Manners seem to have gone the way of the Dodo in this age of modern technology.

Facebook status updates, WhatsApp notifications and Tweets that come in the middle of a face-to-face conversation — you know you shouldn’t check but.....

As explained etiquette teacher Trudy Snaith: “It is important to remember that technological devices have no manners to begin with.

“There is nothing about them that supports civil behaviour. They actually encourage bad behaviour.

“They blurt in, interrupt and demand the attention we would be inclined to raise our eyebrows at if a human being were to do the same thing.

“I admire the person who has the will power to ignore a ringing phone but that can be almost as distracting to everyone around him or her, as answering the phone. In a case like that, the person should turn the phone off.”

People, not devices, should almost always come first, she said. Katie Davis, co-author of The App Generation, said she has often heard people say technology is making us ruder.

“I have seen firsthand people splitting their attention between face-to-face conversations and the conversations they’re having on their phones,” she said.

“One girl I interviewed said that at the end of a day of splitting her attention in this way she felt she had been everywhere and nowhere at the same time.”

She said it’s hard to fully engage with someone when your attention is divided.

“There’s plenty of research to back that up, showing how bad we are at multitasking,” she said. “Trying to compete with someone’s cell phone annoys us all, and that’s why I think that we’ll eventually figure out a way to self-correct.”

She said some young people she talked to had made a pact to put away their phones at restaurants and social gatherings. “I’m hopeful that such pacts will eventually turn into new social conventions for a digital era,” she said.

Former Digicel CEO Wayne Caines agreed.

“Cellphones have eroded our manners and have created an inconsiderate society,” he said, stressing that he was not speaking for the company.

“We have become obsessed with the need to be ‘in the know’. People use their phones in church and in the barber chair. I have even seen one person [texting] whilst standing in the water at the beach.”

He continued: “Technology has made us rude and inconsiderate. We hate that fact, but we are too tethered to our phones to get rid of them or change our patterns of use.”

Current Digicel CEO Alistair Beak believes that the technology is having a positive impact on communication.

“People are talking more, sharing more, and being more social,” he said. “People love social networks in Bermuda and love smart phones and love using fast data networks. If it didn’t feel positive to people it wouldn’t be happening.

“No doubt people are communicating more about more stuff instantaneously these days then they ever have, so it must be feeding a desire as humans to socially interact with one another. That is why I think social networks have done so well.”