Cellphone etiquette takes on life of its own

I hope this finds everyone in Cape Breton well this week. Over the last week I have been playing closer attention to the whole cellphone situation in my life and the lives around me. I have talked about it in the past and I have heard from many people over the last few years about how much they hate phones, and even worse, about how phones have played a part in the ending of the marriage.

So over the last week, I have just made mental notes and OK, I made a few notes in my phone as well about people complaining about their phones, or their husbands' or their kids' phones.

Over just a week, how many times do you think I heard complaints? Fifty-five.

I thought that was really high for a week. Some of the complaints were the ones you expect — they are on their phone all the time and their phone bills are extremely high because they are texting so much. But I also heard of people who will not go to the bathroom without their phones (even of one husband who did that at 3 a.m.) and of others who literally could not put their phone down while out with friends.

In the past I have heard many stories of wives and husbands finding secret texts or even worse, pictures on their phones that indicated they were cheating on their spouse. One woman told me when she went to therapy the therapist told her there was a huge increase in the number of people she was seeing because of “affairs” that were discovered on phones. She said sometimes the individuals had never met, but had taken their conversations to such an extreme on their phone that it broke the trust within the marriage when it was discovered.

And of course over the last week I heard countless number of parents saying they never have their children's attention because they always have their noses stuck in their phone. I wonder if that is how my mother use to feel when she said I had my nose stuck in a book all the time? And do you know what she did? She took the book away. Come on, you are the parent, take the stupid phone away. They might act like they don't need to talk about things, but they do, and they will, if you just create the situation.

I have asked friends and family if whatever they were looking at on their phone is so important that it can't wait while someone is trying to talk to them. And some get defensive about it, so I thought it was time to get creative and ironically enough went searching the Internet for some suggestions — on my phone.

And it seems I am not the only one who gets frustrated with people when you are trying to talk to them and they won't look at you because they are looking at their phone.

People are having dinner parties where they declare it a phone free zone, where you leave your phone in a basket when you enter the house for the evening. There are restaurants that will give discounts to their customers who go without their phones during the time in their establishment (I loved that one), and there are even drinking games, where if you go out with your friends, the first one to pick up their phone to look at it buys the next round.

There is even a town in West Virginia where things like cellphones and iPads are banned over a 13,000-square-mile area. Granted, they are banned there because the people who live there believe they are sensitive to radio waves, so they move there for the health and the peace and quiet.

I have to admit, I don't think I could go to that extreme, but I am starting to take some steps in our house so that we still actually communicate with each other instead of sending each other messages all the time. There never has been, nor will anyone ever be allowed to use their phone at the table, and if they are being talked to directly, there is no phone. I am playing with the idea of having a total technology ban on certain nights, like Wireless Wednesday, I wonder what it is going to take to convince the rest of the family?

I hope you all have a wonderful week.