How Often Should You Charge Your Phone

Yesterday my oldest son and I had a conversation on the phone about our respective weekends. I spent the time visiting my youngest son in Ohio. My older son did a bit of furniture shopping. He is in the process of finishing his basement and creating a theater room. He and his wife went looking for a comfortable couch for it. He is quite pleased with his purchase even though it won't arrive until April. Given the history of his other recent furniture purchases, June is probably a more realistic date. He doesn't mind though as he still needs time to finish the room.

One of the features of my son's new couch is that each seat reclines and has adjustable lumbar support. As it requires electricity to recline and adjust, it also has USB ports at every seat. My son thinks this is a huge benefit as his phone constantly needs to be recharged. I find it to be interesting but probably not all that useful. I have a great routine for charging my phone that doesn't require any time during the day. I just charge it while I sleep.

This brings up the question of how often you should charge your phone. My son is constantly on his phone. So much so that he needs to charge his fairly new iPhone during the day. I can usually go several days without charging should I need to. Furthermore my younger son and I both believe that my older son is probably on his phone too much when he should be paying attention to the people around him. We both remarked about that in Ohio this weekend.

I don't mean to put down my older son by saying that he spends too much time on his phone. I just find it slightly rude to be talking with him, have him pull out his phone and disengage from the conversation without warning. Sometimes he is looking something up that is relevant to what we are talking about but most of the time it is something else that has won his attention.

Should you find yourself in the same boat as my son where you are having to recharge your phone in the middle of the day, you might want to evaluate your own phone habits. Take a look around before you pull out your phone. Are you in the middle of a conversation with someone? Do your kids need your attention? Are you truly alone and do you have the time to spend a minute or two on your phone? If you can answer, "No, No, Yes," then by all means feel free to pull out that insanely useful tool in your pocket. Otherwise you might want to reconsider and connect with the people around you.