Note that this absorption with props functions to keep the eyes occupied so that one does not have to be concerned with eye contact (a type of contact which body-management users take great pains to avoid). And the busyness suggests to those about that here is a person who has many important things to do and is therefore not a person with whom one should attempt any interaction.

DEFINE: Explains the function of prop absorption for body-management users as social signaling.

Lyn H. Lofland, World of Strangers_ Order a…, loc. 889