When I’m hav­ing a con­ver­sa­tion with some­one, I find it a bit rude when I notice they are glanc­ing at their phone every few minutes.

I under­stand that text mes­sag­ing, Facebook, Twitter, etc. has improved our lives in numer­ous ways, but when I’m in the com­pany of some­one else and notice their fin­gers are glued to their QWERTY key­board. It seems as if they’ve never made eye con­tact with another human being, I can’t help but become annoyed.

It’s not proper com­mu­ni­ca­tion eti­quette to be spend­ing time with a friend, and at the same time be chat­ting on the phone with some­one else. It’s the same with tex­ting, because it’s dif­fi­cult to focus on both con­ver­sa­tions whether you’re talk­ing or texting.

It is one thing to quickly answer a text or two when you’re not directly focus­ing on some­one else in a con­ver­sa­tion, but it’s another to be check­ing your phone every minute and have a con­ver­sa­tion via text mes­sage when you’re in the pres­ence of one or more persons.

Many stu­dents on cam­pus are glued to their phones more than ever and seem to give them more atten­tion than they do peo­ple within their pres­ence. I ques­tion the exis­tence of cour­tesy, eti­quette and man­ners among com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Have we become so inter­twined within tech­nol­ogy that it seems strange to talk with oth­ers in per­son, not through a device?

I’ll admit, that at times, I am also glued to my phone, but that’s when I’m gen­er­ally by myself. I make sure that I’m not pay­ing full atten­tion to my phone and barely any atten­tion to the per­son in front of me.

Among one of the most irri­tat­ing instances is when I’m talk­ing to some­one else and the only response I get is a “yeah” or a “uh-huh” as their answer­ing text after text the entire time. To me, that is very rude.

The impres­sion I get from peo­ple who do that repet­i­tively, make me won­der if they would take out their phone and answer a text while on a job inter­view or speak­ing to some­one with higher author­ity. I couldn’t help but won­der if they became so accus­tomed to con­stant tex­ting in all sit­u­a­tions, they would then con­duct that man­ner out of habit at the wrong time.

At times, I catch myself answer­ing my phone more often than not when I’m hav­ing a con­ver­sa­tion with another per­son. I don’t want to make them feel like their com­pany isn’t impor­tant to me, because that’s how I and I’m sure many oth­ers feel when we’re sin­gled out by a BlackBerry, iPhone or sim­i­lar cel­lu­lar device.

I would often like to tell those peo­ple to go spend time with who­ever they’re tex­ting if the con­ver­sa­tion is that impor­tant, or just call me later when they’re not zoned out into their phone.

In some cases, such as being stuck on an awk­ward date, it’s a good dis­trac­tion, but still not polite. Either way, the point remains the same:It’s annoy­ing. n