The phone game

Last week after the amazing win over Kansas, my friends and I went out to dinner to celebrate. Plus, we hadn’t eaten all day from waiting in line so why not grab a bite to eat? One of my pet peeves has always been when people pay more attention to their cell phones than the people they are with. I’m guilty of it myself, especially with the iPhone, but I’ve always had the goal to focus on what’s going on in front of you and not on the screen.

My friend Andrew tweeted an article he found last month about a game some people created. Everyone puts their cell phones in the middle of the table at dinner and isn’t allowed to touch them the entire meal. If someone breaks the rules and uses their phone, they have to pay the entire check. Sounds fun, right? The objective is to get everyone to focus on having a conversation with each other during dinner rather than texting the entire time. So naturally, we tried it!

At Applebees, eight of us put our phones in the center- seven iPhones and 1 Droid (ha). At first, I had turned my volume off and phone facing down, but we really decided to torment ourselves. Everyone’s volume was on and phone was face up so we could see that people were trying to contact us, but realize that it didn’t matter. We were all together, friends hanging out, having a conversation, enjoying each other’s company. What needed to interrupt that? What can’t wait 20-30 minutes?  

Luckily, no one lost the game and everyone got their own check! The game succeeded. We all resisted the temptation to text others and had fun conversations with each other too. Everyone talked about what they were doing for the SuperBowl, what their favorite parts of the weekend were and what was going on in their lives.

Would I do this again? DEFINITELY. It’s upsetting that we have to make a game of it to put our phones away and can’t just do it unconsciously. But it taught us to appreciate the time we have with each other and chill for just a few minutes, rather than constantly thinking about what we were doing next or who we weren’t with. The waitress thought we were incredibly strange, but it didn’t even matter. Give the game a try some time!

Phones in the middle of the table