When push comes to shove, everyone in the United States and around the world will agree that dinner is considered on of the most important meals. Dinner is usually the grand event, the climax of the day. It can be at a restaurant, in a car, on an airplane, at a school, and on a train, but most commonly, it is at the dinner table. When with family, however, all too often an unwritten social rule is always broken. That social rule is “No Phones during Dinner .”

The twenty-first century has brought about many advancements in technology, though as the years move on, humans have begun to change. Over the past decade, people have been glued to their phones more than ever. This is not a new concept and a lot of people already understand that there needs to be a line drawn on where and when cellphones are used.

If you watch TV, there are plenty of shows that portray how a typical family eats dinner. In The Simpsons, we see Homer and family eat at the dinner table with nobody on a cell phone. In every intro of The Big Bang Theory we see Sheldon and his friends eat take-out Chinese food in his apartment and everybody is talking to each other, none of whom are on a cell phone. This is not the case when you move away from the small screen.

In real life, you will often see people at restaurants on their cell phones even when they are eating with another person. Sometimes you will see a parent of a young child on their cell phone while their kid is screaming or being rude. Other times, it could be that sister who just cannot get off her phone because she is too preoccupied with her friends rather than with her family.

Is it the parents that should be condoning the proper behavior? Or is it the child who should know when to turn his or her phone off? Or is it something that we just cannot live without, or can it wait until the end of the meal? Whether you do or whether you do not is your choice, but if I were you, I would go with the latter rather than the former.