Latch

The phone on the dinner table

A guide from the makers of Latch · October 3, 2026 · 3 minute read

Two friends laughing and raising glasses at a restaurant table, with no phones in sight

Almost everyone has had dinner with someone who kept glancing at their phone. Researchers have asked a stranger question: does the phone change the conversation even when nobody touches it?

The study that started it

In 2013, psychologists Andrew Przybylski and Netta Weinstein had pairs of strangers sit down and talk. For some pairs, a phone sat on a nearby table. For others, it was a notebook. The pairs with the phone nearby reported feeling less close to each other and rated the conversation lower, and the difference was clearest when they talked about something meaningful (Przybylski and Weinstein, 2013).

Later studies are mixed

The finding spread widely, but it hasn't held up cleanly. A 2021 replication with 356 participants found no significant effect of a phone's presence on any of the original measures, and concluded the effect is "at minimum harder to find" than first thought (Linares and Sellier, 2021).

So the honest answer is that a silent phone sitting on the table may or may not change how close you feel. A phone that someone keeps checking is another matter, and that's the version most families deal with.

When the phone does get picked up

Research on families points the same way most people's experience does. In a study of 170 families with young children, parents who reported more problematic phone use also reported more interruptions from technology during time with their kids, and those interruptions were linked to more behavior problems in the children (McDaniel and Radesky, 2018). It's a correlation, not proof that phones cause the problems. Researchers call these interruptions "technoference."

  1. 1Phones awayBasket by the door, or another room.
  2. 2Eat and talkNobody checks, including the adults.
  3. 3Check afterAnything urgent can wait 30 minutes.

Keeping meals phone-free

Give phones a place to go

A basket by the door or a shelf in the hallway works better than "just don't use it," because it takes the phone off the table entirely.

Make it the same rule for everyone

Kids notice when adults keep their phones and they don't. The rule holds better when the parents follow it first.

Make the exceptions clear

If someone is on call or waiting for important news, say so before the meal starts.

Let a schedule do the reminding

A lock that starts at dinner time every evening means nobody has to be the one who asks. With Latch, a Dinner schedule on each phone locks the distracting apps at mealtime, and one shared key by the door opens them again afterward.

Where Latch fits

Latch is an app blocker that only unlocks when you scan a key you keep somewhere else: an NFC sticker, a printed QR code, or a number of steps. It's free to start, out now on the App Store and Google Play.

Download on the App StoreGet it on Google PlayTake the two-minute habit check

Sources

Photo: public domain (CC0).