While I was growing up, my grandfather, a physician, would on rare occasions be forced to excuse himself from the dinner table to take an emergency call from the hospital or an ill patient.
Fast forward to 2002. Heated debates centered on talking, texting, and checking emails via cellphone while either dining or in the midst of a conversation prompted the naming of July as National Cell Phone Courtesy Month.
Now a mere seven years later, the smartphone has upped the ante. The debate surrounding proper personal electronic device etiquette has intensified.
That’s hardly surprising, since venues for smartphone use now include church, business meetings, vehicles (while driving), and even funerals.
A number of recent publications have surfaced addressing this etiquette issue. In her latest book, Emily Post’s Table Manners for Kids (Harper-Collins 2009), Emily Post’s great-granddaughter, Dr. Cindy Post Senning, contends that is is not fine to “use your cell phone or any other electronic devices at the table.”
According to Harry Lewis, a Harvard computer science professor and co-author of Blown to Bits: Your Life, Liberty and Happiness After the Digital Explosion (Addison-Wesley 2008), “No one thinks someone on the cell phone can really be paying attention to another person.”
But we all know that -- don’t we? More than likely, most misuses of smartphones are commonsense faux pas. So why is the problem getting far worse, rather than subsiding?
It seems the rise of Web-enabled applications and the social networks’ open forums are tempting people into transgression despite their surroundings.
BlackBerry and iPhone use in conference rooms across America is growing at a clip. In a March poll taken by job-posting site Yahoo HotJobs, over one third of 5,000 respondents admitted to checking email during meetings, and 20 percent were admonished at work for poor manners.
Recently, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, distracted three times during a briefing by a ringing cellphone, called a reporter to hand over the device and abruptly tossed it out of the room.
In another charged situation, New York State Democratic majority leader Malcolm Smith was ousted from his post after billionaire and financial backer Tom Golisano complained of his excessive BlackBerry use during a business meeting.
Rowland Hobbs, chief executive of a marketing firm, could not understand why a potential client stayed engrossed with his iPhone throughout their 90-minute meeting. As reported in The New York Times, one of Hobbs's colleagues peered over the prospect’s shoulder and later reported he was playing a racing game.
Although these examples are extreme, they seem to be turning up with increasing frequency. And inappropriate smartphone use is not just isolated to meeting rooms. An AAA survey last year found that 50 percent of the teens they polled had text-messaged while driving.
The boundaries for smartphone use have been blurred beyond recognition. With Twitter and FaceBook so accessible on mobile hand units, most users no longer think twice about logging on in places formerly deemed taboo.
Further, there is both an anticipation and expectation for people to always be available by being connected. One’s personal etiquette is measured in his or her response time to email or tweets.
David E. Myer, a psychology professor at the University of Michigan, told a New York Times reporter that if a person does not respond to email or tweets within hours, “it is assumed that you are out to lunch mentally, out of it socially, or don’t like the person who sent the e-mail.”
All of which raises the question: Do you practice good smartphone etiquette, or are you a social techno-misfit?
— Chris Poley has been a professional trader for more than 20 years.
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