Over the past 30 years, technology has developed in ways that have completely shifted the way we live our daily lives. For many years, it was rude to place elbows on the dinner table. Now – it is completely normal to incorporate cell phone usage at dinnertime. However, we felt that although this is a quite ordinary standard for humans in modern times. It is not a secret that human interaction has completely altered because of cellular devices.
Unfortunately, most of everyone is guilty of this action of sitting on their phones at the dinner table, rather than having a true human conversation with one another. I selected this project because it affects everyone in modern society. Considering everyone is guilty of this action under certain circumstances, I felt that I was able to withdraw from reality and look at the issue from a third perspective.
Also, I wanted to watch if there were any trends that needed to be identified or if the subjects were just completely random. Phones are damaging relationships in today's society. When the observational data was recorded, the data was presented that this is a truly sad epidemic.
I went to various restaurants and collected information based on various factors. When I was looking for data, I was targeting the following: age range, if people were in groups or by themselves, the time of day and what day, a formality of the restaurant, and whether they pulled their phone out and if there was a reaction from the other people at the table. As expected, this action is especially prominent with families and those in relationships, rather than those who are sitting by themselves.
According to two researchers, Elizabeth Dunn and Ryan Dwyer from the University of British Columbia in Canada say those who use their cell phones at the dinner table are less happy than those who do not. "You see people in restaurants all the time who are sitting across the table from each other, and instead of staring at each other, they're staring at their phones," says Dwyer. "We were really curious: Is it having an impact on people's social interactions, how much they're enjoying the time they're spending with other people?"
Cell phone usage at the dinner table causes extreme distractions and less engagement in social communication. It has become a true problem that needs to be addressed. I found that no matter the situation, whether someone was with their family or loved one, that they would place their phones of higher importance rather than actual human interaction.
It is quite an odd phenomenon because everybody hates the action of cell phones at the dinner table - so the ultimate question rises... why do we all continue to do it? The answer is still unknown. I truly believe that if people started calling each other out, this epidemic would slow down or come to a complete stop. Could you imagine a world where we actually interacted with each other at the dinner table? I sure would love to.
