Keep Your Friends Away From Their Phones With This Game
When you are out and about, especially for drinks, it has become a normal habit to just pull out your phone and check it while someone is talking to you. We do it even if it’s rude, and even if we hate it when a friend does it to us. We cannot help ourselves, and it is not our fault; the whole capitalist machine is trying to make us look more at our phones. You can fight back with a little play.
The game goes like this: When you spend time together, whoever pulls out their phone first has to immediately buy the next batch of drinks.
It’s actually just a rule, but a rule presented with enough enthusiasm is a game. If you don’t drink, find an equivalent sacrifice. If you play a real game together, the phone invader loses a point or loses a turn. Or they need to run the next refrigerator. Some kind of bearable, but specific sacrifice.
The Slow Scrolling digital addiction newsletter originally recommended the game as lunch, with the loser taking the entire group dinner bill. It seems too simple. Maybe they should cover the entire tip, with a 20% gain.
It’s up to you if everyone else can check their phones for free if one person loses. But if you will allow me, I suggest you also play “telephone time”! game : Everyone can check their phone for three minutes, and then report the most interesting discovery made by phone. Or everyone should get their best shot on their own film. This brings everyone back from the “ignore each other” mode to the “talk to each other” mode.
An optional rule of thumb for slow scrolling is to put all your phones together, but that seems too weird and insecure. Usually it is enough to offer the rule “buy before the next round”. If everyone loses all the time, then a stack of phones can help you until you all have some composure.