Do you often feel the need to look at your phone’s screen when you’re actually in the middle of a conversation? If you do this, or even keep your phone in sight without actually touching it, you’re doing harm to the relationship with your conversation partner.

And there’s scientific evidence to it!

Check out: Science Explains Exactly How Your Phone Is Ruining Your Relationships

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Listen

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Glossary

• peek – a quick or furtive look
• better half – a person’s wife, husband, or partner
• glance – a brief or hurried look
• denial – state that one refuses to admit the truth or existence of
• momentous – of great importance or significance, especially in having a bearing on future events
• bond – a force or feeling that unites people; a shared emotion or interest
• inseparable – unable to be separated or treated separately
• wean – gradually stop doing something addictive

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Think about it

Answer the questions below.

• What kind of things do people want to check when they casually pick up their phones? (Apart from the expamples in the article, you can mention some of yours!)
• What subjects were the study participants asked to talk about?
• What was the reasearch team doing as the participants were having canversations?
• What did the resuls reveal?
• What’s the ralation between how close the bond between people is and the extent to which a phone affects the feeling of intimacy?

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Practice makes perfect

Fill in the blank spaces with the words in bold.

make    –    handle    –    burst    –    looked    –    help

•  You know it’s rude [. . .], but you just can’t ________ yourself–you just have to take a quick peek at your phone [. . . ].
• Sorry, smartphone addicts–a new study is about to ________ your bubble of denial.
• The research team ________ on discreetly from a distance to see who checked their device [. . .]
• To what extent did your conversation partner ________ an effort to understand your thoughts and feelings about the topic you discussed?
• If previous research on the benefits of mental downtime (even a little bit of–gasp!–boredom) haven’t convinced you to get a ________ on your inseparable connection to your devices, then maybe this study will convince you of the need to get your addiction under control.

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