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Why Mobile Phones Are Annoying
griffinn writes "Jakob Neilsen recently conducted a study comparing the perceived annoyance level of two commuters having a face-to-face conversation and one commuter talking on the mobile phone. Interestingly enough, subjects were also asked whether the ring tone is annoying, and people didn't find the ring to be particularly bad."
How are those damn ring tones NOT annoying? "Hey look how cool I am with my 50 cent ring tone!" What ever happened to a plain phone, that rings, vibrates and stores contact information. I find the whole ringtone /instant messaging and even the internet on my phone quite useless.
In South-East Asia, where I am from, having a handphone is almost as important as being literate;you can't really live without it.You can but its hard to communicate long distance since public land-line phones are not well mantained and are in generally bad condition.Its no longer a matter of status/fashion statement.
This is why public cell-phone ethics is a serious issue here.In general, the older ones have a tendency to talk too loudly, however I do noticed that the younger generations have learnt to speak as unobtrusively as possible, maybe realising the phone-speaker can actually pickup their voice without having to shout across the room.
My 2 cents
Having lived for nearly a year in Shanghai, I'm all but immune to cellphones. As a matter of fact, I've been one of those people who not only leave their cellphone on in the theater, but actually take the time to answer if it rings. I kid you not, this is normal behavior here.
And why not? In China, as well as most parts of Asia, cellphones are not an annoyance in any way. They're just a part of life. I think in the West, cellphones were initially thought to be annoying because they were an obnoxious show of money, and this has carried on to this day. In China and South Korea, having a cellphone is part of life and is not considered as annoying.
Methink the people surveyed here thought a cellphone conversation was more annoying than a face-to-face conversation simply because it's, well, a cellphone conversation. We still tiptoe around cellphones in the West. For all I can see, this annoyance is purely cultural.
(Earlier today, I saw a perfect picture of modern-day Shanghai: in a sea of bicycles, a man riding, and a woman seated in the Chinese way in equilibrium on the back of the bike with both her legs on one side... And as the man pedals his old rusted bike, the girl behind her is merrily thumb-keying SMS messages to her friends.)
Someone walking down the street talking on a cell phone doesn't bother me, nor does someone sitting in a restaurant talking on a cell phone.
What REALLY bothers me is when I'm sitting in a presentation at a conference (or something like that) and they repeatedly ask that people turn off cell phones or set them to vibrate. Then, naturally, someone's phones has to ring half way through.
Now answer me this, what kind of fucked up individual sits there while someone clearly asks them to silence their phone and doesn't? What is the thought process? Is it "Well, everyone else is turning silencing their phones like they asked, but they couldn't have meant me" or is it more "I'm not going to silence my phone, I'll just assume that nobody will call me"? Or is it that these people somehow forgot that they HAVE a phone?
I've never understood this but it seems to happen every time. Almost as if making the announcement before a presentation to silence phones CAUSES one to ring eventually.
Oh, and the worst is when the phone is in some kind of bag or briefcase and the owner just ignores it like everyone around him doesn't know it is his and he doesn't want to give away that HE is the asshole. We all know it is your phone you goober, looking around like you are trying to figure out whos it is will not fool anyone so turn it off!
There, I feel better now.
Finkployd
Let me first start by saying that I agree mobile phone use does have its etiquette, and certain limits should be respected (i.e. volume of the ring tone in a quiet place, such as a library).
But I really think it's only a matter of habit. I believe if an American lived in Sweden for a while (a country with one of the highest mobile phone penetration rates), they would quickly get used to hearing phones ringing and people talking on them all the time, without feeling necessarily annoyed. It's the constant reinforcement by others in US society that mobile phones are in fact extremely annoying that maintains this perception.
It's almost as if people go out of their way to get annoyed at someone talking on the phone. Because logically speaking, and as the article states, if you only hear half the conversation, you should only be bothered half as much. And if listening to just one side of the conversation is bothering you, then why are you listening in the first place?
I have never heard a real cellphone go off after that ad.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
I think the problem is that the phone covers your ear, so you can't hear so well and the normal feedback that controls your voice doesn't work so well.
Normal phones got round this by feeding back some of the signal from the microphone to the earpiece, so you could hear yourself speaking a little. Unfortunately, mobiles don't seem to do this.
If you'll notice, your regular landline phone supplies feedback of your voice through the earpiece. In the telephone industry this is called sidetone. I've never figured out why cell phones don't do that as well. Without the expected sidetone feedback, people tend to talk louder since they are not getting the feedback that they are accustomed to. "Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
The bad part is the loud speakers that really dont need a phone in the first place.
I disagree -- I think I buy into the article pretty strongly, which says that volume is a minimal issue. I've tried paying attention to what irritates me about cell phones when someone is conversing on one, and my feelings click with what the study says.
The problem is that normally, we respond when someone says something to us. Our brain is cued by it.
The request-for-attention pattern this follows is someone saying something near us, followed by a period of silence as they wait for our response. As the period of silence increases, the likelihood that the message was directed at us (and we should respond and haven't) increases (hence the common pattern of someone saying something, stopping, and two seconds later someone looking up and saying "uh, did you say something to me" -- the "request for attention" sequence was sent).
We are pretty good about ignoring conversation -- sitting in a crowded lunchroom, it's easy to let background noise fade into the background.
The problem is that cell phone speakers follow our brain's "I am requesting your attention" almost exactly. So we're sitting here uncomfortably having someone grab our attention every two seconds or so. It's extremely disruptive when you're trying to think about something else. The only real fix is to start ignoring people that *are* trying to get our attention, which isn't great either.
I would say that the primary issue is that we need a sensory input that would allow us to determine when someone is talking on the phone. Then our brain can learn to distinguish between "cell phone speaker -- ignorable" and "someone trying to get your attention".
I think that a good solution would be to provide (surprise, more noise) a buzz, a sort of masked noise from the phone. When the person on the other end of the phone is talking, we get an unintelligable but audible buzz. It would be crucial that (a) the buzz not be an annoying annoying, (b) the buzz not be easily picked up by microphones (especially cell phones, so that feedback doesn't occur -- a filter is necessary), (c) that cell phone manufacturers standardize on such a buzz sound, so that people talking near each other on different cell phones don't interfere -- this would also allow people to more quickly learn to identify cell phones. I think that cell phone disruptiveness is largely a technical problem, not a social problem (though people talking in movie theaters still require a swift kick to the nuts).
May we never see th
I have a different theory as to why people talk more loudly on cell phones.
On a regular telephone you can hear yourself coming out of the speaker end just a little bit. I don't know if this is because your voice is travelling through the hollow plastic, or if the telephone system is actually designed to do that. Either way, how loud you are hearing yourself compared to the other person helps to give you some feedback into how loudly you actually need to be talking.
On a cellphone, your voice just kind of travels off into nowhere. You don't hear yourself at all coming from the phone. Hence, you feel the need to talk louder, and louder, until you realize that , yes, you are talking loud enough.
This is what happens to me all the time. I always feel that little "urge" that I'm not talking loud enough, and so I sometimes try to actively talk below my comfort level of loudness.