IKEA's anti-smartphone table is a brilliant idea

Forget actual conversation with loved ones – dinnertime is all about taking 18 pictures of your tasty meal, hashtagging the best one with #foodporn on Instagram and waiting for the ‘likes’ to roll in while your plateful goes cold, right?

Well not according to IKEA, who’ve developed a table that should put a stop to iPhone interruptions at meal times, and will force diners to choose between eating and Tweeting (with no opportunities for cheating).

The ingenious concept, designed by IKEA Taiwan, is pretty simple: a smartphone-powered, food-warming hotplate in the centre of this table raises up, and can only be heated by surrendering smartphones to the power pad below. If someone takes their phone away, the temperate drops, and everyone has to chow down on a plate of luke-warm, undercooked or completely raw and possibly poisonous nosh.

Considering the average person looks at their phone a huge 1,500 times a week, with the majority of us glued to our devices for a shocking three hours and sixteen minutes per day, it’s a much-needed antidote to an eating problem epidemic.

So if your 'Boys Banter Club' group on Snapchat suddenly goes silent, you’ll know why – either your mates are enjoying a tasty supper, or suffering from a horrendous case of selfie-inflicted food poisoning.