Advance the Conversation

Cruz is a good friend, but he spends a lot of time on his phone. Any time you’re talking, Cruz has the habit of glancing at incoming notifications. Sometimes he’ll even interrupt you to reply to a message. Usually you ignore or joke about his behavior, but today is different.

Since Cruz is one of your best friends, you want his advice about whether you should accept a promotion at work. Sitting at your favorite coffee shop, you begin to explain that you think the added job responsibilities might interfere with your course load at school. At first, Cruz appears interested and asks questions. But he’s quickly distracted by the sound of a text notification. You’re interrupted a few more times by Cruz’s phone notifications, and each time he looks at his phone, weighing the importance of the text. He soon gets a text from your mutual friend, Mara. Picking his phone up, he says: “Hey, it’s Mara. She wants to know what I’m up to. Should I ask her to meet up here?” It’s now clear that you’ve lost Cruz’s attention.

Mobile phones are an integral part of face-to-face interactions. When friends are together, they often use phones as a source of entertainment by looking at memes, viewing videos, or taking group photos. But when a friend uses a phone to interact with others who aren’t present, it can lead the other person to feel unimportant—or worse, that the friendship is not being taken seriously (Miller-Ott & Kelly, 2017). Even the mere presence of a phone during conversation can negatively impact perceptions of trust and relationship quality (Przybylski & Weinstein, 2012). This is especially true when you are discussing a personally meaningful topic.

How might you respond when a friend’s phone use is disrupting the conversation? Miller-Ott and Kelly (2017) found that young adults often tolerate the distraction if the offending friend offers a disclaimer, apology, or explanation for the interruption (“It’s my boss; I need to reply to this”). Some research participants said that they might respond to such behavior by looking at their own phone, confronting the person directly (“Would you mind getting off your phone?”), or putting their own phones away hoping that the friend gets the hint to stay off his or her phone.

How will you respond to Cruz? Before you act, consider the facts of the situation and the research on mobile phone interruptions. Also, reflect on what you’ve learned about mediated communication challenges and the guidelines for competent mediated communication.