One evening in Guangzhou, China we were having dinner at a local restaurant. We were soon joined at the table adjacent by a young couple. Instead of making conversation with each other, both were staring into their phones during the entire meal, each watching their own preferred programing. I guess dinner isn’t the best time to share details of your day?
As much as I assail our general addiction to smartphones, I am far from a luddite. There’s a time and place to enjoy the wonders of Internet videos. Dinner with your significant other shouldn’t be such an occasion? Maybe it’s cultural - here in the States, the person busy with their smartphones during a shared meal is absolutely the asshole.
Or perhaps I’m merely naive to think that conversation comes easily in a long relationship. Maybe when you’ve been with a person for an extended period, you kind of hang out by not really talking to each other. Enjoying each other’s company is just a matter of being in the same room.
That makes more sense. Thanks to urban density we can only dream of, big cities in China have plenty of local mom and pop restaurants. Sprinkle on some capitalism magic, and that means it’s not overly more expensive to eat out than to cook at home. The phone-occupied couple that sat next to us is practically eating dinner at home - the restaurant is not at all an occasion. Put it in this perspective, I can see the lack of conversation.
If it were me, though, I’d rather have the chat. The Internet videos will still be there when we get home.
Options aplenty.