The digital distraction
How to lure partygoers away from the laptop, plus co-workers’ baby showers.
I keep my laptop in my kitchen. For a while, instead of packing it away when entertaining, I would put the laptop off to the side and would let guests check e-mail. I started to notice that my gatherings were becoming centered around the computer: e-mail, Match.com, “You have to see this video,” etc. I now stash my laptop before having friends over, but they ask me for it and I am getting resentful. How do I set a boundary? And when did our attention spans become so short? Z.Z. / Newburyport You say no. Yes, you started this, and now people think “dinner with Z.Z.” means “dinner with Z.Z. and Wi-Fi.” So you may have to announce a new policy. The host is in charge.
However, you can’t come over all scoldy about it, especially since you’re the one who allowed the situation to happen in the first place. You could play the lovable-eccentric card and present it as a new social experiment. Or you could claim that you’re trying to cut down on your own Internet time and therefore don’t want the laptop going at parties. Or white-lie for a while, saying that the computer is on the fritz (assuming you don’t have guests who will promptly go into Dr. Knowzall mode) and then say that you like having these computer-free parties, so let’s keep it that way.
Regarding your larger societal question, I’m not sure things have changed all that much. We’ve always enjoyed distracting ourselves and one another; only the toys have changed. How is sharing YouTube videos really different from passing vacation pictures around, as we did in the old days? Or from women gathering to do handiwork or embroidery while one of them reads aloud? Personally, I think the occasional shared YouTube clip or checking out travel pics on Flickr is perfectly acceptable at an informal gathering. But as I say: You are the host. You are in charge.
I have a co-worker whose unmarried daughter is pregnant with her second child. (Both of the daughter’s children have different fathers.) I have only met the daughter once, and the co-worker and I don’t socialize outside of work. So when I received an invitation to her daughter’s baby shower, I was a bit confused. My co-worker once told me to invite more people to my wedding, because even if they didn’t come, they might give a gift. Now I feel as if she invited everyone in the office just to get gifts. I don’t want to get her daughter a gift at all. I’m planning a wedding, and I’m already tight on money. Should I feel obligated to get a small gift just because I was invited? C.R. / Columbia, South Carolina Of course your co-worker invited everyone “just to get gifts” -- that’s the point of a shower, as opposed to other kinds of parties. And it’s notoriously difficult to create a “friends-only” office-shower guest list (I get questions on this all the time), so it’s easier to invite everyone from work or no one. Perhaps your co-worker is venal and grasping, perhaps she is merely trying to avoid hurt feelings, perhaps she’s not that up on etiquette (having a shower for a second child is a little odd). Or perhaps her motives are mixed, as motives often are.
However, her motives are certainly none of your business. Helping out a new mother is something you do because of the kind of person you are, not because you approve of the kind of person the new mother is. You can go or not go, give or not give, as you please. (You can’t, obviously, go without giving, that being the point of a shower.) But your decision ought to be based on your own generosity, ability to give, and sense of office politics and fair play, not your judgment of the girl or her mother’s morality or manners.
Miss Conduct is Robin Abrahams, a Cambridge-based writer with a PhD in psychology. Got a question or comment? Write to missconduct@globe.com. BLOG Read more of Miss Conduct’s wit and wisdom at boston.com/missconduct. CHAT Get advice live this Wednesday, noon to 1 p.m., at boston.com. 
