Ringing in My Ears: The Scourge of The Cell Phone
Posted on Thu, Jan 26, 2012
by Jeremy Willinger
It never fails—a phone will go off at any event where you expect quiet and have spent a great deal of money to attend. A recently egregious example: the gentleman who’s iPhone alarm rang incessantly during a performance of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony at the Lincoln Center, New York. The audience reacted by calling for blood. The man, anonymously, reported that he couldn’t sleep for three days.
Is it because 83% of people own a cell phone that we have to expect at least one interruption? It seems like every quiet space is merely a void that is awaiting a ringtone to pierce its solitude. Yet, this is not a condition to which we must become inured. Solutions are available, and common sense and cell phone etiquette guidelines reinforce that phones should not disrupt others.
I think we need to separate the truly clueless from the obstinate / pugnacious. Clueless people are the ones who hear the constant reminders to shut off their phone and just don’t realize that the device is still on, or for some reason forget to turn it off. Unfortunately, I believe we have reached a saturation point regarding public prompts; they play at every movie and before every public event. However, the way we remind people should change. Cell phone etiquette demands that we approach public cell phone use with care and caution, but the messaging should be altered to be without humor or long-windedness. A concise announcement such as, “Ringing cell phones disturb everyone around you. Shut them off and disable all audio, ringtones, or alarms now.” would be a more direct solution.
The other group is more problematic—people who want to be the center of attention (no matter if the attention is negative) or who believe that every call or text message demands an immediate response, regardless of location. If you encounter someone particularly stubborn, it is best to let ushers or venue managers know so they can advise or reprimand the offender.
Between these audiences is the area of overlapping etiquette. People should know by now that ringers are disruptive, and that checking a phone in a dark space thereby illuminates everything around you and distracts your neighbors. Therefore, the primary rules of cell phone etiquette are that when you are inside anywhere, keep your phone on silent and do not take the phone out unless it is an emergency. Vibrate features are strong enough, and audible if you are listening for the buzz, to make ringtones and other noises are redundant. Keeping a phone on vibrate also automatically safeguards against potential intrusion and obviates any embarrassment. By extension, when you are on the phone, a loud voice can be even more distracting than screen glare.
However, humans are not the only culpable players. One by-product of our smart phones is that they can be very confusing to operate. In fact, the gentleman at the symphony had just received an iPhone from his job, and though the phone was off, a pre-set alarm still rang—a trip line waiting to happen.
More so, every app comes with music, sound effects, and other chimes to inform the user that action is happening, and accidentally triggering these features is not all too difficult. Further, despite phone ringer settings on the side of most devices, they can be easily nudged back to sound mode by merely shifting in a seat. Therefore, the onus is on us to understand how to use our phones and turn them off completely to avoid the many conceivable mistakes that could cause public disturbances.
While cell phones do facilitate communication and are particularly handy in an emergency, their ubiquity now demands a new set of considerations—specifically those focused on everyone else around you. Keeping mind of the potential to ruin an experience by having a phone go off will go a long way towards allowing an audience to enjoy things without interruption. The resulting silence will be music to everyone’s ears.
If you would like to read previous blogs about cell phone etiquette by Jeremy Willinger, click on this link: Unbreakable rules of the cell phone etiquette