Neil McNicholas: Pouring cold water on our mobile phone obsession

I hope neither company ever relies on the likes of me for their business because I never use a mobile and I never eat at McDonald’s. There will, of course, be many who eat at McDonald’s whilst using their mobile phones, thus making up the deficit I have created – and thereby hangs a tale.

I wonder how much time and money Three UK used in carrying out their research when all they had to do was have someone stand outside on the street and watch. And their chosen word ‘obsessed’ not only applies to just how many people have mobile phones, but more particularly how constantly they use them and with absolute disregard to where they are or who they are with.

Just to get slightly theological for a moment, I am constantly trying to discourage my parishioners from sitting talking in church because they are disturbing those who are trying to pray (which is what a church is for after all). I use the analogy of how bad-mannered it would be considered to be if we were in the middle of a conversation and someone interrupted us, and yet they will do that without a second thought even though someone is in conversation with God.

And so with the world of mobile phones. Two people can be walking along chatting and suddenly the phone of one of them rings and immediately they start talking to the caller. Why the compulsion to answer the phone? Why not let the person leave a message and call them back later? Is the world going to end if the phone isn’t answered? And what about the person to whom they were already talking suddenly being disregarded in mid-sentence?

Go to any theatre these days and before the performance there always has to be an announcement asking people to switch off their mobile phones. Immediately it’s like ducks on a pond – everyone disappears head-first into wherever there phones are to retrieve them and switch them off. Of course there will always be some who forgot to do that as they walked in, but so many?

We clergy have the same problem in our churches. I print a standard request on our parish newsletter asking people to ensure their mobiles are switched off, but there’s always one that isn’t – and this from people who know that mobiles should be switched off in church. But when it comes to baptisms, weddings and funerals when many of those present may rarely set foot in church, it is always advisable to ask at the beginning for mobiles to be switched off and, usually, the great duck impersonation follows.

With the proliferation of mobiles there seems also to have developed a mobile etiquette – or rather an acceptable non-etiquette. Because the mobile has become an essential accessory, so too, apparently, has the expectation that we can get away with what would otherwise be considered rudeness and ignorance. And so people will sit in restaurants chatting on their mobile to someone who isn’t even there, while those who are there with them sit counting their croutons.

Or people will sit at meetings, their mobiles in front of them, in itself a statement that a phone call will be of more immediate interest than whatever the meeting is about. And even if they resist the urge to excuse themselves to take a call, the phone will sit tweeting and chirruping for all to hear.

And then, as I’ve said, people will leave their mobiles on in church with the option of stepping out to take a call if, again, it is apparently more interesting than the service they are attending. But unless it’s a call to say their house is on fire (and what are the odds?), what could possibly be that urgent that it can’t wait?

These are all examples of our conviction (and there’s a thought!) that the world might stop spinning on its axis if we are out of immediate contact. Add social media to the mix and now we have the obsession that everyone else needs to know what keeps our world spinning.

At one time I would have advocated a compulsory bucket of water in restaurants, trains, buses, cinemas, theatres, banks and post offices, where it was legally permitted to consign any mobile phone seen to be in use. Of course mobiles are now being made waterproof (presumably as a result of those being used – and dropped – in baths and toilets!) and so now perhaps the water could be poured over the phone user instead?

Neil McNicholas is a parish priest in Yarm.