E-Mail Maybe you're like us. We're the folks who are on our smartphones almost all the time, even when we're with others. We know it annoys a lot of people, but we do it anyway. Why? Researchers at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) have looked at why people in cafés pull out their phones, and how this affects café life. Three main reasons they identified are: to delay or pause a conversation (interaction suspension); to get out of a conversation (deliberately shielding interaction); and to share something with others (accessing shareables). But what does that actually mean?