Dinner at the table with your phone in the other room is how families remember each other.

Attention does not really split, it alternates, and everybody at the table can tell. A phone face down on the wood still holds part of you in reserve for whoever might text, and the conversation stays shallow because nobody wants to start something real into a half listener. Meals are one of the few times a family talks without anyone scheduling it. Take the device out of the room and the talk deepens on its own.

Pick one dinner this week and leave your phone somewhere else in the house. Say nothing about why. See how long everybody sits there afterward.