five freakin' minutes anymore. They've cause common courtesy to go out the window. Again, maybe it's my age. And again, my husband and I will usually pull our phones out here and there, but we are capable of having our dinner without or phones in our faces.
How do you know they were a couple?
maybe they were friends, relatives or coworkers.
Or maybe one of them was deaf or hard of hearing and they were texting each other to communicate.
.
Could be this. Maybe they're in a relationship that's turned sour and that's how they stay together. Who knows but it obviously works for them or you would have seen him or her objecting to it or become visibly annoyed.
Maybe I'm reading too much into this...but I don't really think so. I'm in my fifties, so my viewpoint is likely very different from that of later generations. To be blunt, I think this is pathetic on the part of both persons. It's no wonder that American society has some of the problems that it has. It is not a stretch to conclude that a LOT of younger people are not very good at being able to interact socially, as human beings. They interact with the rest of the world as appendages to their electronic devices, not so much as people.
I see this at my job on a regular basis. The teen to 40 age group (yes, I'm generalizing...I KNOW this does not apply to ALL of them) seems barely able to to function without looking at their phones, iPads/Pods, etc. every 3 minutes. That's no exaggeration for a lot of them. Many of them that I interface with have poor interpersonal skills, but they can squeeze every bit (pun intended) of life out of an application on a hand held device. Hell, they don't even speak English half the time; App, telecon, selfie, YOLO, OMG, and on and on. I'd be willing to bet that a very significant portion of Americans under 30 don't even know the words 'application', 'teleconference', or 'self-portrait'. Don't get me started on the near-total inability to write a coherent professional e-mail...or even a personal e-mail for that matter, using P-U-N-C-T-U-A-T-I-O-N. You know...starting sentences with a capital letter, ending sentences with a period, actually writing a sentence that expresses a complete thought.
What happened to basic communication and personal interaction? I guess the larger question is "Is written communication being taught in middle school, high school, and college?"
OK, I'm putting away my soap box since I've gotten slightly off-topic. God Help America.
I used to be bothered by this as well. I had a friend who I would go out with and as we waited for our food or drinks, he would pull out his phone and start surfing. I would text him if I wanted to talk to him. Not because he wouldn't talk to me, but just to make a point. I don't think it was ever made.
My SO and I talk all the time here at home, on the drive to wherever, etc. Sometimes as we sit there waiting for the waitress or our food, there really isn't much to say or we may have already said it.
Admittedly we both get on our phones from time to time. If we re with his parents I would never pull out my phone unless I knew one of my kids or dr was calling, etc.
I don't know. I think it may be better to just leave them in the car, but it is a new age. Sometimes we play a game together on his phone while we wait. If my kids are with us, we normally are all talking and the phones don't come out.....
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