A phone pact with your flatmates

Phone use in a shared space is contagious in a way it is not alone. One person picking theirs up gives everybody else permission, and within a minute the conversation has stopped and nobody decided to stop it.

Which means an individual fix underperforms here. You can block your own apps and still be sitting in a room where nothing is happening.

A rule about a place is much easier to agree than a rule about behaviour. No phones in the sitting room after ten is a house rule. Everybody should be on their phone less is a criticism with a rota attached.

Rules about rooms also enforce themselves socially, because being the only one holding a phone in a room where nobody is holding one is uncomfortable enough to work.

One room, one stretch of the evening, reviewed in a month. Anything larger will not survive the first person who has a genuine reason to break it.

• One room, not the house.
• A few hours, not all evening.
• A named review date, so objecting later is not a confrontation.
• No enforcement mechanism between flatmates. That is how a phone rule becomes a housemate problem.

Somebody will be waiting on a call, or dealing with something at home. Agree now that saying I need my phone tonight is a complete sentence requiring no justification.

A rule with a dignified exception survives. A rule that requires you to explain yourself gets broken silently instead.

Not between flatmates. Holding each other's blocks in a shared house puts a new argument into the kitchen, and it is not worth it.

If one of you wants a real block, hand the key to somebody outside the house. The house rule handles the room; the app handles your own evening, and they do not need to be the same system.