As part of understanding and bringing about awareness to social manners, we have recently conducted a little survey on what people thought about those talking on mobile phones on public transport.
In Japan, you are asked to refrain from talking on mobile phones and also to mute your ring tone whilst on all public transport.
The survey was to select your preference from 1 and 5; from “doesn’t bother me at all” to “I find it really annoying”.
Thirty-eight percentage did not mind, whereas 62% did mind. In particular, 19% did not mind at all, whereas 38% found it really annoying.
There were a few anonymous participants, but there were approximately a 50/50 split in gender.
The youngest participant was a teenager who voted as “doesn’t bother me at all”. The participant however added that a short, quick call is fine but if the caller was loud or continues to make numerous calls, that would be annoying.
Though use of phone calls are not allowed in Japan, there were even numbers of Japanese who did and didn’t mind people talking on their phone.
The majority of participants reside in the UK, but some originate from various places around the world, including Brazil, Netherlands and Malaysia.
In conclusion, according to our survey, over 60% of the people find talking on the mobile phone on public transport to be disturbing.
Personally, I find it to be distracting, unless it is an emergency.
Food for thought.