People who keep their phone face-down on every surface they sit at often aren't being polite, many are quietly trying to stop a nervous system that learned, over years of being on-call, to flinch at every notification

Psychology says people who keep their phone face-down on every surface they sit at aren't being polite, they're trying to stop their nervous system from flinching at notifications it learned were emergencies

The face-down phone gets read as courtesy. A small social gesture, the kind that says you have my attention. That reading is often only half right. For a lot of people who do it reflexi...