But how bad is it really? I don't know the answer, whether empirical or subjective, but I have a (subjective) suspicion that there's a fair bit of confirmation

But how bad is it really? I don't know the answer, whether empirical or subjective, but I have a (subjective) suspicion that there's a fair bit of confirmation bias going on. What percentage of diners share pictures of their food on instagram? How many people take selfies? I don't suppose anyone has actually collected that data, we can't quite say how much is too much, and since some of these behaviors may well be annoying, people quickly enter confirmation bias mode. Besides, the problem is not phones, it's people. Phones just give us an avenue to run away from ourselves. I'm not on my phone at the birthday party because I have a smartphone, I'm on the smartphone because it helps avoid the awkward silence and contrived conversations that would otherwise prevail. If you were sharing a bed with someone you find hot, say some star or someone you've been crazy about but couldn't get around to telling them how you feel, I doubt you'd be staring at your phone with that person in bed next to you. So the problem is not the phones, it's the quality of our relationships and interaction, and those won't change or improve just because we've put the phone away. Were the relationships and interactions robust enough, a smartphone wouldn't stand a chance of getting in the way.