Reclaiming Conversation Read Online Free Page A

because what we value most is control over where we put our attention. Our manners have evolved to accommodate our new priorities. When you’re out to dinner with friends, you can’t assume that you have their undivided attention. Cameron, a college junior in New Hampshire, says that when his friends have dinner, “and I hate this, everyone puts their phones next to them when they eat. And then, they’re always checking them.” The night before at dinner he had texted a friend sitting next to him (“’S’up, dude?”) just to get his attention.
    Cameron’s objection is common, for this is the reality: When college students go to dinner, they want the company of their friends in the dining hall and they also want the freedom to go to their phones. To have both at the same time, they observe what some call the “rule of three”:When you are with a group at dinner you have to check that at least three people have their heads up from their phones before you give yourself permission to look down at
your
phone. So conversation proceeds—but with different people having their “heads up” at different times.
    I meet with Cameron and seven of his friends. One of them, Eleanor, describes the rule of three as a strategy of continual scanning:
    Let’s say we are seven at dinner. We all have our phones. You have to make sure that at least two people are not on their phones or looking down to check something—like a movie time on Google or going on Facebook. So you need sort of a rule of two or three. So I know to keep, like, two or three in the mix so that other people can text or whatever. It’s my way of being polite. I would say that conversations, well, they’re pretty, well, fragmented. Everybody is kind of in and out. Yeah, you have to say, “Wait, what . . .” and sort of have people fill you in a bit when you drop out.
    The effect of the rule of three is what you might expect. As Eleanor says, conversation is fragmented. And everyone tries to keep it light.
Even a Silent Phone Disconnects Us
    K eeping talk light when phones are on the landscape becomes a new social grace. One of Eleanor’s friends explains that if a conversation at dinner turns serious and someone looks at a phone, that is her signal to “lighten things up.” And she points out that the rule of three is a way of being polite even when you’re not at the dinner table. When “eyes are down” at phones, she says, “conversation stays light well beyond dinner.”
    When I first planned the research that would lead to this book, my idea was to focus on our new patterns of texting and messaging. What made them compelling? Unique? But early in my study, when I met with these New Hampshire students, their response to my originalquestion was to point me to another question that they thought was more important. “I would put it this way,” says Cameron. “There are fewer conversations—not with the people you’re texting, but with the people around you!” As he says this, we are in a circle of eight, talking together, and heads are going down to check phones. A few try not to, but it is a struggle.
    Cameron sums up what he sees around him. “Our texts are fine. It’s what texting does to our conversations when we are together, that’s the problem.”
    It was a powerful intuition. What phones do to in-person conversation
is
a problem. Studies show that the mere presence of a phone on the table (even a phone turned off) changes what people talk about. If we think we might be interrupted, we keep conversations light, on topics of little controversy or consequence. And conversations with phones on the landscape block empathic connection. If two people are speaking and there is a phone on a nearby desk, each feels less connected to the other than when there is no phone present.
Even a silent phone disconnects us.
    So it