Two new studies in the news last week about mobile phones, both focused on how the devices prove irritating to people in our immediate vicinity.
Textiquette
The teen who must consistently tap out SMS to friends day and night is a frustration to parents and teachers alike, but as author and psychology professor Larry D. Rosen explains, the kids can’t help it. In fact he suggests that, having grown up digital and constantly connected to their circle of friends, multitasked parallel conversations are a norm of everyday life for millennials. “From a purely behavioral point of view, we are looking at a generation that can’t not text,” he says. Other researchers call it connected e-presence, a kind of ambient accessibility that appeals not just to teens but increasingly to older generations of on-the-go cell phones users as well.
While this explains our tolerance for and the appeal of texting, it doesn’t change what experts call “the other people factor.” This refers to the fact that when someone gives you their continuous partial attention it is both humbling and even supremely annoying. And again, it’s not just the kids who cannot not text. In today’s corporate culture, take a peek at any boardroom meeting and you’ll see that “the way people use their phones has taken rudeness to new heights,” comments Stephen Overell in a column for the BBC. Though admittedly, Overell adds, it’s part of a culture in which “we like our 24-hour rolling news, our always-on connections.”
Texting netiquette guides suggest strict rules for times when it is thumbs off! Yet surveys show that “interrupting a meal, a trip to the bathroom, or even a romantic moment in bed to fire off a text is fast becoming the norm,” for many users.
Halfalogues
Also in the news, a study by researchers at Cornell University on why listening to someone talk to another person on a mobile phone is so irritating. They found that being subjected to half of a conversation (a halfalogue) gets on our collective nerves because “the brain has to work twice as hard to understand the conversation and fill in the blanks, requiring more attention and making it harder to shut out.”
It is always a challenge to block out an overheard phonecall, most especially in the case of the LOUD TALKER, a phenomenon researchers call yell hell!
Seems mobile communications technology is one of those paradoxical scientific developments that enriches our lives while introducing wrinkles, new problems, and in the case of mobile telephony, new degrees of cultural cohesion and disturbance.
