dbguy:

As for not minding when people use their cell or text, that's fine, you're very tolerant, but I feel that your missing some kind of basic point about human interaction.

That's an uncalled for comment. You're reading an awful lot there simply from me not being annoyed by other's distractions. I happen to be quite successful at the "basic points of human interaction" and don't need some condescending lecture about why my high tolerance level should be lowered.

My communication skills receive a lot of praise both at work and among family/friends. I'm considered a good listener and easy to talk to, and I'm also known as being very open and honest in return. I'm not "missing" anything just because I happen to find people to be highly capable of multiple social interactions at a time.

What I think is that far too much is made out of the so-called "rules" of socializing in cases such as this. What I see here is not as much lack of "satisfying social interaction" as much as the tendency of some people to be overly sensitive to any situation that isn't in their own personal perspective flawlessly executed.

Look at it this way...I don't drink, at all. Which means that at any social gathering most of the time I'm one of the few who isn't getting plastered, or at the very least, buzzed. Do you feel that alcohol is the same kind of deterrent to "satisfying social interaction" that electronic communication is? I bring this up because drinking is such a heavily accepted social activity that is rarely criticized in social settings, yet in my obervations it's the people who down one drink after another who are the ones getting that glassy-eyed detachment from everyone around. So much for that social "connection", huh?

I'll take a sober texter over a drunk any day.