We need to call out anti-social attitudes

IT IS hard to imagine life without our smartphones. Not only do they allow us to stay connected, they double as alarm clocks, TVS, street directories, cameras and just about anything else we want them to be.

While smartphones have changed our lives for the better, they have also made us more annoying, rude and anti-social.

Our smartphone obsession – or addiction – has seen us surrender once-common courtesies.

Perhaps you have been distracted by the glow of the moviegoer who texts friends from a cinema.

Maybe you have been phone-snubbed – or phubbed – during an outing with a friend who prefers to scroll through their messages.

You have most likely been outraged by a sneaky and less-than-flattering smartphone snap that ends up published on social media without your say-so, or by a dining partner who films every minute detail of what you thought was a private dining experience.

Even worse is the person who cannot put their phone down long enough to finish a transaction at the checkout, the diehard smartphone user who insists on continuing a call in a public toilet and a work colleague who needs to dash out of a meeting every 10 minutes to take an “urgent” call.

There are also the bad manners of serial callers who cannot wait for you to return a call and those who put you on hold while they attend to “more important” calls.

And you have probably been properly peeved when someone at a quiz night, who is as shameless as a rude statue, pulls out their handset to research the answer to a tough question.

Yet when it comes to the nastiest of all smartphone sins, it has got to be checking notifications while driving or walking.

At the heart of our digital discourtesy is a flawed assumption that being able to use a smartphone to connect with those out of sight somehow gives us permission to ignore, annoy, frustrate or fail to acknowledge those people within sight.

If we dare to call out smartphone misconduct, we might at least manage to stem the rising tide of some of the more anti-social handset horrors that are rapidly becoming normalised.

So what is the worst smartphone felony you have been on the receiving end of?