There is a chain of restaurants that are running a promotion where you get money off your meal if you lock up your mobile phone and don't use it all evening.
You put it in a sealed envelope and if you can resist it for the whole meal you get 10% off.
At first I thought, “How bad is this restaurant that they need to keep you away from TripAdvisor that much?”
And then I thought, “Good, it's nice that people engage with each other.” A manager said, “In today's society everyone is constantly on their phone so we want to get people talking again.”
Do you realise what you've done? You're forcing couples who have been together for years to have to talk. Are you sponsored by a divorce lawyer? People will work out that they have nothing to say.
It's a common theme these days they people say we spend too much time on our phones, and maybe some people do, but there's nothing wrong with checking Twitter while you're other half nips to the loo or posting a pic of the meal you're about to have.
And without a phone and conversation that includes, “What was the name of that actor from that film with the aliens?” can lead to a full-blown row that a simple Googling would have solved.
I think the “phones bad”, “nature good” trope is too simplistic. They won't be happy will we're all sat in a field doing nothing and not noticing that the GDP is crashing because we can't get news alerts.