There’s something ruining our relationships without us even realising it.
We’ve become friends, lovers and family members who constantly have something in our right hand-and no, it’s not that said person’s hand.
It’s our mobile phone.
Unknowingly to ourselves, the phone is ruining our relationships with both our nearest and dearest and the new people we meet in our lives.
Two new studies have shown that if a mobile is visible during a conversation it causes people to feel less positive towards the person with whom they are chatting.
The research shows that mobile phones can damage personal relationships merely by their presence, even when they are not in use.
The findings revealed that fiddling with your mobile or simply leaving it out in view during a romantic dinner or a meeting with a friend could be a serious social faux pas.
The mobile phone could be the secret social relationship-ruiner.
Psychologists who conducted the experiments at Essex University believe mobile phones can automatically trigger thoughts about wider social networks, reducing the level of empathy and understanding in face-to-face conversations.
“In both studies we found evidence mobiles can have negative effects on closeness, connection, and conversation quality,” the lead researcher Andrew Przybylski told the Daily Telegraph.
“The presence of a mobile phone may orient individuals to thinking of other people and events outside their immediate social context. In doing so, they divert attention away from a presently occurring interpersonal experience to focus on a multitude of other concerns and interests.”
The etiquette guide Debrett’s, strongly advises against placing a mobile phone on a table during a meal or, worse, glancing at it mid-conversation.
The first study involved 37 strangers to spend 10 minutes chatting to each other about an interesting event that had happened in their lives in the past month.
The people sat in chairs in a private booth and a mobile phone was put on the desk nearby for half of them. For the others, a notebook was left in the same place instead of a mobile.
The study found that people who had chatted with a mobile phone visible nearby were clearly less positive than the other participants about the person they had just met.
In the second study, 34 different pairs of strangers were asked to talk about their most meaningful events of the past year. The feelings of closeness and trust in their partners were far stronger when the notebook was nearby than when the phone was sitting on the table.
“These results demonstrate that the presence of mobile phones can interfere with human relationships, an effect that is most clear when individuals are discussing personally meaningful topics,” the researchers wrote.
The research was the first designed to look specifically at the effects of a mobile phone being present on face-to-face communication.
And we say it was well-needed! Put the phone down and appreciate the person sitting across from you…
