Cellf-absorbed
June 1, 2009 -
Katie Long
It
seems like everyone has a cell phone these days. While the trends
lean towards more texting and other forms of non verbal
communication, the fact that more and more of the population are
armed with a cell phone means the number of calls being made per day
is on the rise. In the last week I’ve personally experienced two
cell phone faux pas. The first was a waiter bringing me my food
while on his cell, the second was a man screaming into his phone at
the top of his lungs in a coffee shop cursing at the person on the
other end of the line about how he was “not going to Ikea.” I’m sure
everyone has been in a room with someone who didn’t seem to realize
what was appropriate in public while on a cell phone. This being
said I discovered that rude cell users are such a huge problem July
has been declared National Cell Phone Courtesy Month. Therefore, I’d
like to investigate one of the newest aspects of Indoor “Air
Wave” Quality, cell phone noise pollution.
Here’s
a little insight into why this problem seems to be growing so
quickly: There were approximately 340,000 wireless subscribers in
the United States in 1985, according to the Cellular
Telecommunications and Internet Associate (CTIA); by 1995, that
number had increased to more than 33 million, and by 2003, more than
158 million people in the country had gone wireless. This means if
you went out for a family dinner, chances are everyone from the
grandparents to the junior high age grandchildren would have a
mobile phone of some sort. We tend to view this as being more
available and in touch, in the mix if you will. How is it then that
the mobile telephone encourages us to connect individually but
disconnect socially, ceding, in the process, much that was civil and
civilized about the use of public space?
Interestingly enough, in the U.S., mild regional differences in the
use of cell phones are evident. Reporting on a survey by Cingular
wireless, CNN noted that cell phone users in the South “are more
likely to silence their phones in church,” while Westerners “are
most likely to turn a phone off in libraries, theaters, restaurants,
and schools.” But nationwide, cell phones still frequently interrupt
movie screenings, theater performances, and concerts. People are
generally more turned off by people using their mobile phones in
public than they are by people having a loud conversation in the
same situation. Because cell phone talkers are not interacting with
the world around them, they come to believe that the world around
them isn’t really there and surely shouldn’t intrude. And when the
cell phone user commandeers the space by talking, he or she sends a
very clear message to others that they are powerless to insist on
their own use of the space. It is a passive-aggressive but extremely
effective tactic. Such encounters can sometimes escalate into rude
intransigence or even violence. In the past few years alone, men and
women have been stabbed, escorted off of airplanes by federal
marshals, pepper-sprayed in movie theaters, ejected from concert
halls, and deliberately rammed with cars as a result of their bad
behavior on their cell phones. The Zagat restaurant guide reports
that cell phone rudeness is now the number one complaint of diners,
and USA Today notes that “fifty-nine percent of people would rather
visit the dentist than sit next to someone using a cell phone.”
The
worst part is that as much as we all hate the person gabbing away at
inopportune times we can also find ourselves being that person. Much
like the talk radio caller who is complaining about people driving
and talking on the phone while they are in fact calling from their
car while on their phone, most of us believe that the rules can be
bent ‘just this one time’ especially if it is important. While the
occasional emergency will require a person to disrupt social calm,
please let us all remember our manners. While cell phone etiquette
hasn’t been as firmly set as say dinner etiquette a few simple rules
can be followed to insure clean IAQ for yourself and everyone around
you.
Jacqueline Whitmore an etiquette expert has some simple tips such
as, learn to use the vibrator setting on your phone and be aware of
your surroundings as to avoid discussing private or confidential
information in public. If we can all remember these simple steps as
well as realizing that sometimes it is just better to let a call go
to voicemail we should be able to make this July the most courteous
and polite month in cell phone history.
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