Cell Phone Etiquette: How To Be More Courteous

Have you experienced stress from annoying cell phone etiquette?

The coach of a kid’s sport’s team is talking on his cell phone while the kids are playing.
The driver in front of you is going slower and slower on the highway as they talk on their cell phone
You are in the bookstore when the person walking beside you has their cell phone go off breaking the peace and silence.
You are sitting at a restaurant enjoying the company and the meal when the person next to you engages in ‘cell yell’.

Stress and Poor Cell Phone Etiquette

I think that we have all been exposed to poor cell phone etiquette.

Cell phones annoy us, but we can’t seem to do without them. We feel like we are tied to them and have trouble turning them off, even while on vacation or going to sleep at night. Beverly Beuermann-King Click to tweet

It use to be that it was only the high level executive that carried one. Now everyone, from kids to grandparents are seen talking away. It is just as common to see a trucker or a farmer carrying one, as it is to see a salesman or a doctor.

Do You Like Yours?

I don’t particularly like mine. In fact, I keep it off most of the time, unless I need to call my husband or remind my kids of something if I am on the road. But it is getting harder and harder to do that. When my kids graduated out of public school and had cell phones of their own, we definitely had many conversations around cell phone etiquette. Most of it, I think, went ‘in one ear and out the other’, as my dad use to say when I look at how and when they use their phones now.

Cell Phone Etiquette and Common Courtesy

Cell phones are an integral part of our technology-based world, and it doesn’t look like they will be replaced anytime soon. However, if we all practiced a little more courtesy using our cell phone, then maybe cell phones would not seem so stressful, annoying, or intrusive.

Beverly’s 5 Tips For Cell Phone Etiquette and Celebrating Cell Phone Courtesy Month:

Evaluate your own cell phone etiquette and practices:

Keep it down – no one wants to hear you on the phone
Love the vibration – use your phone’s vibration mode when in public
Try to excuse yourself – when accepting a call in a group gathering, try and take it to a more private place
Focus on the task at hand – not your cell phone
And try to make the Person You are With Feel Like the Most Important Person you want to talk to