Using a smartphone while on the move is problematic. Whether walking, cycling, or worse, driving, having a cell phone in our hands draws our attention and slows down our reflexes a lot.
This is confirmed by a study conducted in Japan and published in Science Advances, which dealt specifically with the analysis of our behavior in a crowd. The study found that our confused gait due to the smartphone not only prevents us from moving deftly between people, but also negatively affects the movement of those behind us.
To achieve these results, the researchers conducted experiments involving several students from the University of Tokyo in Japan. Divided into two groups, the volunteers had to walk towards each other, crossing and continuing on their way: if neither of the participants was distracted by his cell phone, the two groups instinctively formed queues and continued on their way smoothly.
But in the meantime it was enough for only 3 of the students to use their cell phones as they walked in front of their classmates, and the whole group got into chaos. Those who were busy with their phones moved more slowly and with difficulty, collided with their classmates coming face to face from the opposite group, and the rows took much longer to form.
In general, both groups took longer to describe the same path, and did so with more than one problem. According to researchers, this general chaos comes due to lack of eye contact. When we walk on the road we look into the eyes of those we face opposite to understand in which way we will move, and consequently we move accordingly to the circumstances.
And we do this instinctively, but it is precisely these eye-to-eye communications that enable us to avoid collisions with each other. According to Hisashi Murakami, one of the authors of the study, the next step will be to analyze the eye movement of people who meet on the street.
