I spent most of last week working on a television programme with a group of people I hadn’t met before. Among their number were a young male and a young female in their mid-twenties who spent more time gazing intently down at their mobile phones than they did interacting with the rest of us.
I must confess that after a while those of us who been around a decade or two more than them began to find this rather irritating. The young people concerned were in every other way very pleasant, friendly and professional, but the moment the cameras were turned off to re-light or re-dress the set, the eyes went down, out came the Blackberries or iPhones and the fingers started flying over the keyboards.
Holding the wretched devices surreptitiously under the table did nothing to disguise what they were doing and was the equivalent of an ostrich hiding its head in the sand to convince onlookers it wasn’t there.
The fact that the process is silent compared to the even less inclusive act of making a phone call doesn’t help either, as at least in that case most people have the courtesy to walk away to keep the conversation private. Texting, twittering and emailing can be carried out inches away from you – and therefore inevitably is.
I suppose it is the modern equivalent of my generation whispering in the corner and giggling which irritated the older generation of our day so much. It suggests too that the people they are with are insufficiently interesting to deflect them from the desire to chat about heaven knows what with their contemporaries. And because it is so easy and can be done silently, they perhaps don’t consider it to be disruptive in any way and therefore expect it to be acceptable.
It is all about manners in the final analysis and sadly fewer and fewer children are taught the basics of good manners any more.
I have noticed when I am rehearsing for a play too, that during a tea break all the young cast members rush off to get their phones and spend the entire time texting or talking on them. I can never think of anyone to ring and have considered pretending to make a call so I don’t seem like a Colly-no-mates. I suppose they could be calling their agents saying, ‘Get me out of here!’
