Phones in meetings.

What the survey found

Researchers at the University of Southern California’s business school and Howard University asked a national sample of more than 550 full-time professionals, each earning at least 30,000 dollars a year, which phone habits in meetings they found acceptable and which rude. According to the university’s announcement:

• In business meetings, 76 percent said checking texts or emails is unacceptable, and 87 percent that answering a call is rarely, if ever, acceptable.
• At informal business lunches, 66 percent said writing or sending a text is inappropriate, 20 percent that simply having a phone out is rude, and more than 30 percent that excusing yourself to take a call is rarely, if ever, appropriate.
• Age: 66 percent of those under 30 said texting or emailing over a business lunch was fine, against 20 percent of those aged 51 to 65.
• Gender: at a business lunch, 59 percent of men but 34 percent of women found checking texts acceptable, and 50 percent of men against 26 percent of women found answering a call acceptable.
• Income and region: higher earners were less tolerant of phones in meetings, and professionals on the West Coast less accepting than those on the East Coast.

The study’s author pointed out the catch for younger professionals: they rely on older colleagues for their career advancement, and courtesy is among the soft skills hiring managers notice. It was a survey of attitudes in 2013, and habits have moved since; but the people most likely to mind are the ones least likely to say so in the meeting.

What gets noticed

• A phone face up on the table. It says that something else might matter more.
• Looking down while someone speaks, even for a moment.
• Typing. People assume it is not about the meeting.

A phone in view can change a conversation even when nobody touches it, though the evidence is weaker than the headlines: a phone on the table and the brain drain study.

What is usually fine

• Saying at the start that you are waiting for one urgent call, and stepping out when it comes.
• Taking notes, if you say that is what you are doing.
• A phone face down, on silent, out of reach.

Staying reachable without the screen

• Let a few people through. Most phones can let calls and messages from chosen people through a focus mode and hold the rest: Do Not Disturb with exceptions.
• Feel it instead of looking. A watch or a ring can buzz only for those people: how a buzz can carry meaning.
• With Lychnos Ring, in development: one buzz for the mail that matters, the first line on the ring if you turn your hand, the rest after the meeting. Its microphone is off unless you hold the button, so it does not listen to the meeting. More in an AI ring for work.

Source, read 5 November 2026: University of Southern California, press release on a study of smartphone etiquette at work, EurekAlert, 24 October 2013, reporting Washington, Okoro and Cardon in Business Communication Quarterly; figures as the release states them.