"They do it too"

Your partner glances. Your friend checks. Your teenager barely looks up. So there's a shared norm at the table, and you're keeping to it, and it would be odd to be the only one with the phone away.

Two things about this. The first is that the norm was built by everyone doing what you're doing and nobody starting first. Each glance makes the next person's glance easier. If the person across from you is on their phone while you talk, part of the reason is that you were on yours while they did, last week, and neither of you meant it as a policy. Norms aren't agreed. They're accumulated, and they can be un-accumulated by one person in the same way.

The second is that "they do it too" is a reason to be annoyed, not a reason to do it. You already know what it's like to be talked to by a lit face, because you've been on the receiving end, and you've felt the drop from the other side. That knowledge is the strongest argument in this book, and it's one you own already. What it isn't is a licence. The fact that someone else's glance stings doesn't make yours sting less.

You'll want to say something. Don't, yet. An earlier book in this series, The next move is yours, is about waiting for the other person to go first, and its argument applies here in full. If you make your own phone go away when they talk, and you don't announce it or make a point of it, one of two things happens. Either they notice, in a week or a month, and something shifts, because a person who's being fully listened to tends to look up more. Or they don't notice, and you've still had the better evening, because chapter 15 is about what the glance costs the person doing it.

If, after a few weeks of this, the thing you want is for them to look up as well, ask for it plainly and once. "When I'm telling you something, could you put the phone down? I've started doing it and it's made a difference to me." That's a request, not a score, and the earlier book They can't read your mind is about why the plain version works and the hint doesn't.