How to stop phone use at dinner (starting with your own)

Most advice about phones at dinner is written as if the children are the problem. The numbers say otherwise.

In a research letter published in JAMA Pediatrics in June 2026, researchers at the University of Arizona surveyed 357 US parents of children aged 4 to 10 about their most recent family meal. 77.6% of the parents said they had used a media device during that meal. 68.7% said their child had. (Wu, Lapierre, Sada Garibay and Choi, 2026; figures as reported by Phys.org)

Some care is needed with that figure. It is one survey of 357 people recalling one meal, "media" includes the television, and the study did not measure whether the use did any harm. But it matches what most of us already know: the adult's phone is on the table too.

Does a phone at the table matter?

The best evidence comes from an experiment. Researchers at the University of British Columbia sent more than 300 people out for a restaurant meal with friends or family and randomly assigned them to keep their phones on the table or put them away. The people with phones out felt more distracted and enjoyed the meal with their companions less. The difference was modest, about half a point on a seven-point scale, but it came from a randomised design, which is rare in this field. (Dwyer, Kushlev and Dunn, 2018)

There is also older observational work. In 2014 a team led by Jenny Radesky watched 55 caregivers eating with young children in fast food restaurants around Boston. Forty of them used a device during the meal, and the caregivers who were most absorbed in it tended to respond more harshly when the children acted up. That study is small and descriptive, so treat it as a sketch and not a measurement. (Radesky et al., 2014)

And teenagers notice. In Pew Research Center's 2024 survey of US teens and their parents, 46% of teens said their parent is at least sometimes distracted by their phone when they are trying to talk to them. (Pew, 2024)

Why "no phones at the table" usually fails

A rule that depends on everyone remembering, every night, while tired and hungry, does not last. Three things tend to break it:

• The phone is within reach. If it is in your pocket, one buzz is enough.
• The rule applies unevenly. A parent who "just needs to check one thing" has ended the rule for everyone.
• Nobody decided when it starts and ends. A vague rule turns into a nightly negotiation.

A plan that holds

1. Make it the same rule for everyone, adults first. The survey above is the argument. If the adults are in, the children have very little to push against.

2. Give the phones a place that is not the table. A shelf by the door, a drawer, a basket in another room. Distance does the work that willpower does not.

3. Set the edges. "From when we sit down until the plates are cleared" is a rule. "Less phone at dinner" is a wish.

4. Keep the exceptions honest. Someone on call, a teenager waiting on a lift home: agree on these out loud, in advance. An exception that is announced is fine. One that is taken silently erodes the rule.

5. Expect to slip, and do not make it a trial. The goal is most dinners, not all of them.

Where a lock helps

If the basket works for your household, you do not need to buy anything. Many people find the phone drifts back to the table within a couple of weeks, and that is where a lock earns its place.

With moss, a household sets a shared schedule such as "phones down at dinner", or one person starts a session and the others join with a tap. Each person's chosen apps lock on their own phone. Calls still come through. Everyone can see who is in, and unlocking means getting up and walking to the stone. Nobody can lock anyone else's phone, which matters with teenagers: it is something the household does together, and the adults are visibly doing it too.

If you would rather start with what you already have, Apple's Screen Time can schedule a block at dinner time for free. Our guide to whether Screen Time holds explains how to set it up so that it does.

The short version

Put the adults' phones away first, put all of them somewhere that is not the table, decide when the rule starts and stops, and make the walk back to the phone slightly inconvenient. Dinner is twenty or thirty minutes. Almost nothing on a phone cannot wait that long.