A knife, a fork, a spoon, a plate, a smartphone??? It seems a new piece has been added to most table settings when dining out and it is common now to have a phone sitting out in front of every person in your party. As you sit there, you do your best NOT to pick it up while pretending you’re enjoying yourself rather than passing that next level on 100 floors. There have been many statistics put together on smartphone usage while eating and it seems now it is becoming less of a taboo to be checking your phone several times during dinner.
Lab 42 brings us this infographic on the behaviors of “smartphone foodies” who just can’t seem to put down their phones when out with friends. They check in on Facebook, Foursquare, and tweet highlights from the dinner conversation. Some even become experts after several drinks and write a review on Yelp… A surprising stat was that 49% of respondents found their cell phones somewhat to extremely important to their dining experiences.
If this is you and you have a big date coming up, you may also want to learn about mobile phone etiquette while on a date.