There are lots of reasons for using a smartphone beyond avoiding engaging in conversation though. Looking things up, sharing contact info, planning another date, paying for the meal/event, even going to a movie can almost require an app.
I'm not saying these would be the majority of the time or anything, but not using your phone whatsoever is more of a limitation than you'd think.
It's only been 2 years since my last "first date". I know the world moves pretty fast, but I'd be shocked to discover that in the last 24 months the world went from "can be traversed without looking at your phone" to not.
I guess I'd turn it around on you: NOT using your phone is NOT as much of a limitation as you'd think.
Also, so many stupid things we do on our phone are things that could be an interaction with your date instead. What WAS that movie with Brendan Fraser with The Rock? Where IS that restaurant with no lights and all the servers are blind? What time is it? What direction is the river from here? What nationality is Santa Claus? How far north would we have to go so that Zombies would be frozen solid for at least 3 months per year? The point of a date is to attempt to form a bond, and it's the shared journey that gets you there, not the successful and efficient completion of independent tasks.
Obviously, if the only way to pay for the meal is to tap your phone, tap your phone. The PHONE isn't the enemy. It's that you're your own enemy, and that your nervousness and awkwardness is going to try to push you into the comfort of your phone for reasons that you REALLY don't need to be on your phone for. Embrace the awkwardness and as much as physically possible lean on your date for anything you imagine your phone can do.
Oh, I don't disagree, people opt-out of being present in favor of their phones far too often. I'm just reminding us of the context of hiding your social, financial, and often legal, sci-fi multi-tool. Reducing usage and eliminating usage can be very different things for many people.
Not a lot of fraud or identity theft from the waiter taking your card to charge your meal, no.
Probably there are some rogue waiters who try to use a customer’s card to buy personal things for themselves, but I’ve never heard of it happening to anyone I know personally
Yeah, it's not great if you think about it, but it's standard. I'm not here to be a prescriptivist; I'm just describing my experience (and it's a common one in the US of A).
My brother in Christ you sound like you've never been to a restaurant with waiters. And regardless you also literally just said "Most places you just pay with your phone or your card" after asking how he would pay if he couldn't use his phone. You literally already know the answer to your own question.
This you? The guy who thought you could only pay for a bill at a restaurant via contactless? Also, the whole "different cultures do things differently" thing cuts both ways. You were assuming you couldn't pay for a bill with anything other than your phone because that's (maybe) how it is where you live, and when other people said it was common for their experiences to be able to just hand a credit card over to a waiter, you said "well, it's different where I live." Yeah, and it's different where the people you were replying to live, too. And where they live, they hand a credit card to a waiter. But you never considered that until someone corrected you. So maybe you should consider your own cultural assumptions before calling other people out on theirs.