Checking your phone at dinner is a choice to be somewhere else while you’re right there.

Sitting at a table is one of the few times people talk without needing a reason. Reaching for a screen halfway through is less rude than it is absent, and the others adapt: the conversation thins out, somebody stops bothering to mention their day. Presence is the actual thing being offered, and it is noticed when it leaves.

Leave the phone in another room for the length of the meal, since face down is not far enough. Ask one question you do not already know the answer to. Twenty minutes of real attention is a cheap gift to the people you live with.