Just five minutes before takeoff, the young man across the aisle on the Baltimore-bound flight whipped out his cell phone and began a hurried and boisterous conversation, explaining the fine points of marketing his new Christmas-gift Web site to an unseen underling.
With glazed eyes staring at the seat in front of him, the executive unconsciously pounded his foot in rhythm to his conversation, oblivious to the 15 surrounding passengers glaring at this human loudspeaker in seat 23B.
In addition to dressing down his staff member, the harried young executive was engaged in one of the more despised forms of mobile phone behavior. In the industry it is called cell yell–a tendency of many cell phone users to speak into their phones more loudly than necessary, unwittingly involving surrounding strangers in their personal business.
Cell yell has created a subculture of cell-yell haters. The phenomenon has given rise to a Web site (www.cellmanners.com). An artist, John Detrich, offered a cell-yell-themed illustration for sale online. The Register (www.theregister.co.uk), a British Web site devoted to technology, reported that a cell phone user in Germany died two years ago after a beer-garden brawl over his lack of cellular civility.
It is too simplistic to put the blame for this anti-social behavior strictly on technology, social scientists say, because the way society uses new inventions defines and reflects the existing culture.
In the 1950s, people were used to the privacy of enclosed phone booths when making calls in public places. If mobile phones had been invented then, people would probably have jumped into those same booths to use them. Today, with more mobile, informal and open societies, many in Western countries relish the idea of speaking in open spaces, oblivious to the presence of others, and often in too loud a voice.
Mobile phone design doesn’t help temper that arch behavior. Unlike corded phones, cell phones provide little in the way of aural feedback; it has long been known that if you can hear yourself through the earpiece, you are better able to keep your voice properly modulated.
Because the mouthpiece of the typical cell phone barely extends to the cheek, many users act as if they have to shout to be heard.
“Cell phones are so small that people don’t trust the technology to work,” said Timo Kopomaa, a social scientist at the University of Technology in Helsinki and author of a study on cell phone behavior. That is one reason Motorola makes phones that flip open, according to a company executive: to give people the illusion that the phone is bigger and the microphone is closer to the mouth.
Add to that loud street sounds, plus the relative novelty of being able to speak to anyone anywhere, and suddenly throngs are shouting above the ambient noise in public squares, restaurants and post offices, consequently “privatizing the public space,” Kopomaa said.
Hard to turn away
Perversely, many onlookers find it difficult to withdraw attention from the unwanted cellular intrusion. The ringing phone has long taken precedence over a conversation between two people in the same physical space; an unanswered phone expresses urgency and creates tension for the listener.
A ringing cell phone is perceived as even more important than a ringing traditional phone. Sounding in public, it “spreads tension to all those within earshot, yet because it’s not for them, they’re powerless to answer the call,” said Sadie Plant, a researcher in Birmingham, England, who was commissioned by Motorola to study cultural differences in cell phone use.
Some cell phone owners prominently display even cell phones not in use, for their presence alone creates tension, as bystanders wonder if they are soon going to ring, Plant said. Users also often engage in “stage-phoning,” making unimportant calls in public just to impress others.
Plant found individuals who enjoyed listening to strangers’ cell calls; a soap opera was created, but one with only half the information available. Others found it obnoxious, since they are neither fully admitted to nor excluded from that cell phone user’s world.
The public cell phone user creates what Kopomaa calls a “black hole” as the user psychologically withdraws from his immediate surroundings to focus on the call.
“People are forced to remain present both physically and mentally,” Kopomaa wrote in “The City in Your Pocket,” a Finnish study of cell phone culture. Since a phone conversation by its nature is the opposite of public speaking, surrounding people are “disgusted by this forced eavesdropping,” he theorized.
Cell phone users tend to answer their phones quickly, but not because they are concerned about annoying their fellow citizens. Rather, a rapid response to a ring shows bystanders that the users have “telecredibility,” Kopomaa said. They have mastered this new technology, and they do not have to fumble to figure out how to answer it.
When Kopomaa recently discussed the implications of his study in an interview on his cell phone while riding a ferry from Finland to Sweden, he did what few other cell phone users do: He retreated into the ship’s bathroom for privacy.
In Plant’s view, the cell phone has become a psychosexual symbol of performance. When couples dine in restaurants, for example, it is more likely that the male will place his phone on the table and the female will leave hers in her purse, according to Plant. When two women dine together, both tend to keep them out of sight. But if one woman places her phone on the table, the other will probably follow suit.
Plant found this tendency toward display to be as true in Chicago as in London.
Habits vary
While cell boorishness is not confined to one country, certain practices are culture-specific. In China, cell phone owners prominently carry them in crocheted or silk bags, Plant said, while Japanese users often customize their phones with stick-on designs and graphically unique cases.
In many countries, texting–sending short, coded text messages to another cell user–has become the communication method of choice, especially for adolescents. It offers the socially shy the anonymity and immediacy of e-mail, coupled with the mobility of a cell phone.
“Boys can ask girls out by sending a text message, without having to hear the disappointment in their voices,” Plant said.
At Bergen Airport in Norway, a Norwegian company recently installed a system that automatically shuts off travelers’ cell phones before they enter the plane. Trains in Britain, Japan, Switzerland and the United States now have phone-free “quiet cars,” Page noted.
A bagel shop in Westlake Village, Calif., banned the use of cell phones while ordering last year because customers routinely asked for the wrong food when they were busy jabbering. To stem the jangle of ringing cell phones, Cingular Wireless is erecting kiosks at 100 Loews movie theaters as a sort of lobby-based cell phone purgatory where users will be encouraged to place and receive any calls.
“People are very upset when they’re forced to hear the results of a stranger’s medical tests,” said Carol Page, a Boston public relations consultant and founder of CellManners.com. The site has so far recruited three “cell spies,” volunteers in Boston, San Francisco and Washington who report on bad cellular behavior–like the man who insisted on phoning while using the urinal, or the wedding guest whose phone went off between the words “I” and “do.”
As a new consensus develops over the use of cell phones, perhaps the fear of stigma, rather than rules and laws, will do the most to turn the disruptive tide. In Finland, Kopomaa has noticed that people already use cell phones more often in casual restaurants than in expensive ones. And when they do, they call from outside the establishment, sharing the space with society’s other long-shunned group of addicts, cigarette smokers.
