If smartphones can be used for good purposes like global positioning system or can be boon for a visually impaired, to name a few its advantages, its overuse can prove fatal for mannerisms and social behavior.
According to a poll, carried out by mobile phone firm Recombu in UK, Britons seem to be doing away with their traditional good manners. A survey has found two out of three people in Britain wouldn’t mind answering a call on their cellphone despite being on a dinner date. Britain has become more ‘Rude Britannia’ since the introduction of smartphones. Almost two third of people – 63 % – admitted leaving their iPhone or BlackBerry on the table while being out for dinner, Daily Mail reported.
As high as 68 % would take a call on a dinner date, even if they knew it was not important or work-related, the study found. The research also suggested that Britons cannot live being separated from their smartphones, with more than a third admitting they would struggle to live without their mobiles.
More than half – 59 % – keep their phones on at all times, 16 per cent continuously walking around with their mobile in their hands, one in seven of the 1,000 people polled even take their phone to the toilet.
Nobody has done survey in India about usage of smartphones. But from my personal experience, I can say that Indians are more addicted to their mobile phones than Britons or Americans. Here, it has become a fad to use the handsets while travelling, walking. Whenever, I travel by long distance train, I get disturbed by fellow travellers using their phones in the dead of night or early in the morning and speaking in such a high pitch as if they are travelling alone. People don’t switch off their beloved phones even at creamation ground, and when everybody should be praying for the departed soul, some of the mourners remain busy with their cellphones!
Even at religious places and in movie theaters, bad mannered users of mobile phones will spoil your mood. Worst part of Indians is that they speak very loud and damn care for their fellow citizens. What we need desperately is that mobile vendors should place an instruction sheet alongwith other documentation in the handset boxes, giving tips about proper usage and where to avoid using handsets!
