Mind your digital manners

September 20, 2026Every generation inherits a code of manners that fit perfectly into the society. Ours happens to fit neatly inside a smartphone. As our lives have migrated online, the distinction between acceptable and inconsiderate behaviour has grown hazy, shaped by convenience, constant connectivity and an ever-present screen.

Yet technology has not abolished etiquette; it has merely created a new one that many of us are still failing to observe. Do you keep looking at your screen in one-on-one meetings? Randomly make promises to connect with people, provide information or share numbers but never follow through?

Do you have loud conversations on your phone in the doctor’s waiting room or in a queue at the checkout? If you answered yes to two out of the three of the above questions, you need to brush up your manners.

One-word replies. Do you have the remarkable ability of ending a conversation without beginning it? Single word responses like yes, not, sure, done and noted give the impression that you are insanely busy.

One kind of response cannot be used for everyone. Depending on who you are replying to, an appropriate one liner would be much appreciated. Promise it won’t keep you away from scrolling for longer than 30 seconds.

Get up and ask. Then there is overdependence on texting. There is a colleague who cannot seem to get up from her desk and walk over to mine.

Whether it is a work-related query or something as mundane as asking if I have a safety pin, it arrives as a message on my phone. Never mind that I am sitting barely a few metres away and fully visible from where she is.

In an age of instant communication, we seem to have forgotten that not every interaction requires a screen. Sometimes, the shortest distance between two people is not Wi-Fi, but simply getting out of one's chair.

Not only is it good for her/his blood circulation to get up and take a few steps, the request would also get a better response as one registers the effort made. Mute your mic.

Why is there always a dog barking, a child chattering incessantly, or the relentless whirr of a blender coming through someone's unmuted microphone during a Zoom or Google Meet? If five other people can hear the soundtrack to your home, your microphone probably shouldn't be on.

Muting yourself isn't just a technical feature; it's basic digital courtesy. Public calls or public entertainment? I once received an unexpected lesson in public etiquette from a well-known television actress.

I was at a salon when I sent an urgent voice note that lasted no more than 10 seconds. The beautician was working on my face, so typing wasn't exactly an option. "Please stop this now.

We don't want to hear your plans," she declared, loudly enough for everyone in the salon to hear. I caught her eye in the mirror, slightly embarrassed. Barely half a minute later, she launched into a booming phone conversation, updating someone on every detail of her recently completed Umrah.

Apparently, her conversation had diplomatic immunity. Mine did not. It reminded me of the countless people who have never mastered one of the simplest phrases in the English language: "I'll call you back.

" Instead, they happily treat buses, cafés, waiting rooms and airport lounges as extensions of their living rooms, sharing every intimate detail with an unwilling audience. We learn about a daughter-in-law's difficult C-section, the family's holiday itinerary as it's being negotiated with a travel agent, or the mysterious leak in someone's bathroom plumbing.

Walking around with a Bluetooth earpiece permanently lodged in one ear while carrying on a phone conversation as you interact with people serving you is one of modern life's quieter acts of discourtesy.

You are asking the supermarket assistant where the cereal is, paying the cashier, ordering a coffee, handing over your boarding pass to an airline agent, checking into a hotel, speaking to a pharmacist, asking a security guard for directions or thanking the courier at your gate—all while continuing a conversation with someone else.

It sends an unmistakable message: the person in front of me is less important than the one in my ear. Turn down the volume. Yet even these accidental broadcasters are easier to tolerate than the people who insist on playing videos, reels, voice notes or music at full volume in public spaces.

Picnic buses, cafés, restaurants, hospital waiting rooms—apparently no place is too sacred for an unsolicited soundtrack. Headphones exist. So does consideration.

Unless the call is a genuine emergency, the polite thing to do is simple. Pause the conversation for 30 seconds. Look up.

Make eye contact. Say "please" and "thank you. " Give the person helping you your full attention before returning to your call.

The world is not your hands-free headset. The people serving you deserve your attention, not just your transaction. Voice notes have rules.

Voice notes, however, are a different ball game altogether. There are times when they make perfect sense. Perhaps you're driving, your hands are occupied, or you're walking on the street and simply can't type or make your mobile available for a quick snatching incident.

Maybe your reply is too long to thumb out on a tiny keyboard, so speaking it feels quicker and more natural. But voice notes come with their own etiquette. The very short ones—"Yep," "Okay," "On my way"—are almost pointless.

It would have taken less time to type them than to record, send and make someone else press play. The marathon voice notes are no better. Five minutes of rambling thoughts, side stories and forgotten points are really saying, "I'm too busy to type this, but you can spare the time to listen, remember it all and then reply.

" You've saved yourself time by spending someone else's. The polite approach is simple. If it's brief, type it.

If it's long, ask first: "Is now a good time for a voice note? " Better still, organise your thoughts before you hit record, keep it concise, and if the conversation is becoming complicated, pick up the phone instead.

Some things are meant to be conversations, not podcasts. The groupie. Adding a person to your Whatsapp group without their consent is an invasion of privacy.

Suddenly you start receiving an avalanche of texts from people you don’t even know. Also people don’t use Whatsapp groups for their specific purpose. They want the entire group of God knows how many people to appreciate what you share, simply because you subscribe to that thought, humour or opinion.

The impulse to share must be controlled, to show respect for other people’s time and phone space. Does it occur to you how you are mindlessly cluttering their digital space, their phone data? Apparently not.

For all the time you spend with your phone and on your phone, have the courage to decline when you don’t plan on being part of an activity or a social event.

It takes two seconds, but it is better than leaving them hanging and wondering if you have seen the message, thought about it, have the will to join in or not. It is also polite to let people know why you have decided to leave a certain group.

Likewise, also control the urge to put up and share every mundane experience with your child, BFF or bae, however life altering it might have been for you. People can live without the picture of your perfectly served plate of daal-chawal or grilled chicken and veggies for that matter.

Just be a guest. Which brings us to weddings that have now become vulnerable to creating content for the 200 hundred or so guests. Actually, the same extends to conferences and other work, social and professional events.

You are a participant, or a guest, so don’t try to volunteer your endeavours as their self-employed production or PR team. You don’t have to film every detail.

Recently, at a wedding and a conference, my toes were crushed quite a few times when ardent social media lovers, v-loggers and You-Tubers made a beeline for just about anything they thought can be filmed or recorded, irrespective of whose view they were blocking, whose feet they were stepping on, literally, in order to capture content for their feeds.

Guest etiquette at a wedding means remembering that you are there to witness, support and add warmth to the day, and that is where it ends. A selfie with the newly-married couple is just about fine, as long as you are not including images of random people who may not want to be part of your digital life.

Another highly irritating, invasive and rude behaviour here is that when people are recording, they are also catching and later broadcasting private conversations in the background. Kids are not content. Documenting other people’s children, however cute they might be, is a big no-no.

They are children and not poodles in a dog-show. Are you quite sure their parents are happy with what you are posting about their kids online? Kids being innocent and clueless and may not object but it is important to be aware of your responsibility around your and other people’s kids.

AI feelings. Time for a confession. I once used AI to write a condolence message.

It was for my daughter's mother-in-law after the death of her ex-husband—my daughter's father-in-law—a man who had spent years squandering the family's wealth on addiction. I was paralysed by writer's block. It was one of those impossible moments where grief, relief, anger and sadness all occupied the same space.

What do you say when someone has died after years of causing pain, and everyone had, in quieter moments, wished for the suffering to end long before it did? I couldn't find the words, so I borrowed them.

AI did what it does best: it produced something eloquent, measured and compassionate. It helped me over a hurdle I simply couldn't clear that day. But I have never quite shaken the guilt.

Some things should never be outsourced. A condolence message is one of them. It doesn't have to be beautifully written or grammatically perfect.

It doesn't even have to be profound. It simply has to sound like you. A few heartfelt, imperfect sentences carry far more comfort than a flawlessly crafted paragraph generated by a machine.

In the moments that matter most, people deserve your voice, not your algorithm. Smartphones did not kill good manners. They simply exposed where they were missing.

Technology has made communication faster, easier and more convenient, but convenience should never come at the expense of consideration. Behind every text, voice note, Zoom call, Whats. App group and Instagram story is a real person with limited time, attention and patience.

Good digital etiquette isn't about learning new rules. It's about applying the old ones in new places. Look up from your phone.

Wear your headphones. Mute your microphone. Ask before you post someone else's photograph.

Decline an invitation if you're not going. Write your own condolence message. And every once in a while, put the phone away and have a conversation with the person sitting right in front of you.

Manners have never gone out of fashion. They've just logged on. Pages.

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