Traveling with someone who is always on their phone
Constant doomscrolling pulls a companion completely out of shared experiences, leaving you to handle all the logistics and planning alone. Being tuned out during meals, transit, and downtime ruins the trip and makes you feel like you are traveling by yourself.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
- 1Traveling completely solo
- 2Planning future trips only with compatible travel partners
- 3Bringing a small book to read or focusing on people watching
- 4Telling oneself to just ignore it and live their own life
In their words
Unedited, most upvoted first, each linked to the thread it came from.
“I’m with my friend in Greece at the moment and I swear this guy has the worst doomscrolling problem I’ve ever seen. Every time we sit down at a restaurant, wait in line, chilling at the hotel, on a ferry, bus etc, guy’s doomscrolling.”source ↗
“Writing this from the hotel as he’s doom scrolling while I just planned out what to do tomorrow”source ↗
“It takes them out of the moment that they were just spending with you and now they are somewhere else. It's antisocial behaviour.”source ↗
“I had to come up with something else to do. Another hike and how to get there, etc. And he didn’t want to help with that at all. Literally on his phone unresponsive to my questions.”source ↗
Where this came up
People with this problem also raised
- 6Can I refuse to use my personal phone for work?
- 3Why can't I stop coding with AI at night?
- 2Partner won't help with the puppy and keeps threatening to get rid of him
- 3How to stop unwanted small talk with a plane seatmate
- 8How to stop kids from throwing tantrums over phone limits
- 6How to stop students from scrolling phones during class