📱 Everyone at home is on their phone at dinner

Last night 5 of us sat at the same table for dinner and nobody said a word for 10 minutes. My brother had a reel playing with the sound low. My sister was typing something. My mother was checking prices. I was the worst of all because I was reading cricket news and eating rice at the same time. Then my father cleared his throat and asked who wants more dal. Four heads nodded without looking up. When I was small, dinner was the one time everyone was home. We sat on the floor around one big plate. My father would ask about school and my mother would complain about the vegetable seller. Somebody always started a cricket argument. There was no phone to hide behind, so you just had to talk, even on days you had nothing to say. I'm not saying those talks were great. Half of them were fights. But at least we were looking at each other. I tried a phone basket once. It lasted 3 days. On day 4 my brother had an urgent call. After that the basket became a place for keys. My mother uses it for her house keys now. The problem is I can't tell them off. I'm the one who picks up my phone first, every night, without thinking. Last week I tried leaving it in my bag. By the second chapati I'd gone to check it. So has anyone made a no phone rule at dinner that survived more than a week? I need to know what you did about the teenagers, and about the parents who say they're only checking work. My father says he's reading the news. The news seems to have a lot of pictures of cats. Any trick works. I'll try anything that doesn't start an argument over rice.

The strictest rule needs to start with the father in the house first, before anyone even thinks about setting rules for the kids. If the elders in the family are constantly on their phones themselves, no amount of rules for the younger ones is ever going to stick properly or be taken seriously by anyone at home.

We tried it at home in April. Phones in a drawer during dinner, 20 minutes, no exceptions. It lasted one week, until my father took a call from the shop and nobody could object. What did work was a card game after dinner. The kids wanted that more than their screens. Now we sit at the table long after the food is gone, fighting over cards.

Yes, this is the situation in a lot of homes these days, everyone's together in the same room, but everyone's attention is somewhere else, buried in phone screens instead of engaging with the people right next to them.