Texting's Single Golden Rule

Follow same guidelines as with a restroom visit
By Will McCahill,  Newser Staff
Posted Mar 21, 2010 4:53 AM CDT

In trying to find an easy-to-remember (and follow) rule to govern text-messaging etiquette, Slate turned to its readers, and found the perfect solution. The Bathroom Rule goes thus: If you’d have to excuse yourself to hit the restroom, do so before whipping out the phone (and if you wouldn’t, don’t). And only text as long as you’d be in the bathroom.

The rule “recognizes both the social costs and benefits of our digital devices,” Farhad Manjoo writes. “We’ve all got to do it sometime, and depending on life circumstances, some of us need to do it a lot more than others. But the rule also recognizes that the phone, like going to the bathroom, pulls you away from other people.”
(More etiquette stories.)

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