The people we love should never have to compete with our phones for our attention.
Does this look familiar?
I recently went back to a story I had saved about suicide rates in America. The numbers were heartbreaking. Nearly 50,000 Americans died by suicide in 2022, which at the time was the highest number ever recorded. The numbers have remained alarmingly high, with 48,824 Americans dying by suicide in 2024. Men continue to die by suicide at much higher rates than women, and older men are among those at particularly high risk. Researchers point to many possible factors, including mental illness, finances, relationships, addiction and access to mental health care. But there was another factor mentioned that caught my attention because of my passion for hospitality: social isolation.
There is obviously no single explanation for why someone takes his or her own life, and I would never suggest that there is. Suicide is far too complicated and personal for that. But we do know that loneliness and isolation are real problems in this country, and that makes me wonder if we are paying enough attention to the ways we actually connect with the people closest to us.
We have never had more ways to communicate. We can text our children from another room, FaceTime someone across the country, follow hundreds of friends on social media and know what someone we have not spoken to in twenty years ate for dinner last night. Yet all of that communication does not necessarily mean we are having meaningful conversations with the people sitting in front of us.
Look at the Person Across From You
Go into almost any restaurant and look around. You will see a family of four sitting together while one or more of them is looking at a phone. Sometimes everyone at the table has a screen in front of them. I see parents scrolling while their children are talking, and teenagers texting friends while their parents are trying to have a conversation. I am not talking about the occasional time someone needs to be on a phone at the table. We have all done that. But I am pointing to the daily routine that makes this normal in too many families.
The question we need to ask ourselves is whether the people we love have to compete with our phones for our attention. And the dining table should be one place where they should not have to compete at all.
Think about what happens when we put the phones away. We look at one another and notice facial expressions or someone hesitating before they answer. We can tell when someone is unusually quiet or when “fine” does not really mean fine just by looking into their eyes. And sometimes we learn things about one another that would never come out through a text.
The people we love do not always announce when something is wrong. Someone at your table may be worried about work, may be having a difficult day or may be dealing with rejection at school and have no intention of bringing it up over dinner. But it is amazing when the phones are away and eyes are on each other how much you can pull out of another person by simply asking, “How was your day?”
Why I Keep Coming Back to the Table
If you have read my writing for very long, you know how strongly I believe that the table plays an important role in the life of a family. It is why I say, “The table shapes the home; The home shapes families; Families shape society.”
Sitting down for dinner cannot cure depression, and putting away a cell phone is not the answer to our country’s suicide rate. I am not suggesting either one. But I do believe regular time together gives us more opportunities to know what is happening in the lives of the people we love.
That is one reason I think we need to protect the dinner table from our phones. Our children are going to face disappointments and broken hearts that we cannot prevent. But we can turn our homes into a refuge from the outside world and make dinner a time when we actually talk to one another.
This article is not just about our children. The suicide statistics that originally caught my attention were particularly troubling among older adults. We spend a great deal of time worrying about the effects of technology and social media on teenagers, but loneliness does not have an age limit. Our parents, spouses, siblings, friends and neighbors need connection too.
Parents Have to Go First
It is easy to complain about how much time teenagers spend on their phones, but adults are often just as bad. I have caught myself checking a text or looking at an email when I should have been paying attention to my husband. We cannot expect our children to believe the dinner table is important if, as the adults, we are constantly interrupting dinner to see what just came across our own screens. We set the example for our children. It is not the other way around.
What is the easiest way to put boundaries around the phone during meals? Keep the phone away from the table. Leave phones on the kitchen counter or place them in a drawer or box before sitting down. There will always be exceptions when someone is expecting an important call or there is a legitimate reason to keep a phone nearby, but an exception does not have to become the rule.
I also think this is about more than good manners. Of course, staring at a phone while someone is talking to you is rude. We all know that. And we have all done it! I am not casting stones. But what concerns me more is the message it sends to the person sitting across from us. Every time we stop listening to check a notification, we are allowing someone who is not even in the room to interrupt the person we are with.
I have often found myself thinking, “I didn’t invite the person on the other end of that phone to my table, so why did they crash my party?”
Hospitality Starts With the People Who Live in Our Homes
We usually think hospitality begins when we invite others into our home for a meal or just to share time together over a glass of wine. But I believe hospitality should begin with the people who live under our own roof.
Our families need to know that we are interested in what they have to say, which means asking questions and then listening to the answers. Work emails, group texts, Instagram or whatever else is demanding our attention that day can wait. Sometimes we need to simply sit down at the table together and break bread.
I have always believed that entertaining is about performance, but hospitality is about people. Sometimes the most important hospitality we practice is not a beautiful dinner party or a perfectly set table. It is a simple Tuesday night when a bowl of spaghetti and a plate of bread are all we have on our table. We sit down together, put away our phones and just talk.
Putting away our phones will not solve our country’s loneliness problem or change a heartbreaking national statistic. But it will change what happens at our own tables. And if we want our homes to be places where people feel loved and comfortable talking about what is really happening in their lives, putting away our phones for dinner seems like a very good place to start.
Together with you,
Lisa Zook
