WHEN I was a teenager the only people who had mobile phones were characters from Star Trek – and they called them communicators.

You don’t need me to tell you that today everyone has a mobile and sometimes the last thing they use them for is to communicate.

The pace of technological change is so rapid that my three-year-old Nokia N96 – the absolute bees knees when I got it – now looks like something from a steampunk movie. My previous phone, which resembled a flip-top communicator, as used by Captain Kirk, is so obsolete it may even be a museum piece.

I still use my phone to call and text but rarely harness its internet function as its too clunky and slow. What I need, says Firstborn, is a smartphone like his. Then I too can spend my days surfing, twittering, collecting apps, reading feeds, texting, YouTubing and checking my emails.

But do I want to? That’s the question.

Do I really need to join the ranks of the continually distracted. Do I want to be one of those people who sits in a restaurant scanning my phone, sitting next to someone else doing the same?

I was thinking about this the other day while waiting for Firstborn to call round after work.

Every Wednesday he plays racquet ball with the Man-in-Charge and then we all sit down to a dish from Jamie Oliver’s 30-Minute Meals.

It’s becoming a family routine and one that I’m enjoying because I never thought my first born would end up with a job in Huddersfield. I imagined that he’d wind up in some far flung corner of the country, or globe, and we’d hardly ever see him.

But there is just one small blot on the enjoyment of these occasions. It comes in the small, rectangular shape of his smartphone.

Firstborn, like many of his generation and some of those from an older generation who should know better, thinks that it’s perfectly socially acceptable to sit staring at his phone whenever and wherever he wants.

“Had a good week?” I enquired on Wednesday, as we sat on the sofa waiting for the dinner to heat up.

“Mmm. Yeah,” he replied, glancing up briefly from his phone with unfocussed eyes.

He went back to doing whatever it was he was doing on the phone and I waited.

“How did that meeting you were talking about last week go?”

There was a lengthy pause, during which I coughed encouragingly. “Mmm. Yeah” came the response.

I waited a little longer.

“Perhaps you could put the phone down and talk to me,” I said. It might sound needy but I was feeling irritated.

“I’m just doing something,” he said, equally irritated.

“I can see that,” I replied.

Even at the dinner table we are not free of the mobile distraction. It buzzes throughout almost every meal. When he was younger I’d have been able to make it a table manners issue but now he’s an adult I don’t feel I can lay the law down. And mobile technology has grown at such a pace the rules about polite usage have yet to be written.

Secondborn is only marginally less attached to her phone. It also beeps and pings at regular intervals during meals, winging tweets and messages from her many friends. She sleeps with it next to her pillow just in case anyone twitters her during the night.

It is, I believe, a form of addiction.

What we need, I have muttered darkly to friends of my own age, are some official guidelines, an etiquette of phone usage.

And, after much consideration, here they are:

1 All smartphones should be turned off during meals or they will be thrown into compost buckets.

2 When in conversation with someone don’t just suddenly stop mid sentence to pick up your phone and check your messages. If you absolutely have to look at your phone then apologise first.

3 When visiting someone it is not polite to open up an app instead of talking to them, even if you think they are the most boring person in the world.

4 Switch your phone off when in the cinema. If you can’t focus on a 90-minute film without checking your emails or twitter account then stay at home and get a life.

But it doesn’t do to be too negative. I read this week that it’s just possible some good has come from smartphones.

Despite the fact that we’re now in a triple-dip recession, which would normally be associated with a rise in crime, official statistics show that there was an 8% drop in crime last year for England and Wales.

This is even more surprising given that we currently have more 15-year-olds than ever before – the peak age for offending.

The supposition is that smarter policing and a higher prison population have contributed to this but these things can’t fully explain what is happening.

Youth workers, however, point out that the fall in crime levels began around the time smartphone sales took off four or five years ago. It has been suggested that YouTube, apps for just about everything and social networking are keeping kids away from crime – apart from phone theft, of course.

So perhaps smartphones have a higher purpose after all. But the polite rules still apply. Is there an app for that?