Dear Dáithí: My friend's phone use is putting a dampener on nights out

Dáithí Ó Sé. Pic: Domnick Walsh

Dear Dáithí, 

I have a friend, we’ve been good friends for years now, but over the past year or two she’s become more and more focused on her phone. 

Like, we’ll be out on a night out with other friends, and she’ll be on her phone all night – she might as well not be out with us at all, she’s completely distracted and not part of the conversation!

We’ve called her on it, at the start in a jokey way, but she’s laughed it off. 

More recently though it’s really starting to put a dampener on our nights out. 

If we’re out for a meal the rest of us will have our phones in our bags, but hers will be sitting on the table right next to her, and the minute it pings she’s on it. 

We don’t want to get to a situation where we’re not inviting her, but really, it’s like she’s not interested in being with us anyway.

How can we ask her to put her phone away in a way that she hears us, and takes notice?

Another problem this week that didn’t exist when we were young but is very common nowadays.

I thought recently that one of my friends was falling into this type of scenario but it turned out that he was ‘meeting’ a special friend of his. We all forgave him.

Your situation is a lot different and has been going on now for a long time and I’m wondering really why your friend still meets up with you all.

She doesn’t show any interest and has put herself firmly outside of the conservation, and I can see why this is bothering you and the rest of your friends. It would bother me too. 

Yes, we all get it, we are all now married to our phones. They are no longer just for calls anymore, but that doesn’t mean we need to have them surgical inserted into our bodies.

I have come across a fair bit about this in the past year or two and I don’t want to sound like Dr. Phil here, but your friend might have an addiction. I know that sounds strange, but I think she might. 

It’s one thing being on your phone all the time at home, which is also very bad for you, but being on it when you’re out with your friends when everyone else has put theirs away, there is a problem here. 

As parents and adults we are very good at deflecting this onto our children and not realise what we are doing to ourselves. 

It’s all about screen time for them and we never seem to check in on how long we spend scrolling. I’m as guilty as anyone else reading this. 

I do try and cut it back - and sometimes I’m good, and not so much other times. It’s hard, I know. 

I even had a habit when having coffee with someone, I would put my phone on the table and what was happening? I was doing the same as your friend, checking it all the time.

So really there were three people for coffee - my friend, me and my phone. You can’t be totally present in a situation like this. It’s only when I was made aware of it that I took action.

Looking at this from a social perspective when you have something like this in a group it’s like having a new person brought into the gang and in this case this ‘person’ is toxic and is causing friction within the group and that’s not good for anyone.

The only thing is that this toxicity and your friend literally go hand in hand.

MOVING ON?

So, what do you do? Well, you’re going to have to say it to her, and what effect it’s having on you and the group as a whole. 

I wouldn’t start with the Dr. Phil stuff or she might go back on the phone looking for a doctor for you.

I would explain that this has gone so far that the dynamic of the gang is being affected. She might not even know that she is on her phone all the time; this might be the wake-up call she didn’t know she needed.

I would also ask her if she has moved on for the gang and if so, that’s okay too, this happens all the time. 

People change but have been in the same routine for so long they don’t know how to get out of it. 

You don’t have to stop being friends, nothing like that. You just don’t meet every weekend and when you do meet up, she might forget for a while that the phone exists.

Now, if she still wants to be in the gang you need to set some ground rules, and it is really sad if it comes to this but life is too short to be dealing with this.

If you all go for dinner there are no phones. You will always get pushback with this and she might say ‘what if someone dies, I’ll need to know’.

Well the person’s situation won’t be changing over the course of the dinner, let’s be straight about it. 

You know what, she might even enjoy her time without her phone. People, and I put myself in the category too, usually do and then an hour later we go back to our old ways.

Just like when covid was here, people swore that they would never go back to the lifestyle they had, but that didn’t last long.

You are totally right to call this out, for your sake, for the gang and for her too.

I can see how it puts a dampener on a night out, it’s like there is something more interesting on the phone as opposed to the gang on a night out, and that’s a crap feeling. 

I wish you well and I hope she listens - but remember, you can only control your own actions and none of anyone else’s.

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