Devices and Dining: A Cross-Cultural Analysis of Mobile Device Use in Italian and American Restaurants

The field of technology ethics has seen increasing growth and interest over the years. Many have begun to consider the impacts of technology’s use and whether it is being employed in a healthy manner by users. However, there has been limited investigation into whether the ways in which technology use varies across cultures. This study begins to address this gap by researching Italian and American device usage in fast food settings. Non-participant naturalistic observations were used to record data for 89 Italian and 88 American customers of fast food restaurants. Analysis of the collected data indicates that Americans use their phone at much higher and more disruptive levels than Italians. These findings suggest the necessity of examining cross-cultural uses of technology to better understand the infiltration of cultural differences into mobile phone behaviors, healthy and unhealthy methods of device use, and implications for our technology practices.