In the early days, when cellphones were first made available, they were a novelty of the rich. I can remember sitting at a diner and some guy was carrying on a conversation into a phone without wires from his table. He was speaking loudly and laughing and annoying everyone else.
My thought: This technology is a dream come true, but we do not yet have social norms for these things. It will likely take many years to get there.
I knew for sure that there would come a time when the court of taste and manners would rule against speaking loudly on a cellphone in a public restaurant.
By now, that is surely known. I cannot remember seeing this in a very long time. There is no law against and restaurants do not usually have to explain that this is not allowed. It is simply considered rude, and that is all that is necessary to make the practice Verboten.
Albert Jay Nock, one of my favorite interwar authors, wrote about the power of social expectations and informal rules. He said the court of taste and manners in a free society would guide the operation of behavior, and this “court” would have a much larger role in society than law, legislation, or religion. This is surely true in a social order that is civilized.
With new tools and toys, rules must adapt. This will happen even if slowly. The formation of new rules comes with emulation. When we see someone doing something that bugs us, we make a mental note not to do that. When people do things that elicit respect, we make notes of that too. Gradually, the knowledge spreads and becomes instantiated in habits and norms.
Sure enough, the etiquette surrounding cellphones has become ever stricter.
For example, a few years back, I was at a dinner party and took out my phone to see why it was buzzing. It was a message that I read and then clicked on a link and, the next thing I know, I was engrossed in some content on my phone and started ignoring the conversation.
After I put my phone back in my pocket I looked up to see people staring at me disapprovingly. It was at that moment that I realized: We are in a new world now and the general expectations concerning appropriate phone use are changing.
Today it is usually and rightly considered uncouth to take your phone out at dinner of any sort or even at a cocktail party to which you have been invited. I rarely see it now. You say that you need it just for emergencies? Well, you can set your phone for a special buzz for the special person and make an exception. That is fine. But you might be best to excuse yourself to use your phone.
A year or so ago, I was invited to speak at a special club in some city (I cannot remember which) and took a call. I was walking around the club talking. I thought this was fine because there was no one around. But then a man in black tie came up to me and said this was not allowed, that they have special phone booths for this. I was stunned. I entered a phone booth and finished my conversation.
I assume that this is true in any private club now.
It is certainly true when you are in someone else’s home. The phone gets buried out of sight and you don’t pull it out for the entire evening. That’s where we stand today. I would say that this is exactly right. Digital addiction is real and nothing says “I don’t like you” like pulling out your phone during a conversation.
This rule seems to have emerged in the last few years, probably during lockdowns when people were spending so much time indoors with others. No one announced it. It just became a thing for people. Sometimes it is rooted in privacy concerns given the widespread belief that these things are simply tools of surveillance and spying. No one likes that. It also traces to a general sense that if you are somewhere, you should be there and not somewhere else in your head.
I’m also hearing fewer announcements at concerts and church and so on to turn off your cellphone. These days, people are right to keep their phones on vibrate except in special places. Vibrate is enough. The days of sitting quietly only to have someone phone scream “Everybody dance now!” are largely over.
It’s the same with listening to music. Earbuds are essential if you must listen to music.
I have the impression that we still are not there with etiquette concerning taking photographs. In big public spaces with a public personality, it is unavoidable. But for regular people in private places, taking photos without permission is really a violation of privacy. It is certainly not charming. It has happened to me that someone shows me a picture they just took of me and I feel a tinge of anger about the whole thing. It’s just wrong.
The generalized rule should be: Never take a photograph of a person without permission. If a person is giving a big public speech or otherwise a known figure, the permission is implicit. Otherwise, in private situations and casual locations, it should be considered uncouth and plainly violative to snap photos much less publicly post them without permission.
I’m also learning something else. I’ve typically kept my phone in my coat pocket with the top peeking out over the top. That’s the place where the pocket square usually goes. That turns out to be rather alarming to some people, especially if the camera holes are visible. Discovering this, I’ve started to keep it in my left pocket inside the coat, out of sight completely. It was simply a matter of changing habits. This way, people aren’t reminded that the cursed thing is there.
This speaks to a larger issue of the smartphone. Having one once was considered cool, a thing to show off. People liked their phones, thinking of them as their friends. That is simply no longer true. Now that we know they are surveilling us, that much of the news notifications are fake news, that the apps are all links and are assembling a full profile of how we use them including our locations, they are no longer seen that way.
They are now regarded as essential but neutral or often a true threat to privacy and even freedom. That is a dramatic change from just the past few years. Now no one wants to see them. Of course when you travel and sit on the plane or train, everyone has them out as a means of passing the time. But that is also a time when people aren’t talking to each other and want to appear to be busy. This is not likely to change anytime soon.
The court of taste and manners has judged the smartphone and found them guilty of terrible things, the most offensive of which is invading our private spaces, ruining dinner parties, distracting us with gibberish, and generally taking away from the quality of our lives. Indeed, I have turned off all my notifications except a few and only now use a handful of applications and only when absolutely necessary.
How times have changed from the old days when these contraptions were first being distributed to the public. We now have rules and expectations and they are working just fine.
