Smartphone slaves are ruining cinema

Are you one of those people who can’t resist a sneaky check of your social media feeds during a movie screening? David Mills would like a word.

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I miss the Middle Ages.

I know, I know – they had lousy hygiene, and little in the way of glamour, and death was a constant presence in everyone’s life – but they had public shaming down to a fine art.

Those errant members of the community who were guilty of misdemeanours could be put in stocks in public spaces, where they’d be subject to several hours of humiliation by the public at large.

There’s no way of knowing if the punishment prompted miscreants to change their ways, but I reckon it would have given the general public a few moments of intense satisfaction.

If some thoughtless clod had done something that really angered you, how great would it have been to have the legal right to throw a rotten tomato at their head?

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And so to modern times, and the contemporary misdemeanour of people who use their mobile phone in the cinema.

Unfortunately we have no modern equivalent of the pillory to shame these perpetrators, but a ton of anecdotal evidence will tell you it’s a growing problem. Too often, a movie session will be ruined by a smartphone slave using their device, seemingly desperate for the sugar hit of a message or a social media like.

The good old days of cinema-going: friends, popcorn, intense focus.

It’d be easy to just dismiss these people for their pathetic inability to concentrate, but the glow from their little screens provides an immediate distraction to the action on the big screen for the rest of us.

Cinema chains long ago cottoned on to the problem of incoming calls interrupting movie screenings, and now run messages before main features asking patrons to at least switch their phones to silent. But they have so far not responded to the specific problem of audience members who choose to send messages or check their social feeds during a movie.

When asked about this issue, a spokesperson from Hoyts said they appreciated their customers wanted the “immersive experience that only film can offer” and encouraged patrons affected by mobile phones in the cinema to speak to a staff member, who would assist in resolving the issue.

Both Hoyts and Event Cinemas said they receive few complaints about the issue.

“Even with the rise of mobile phone use in our everyday lives, we still receive very few disruption complaints across our cinema circuit, highlighting that cinema is still one of the few entertainment experiences where audiences truly switch off and allow themselves to be captivated by the movie-going experience,” said Alex Holden, general manager of customer experience for Event Cinemas.

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Despite the low volume of complaints, opinions are clearly divided on the issue – with the smartphone slaves themselves obviously seeing nothing wrong with their behaviour, while those who object to it find it a massive imposition on their enjoyment of the movie.

The nightmare of modern cinema-going: small screens competing with the large one.

Educational Neuroscientist Dr Jared Cooney Horvath from the University of Melbourne says a person checking their phone during a movie session is attempting to multitask – but the act actually forces other people around that person to multitask as well.

“It ripples out, and pulls your attention,” he says. “By default you start multi-tasking too. And you can’t ever really do two things at once.”

Dr Horvath says that while he is unaware of research on the impact of smartphone use in cinemas and theatres, he says the trend is in keeping with “the big behavioural shifts in audiences that we’ve also seen in classrooms and lecture halls”.

Sydney-based analyst and adviser in digital culture Dr Joanne Orlando says the use of mobile phones in cinemas is not too hard to understand when you consider just how ingrained the devices have become in our lives.

Educational Neuroscientist Dr Jared Cooney Horvath says smartphone use sets off a ‘ripple effect’ of distraction. Photo: Jack Li

She offers some startling statistics. The average person checks their phone every 12 minutes. For 75 per cent of us, checking our phone is the last thing we do before sleep and the first thing we do upon waking. And the average user spends just under three hours a day using their phone.

“Most people wouldn’t go an hour and a half or two hours, which is the length of a movie, without checking their phone,” she says. “It’s more acceptable to check your phone before the movie starts or during the ads in the lead up to the movie, but in handbags and pockets, the glowing light of a notification can come through, and most people find it very hard to resist.”

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She suggests that those pre-movie messages get tweaked to point out that phone screens can distract patrons just as much as a ringtone.

“That’s not really been brought to people’s attention,” she says.

Social norms around technology evolve as technology itself evolves, Dr Orlando says, and mobile phone usage at the cinema could end up going one of two ways: either it will end up completely normalised, or there will be a drift towards increasing regulation, a bit like smoking.

Technology and society expert Dr Joanna Orlando says the norms about mobile phone use are evolving with the technology.

In the past decade we’ve seen mobile phone use being circumscribed in other public spaces, with the introduction of so-called “quiet carriages” on trains in New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland. Could we see mobile phone bans in cinemas, or at least at some screenings?

I for one would be supportive.

And lest you think this is a minor issue, consider the case of the retired cop who fatally shot a man in a Florida multiplex in 2014 because of the latter’s incessant texting.

Clearly that’s an extreme over-reaction, but it’s not hard to sympathise with the irritation. We must stop the smartphone slaves from ruining cinema.

David Mills is a columnist with RendezView

@DavidMills1972

Originally published as Smartphone slaves are ruining cinema