Does a Phone on the Table Ruin a Meal With Friends?

Leaving your phone face up on the table while you eat with friends feels harmless as long as you're not reaching for it. A team of psychologists in Vancouver tested whether that's true, with real groups of friends and family sharing a real meal, half with their phones in plain view and half with their phones put away.

What the researchers did

The study, by Ryan Dwyer, Kostadin Kushlev and Elizabeth Dunn, was published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology in 2018. It combines two pieces of research.

In Study 1, the team recruited 304 people (64 percent women, aged 19 to 69) in groups of 3 to 5 friends or family members, drawn from university students and the wider Vancouver community, to share a meal at a local café. Each whole group was randomly assigned to one of two conditions. In the phone condition, participants set their phones on the table with the ringer or vibration on, and were told a researcher would text them a survey question after they ordered. In the phoneless condition, participants silenced their phones, placed them in a container on the table and got the same question on paper, a cover story that kept the study's real purpose hidden. A small, visible camera recorded each meal. Afterward, everyone privately answered questions on an iPad about how connected, distracted, bored and interested they had felt, with up to $20 toward the bill as thanks.

Study 2 followed 123 students at a large US university (69 percent women, average age 18.6) for a week, texting them a short survey five times a day about the past 15 minutes: what they had been doing, how they had felt, whether they had been face to face with others, and whether they had used their phone. Of 3,008 completed surveys, 1,244 captured a face-to-face interaction.

What they found

• In Study 1, phones on the table reduced enjoyment. Participants in the phone condition reported significantly less interest and enjoyment than those in the phoneless condition, and significantly more distraction. They were slightly more bored too, though that difference fell just short of the study's own strict pre-registered threshold. Camera footage showed that people in the phone condition had their phone out for about 11 percent of the meal, against 1 percent in the phoneless condition, so the effect came from fairly light use. Averaged across every measure tracked, the overall effect was small but consistent (d = 0.31).
• Distraction looked like the path. The phone made people feel more distracted, and feeling distracted went with enjoying the meal less. In Study 1 that indirect path was only marginal by the researchers' own strict standard, but in both studies phone use predicted distraction, which in turn predicted more boredom and a worse mood.
• Study 2 found the same pattern in everyday life. Across 1,244 moments of face-to-face interaction logged over a week, people who had used their phone in the last 15 minutes reported more distraction, less enjoyment, a worse mood, less connection to the people they were with and more boredom than when they hadn't touched it, and time seemed to pass more slowly. The overall effect was again small (d = 0.23).

What the study can't tell you

Both studies found small effects. The researchers calculated that detecting Study 1's effect reliably would take at least 165 people per group, a sense of how subtle it is at any single meal.

Study 1 randomized whole groups, not individuals, so it can't separate the effect of your own phone from a friend's phone on the same table. Study 2 didn't manipulate anything: it tracked phone use and feelings together over a week, so someone who was already bored or disconnected might simply have reached for their phone more, rather than the phone causing those feelings. The researchers also estimate that their survey prompts nudged participants to check their phones a little more than usual, by about 6 percent above typical use for people that age, though they argue this is too small to explain the results. Both samples came from North America: students and community members in Vancouver for the meal, and students at a university in the southern United States for the week of surveys.

What it means for your phone

The phone doesn't have to be in your hand to cost you something. Having it out and ready was enough to make a meal a little less enjoyable here, mostly through feeling distracted. Putting it away, as the phoneless groups did, is the simplest fix.

When you want that out of sight, out of mind feeling without relying on willpower alone, a phone-free Focus session in Unrotten, started from Home's + button, locks the apps you choose until the session ends, so the phone can sit on the table without becoming the third guest at dinner. If scattered attention is a wider pattern for you, not just at meals, read our guides to digital minimalism and how to focus better.