Illinois Smart-Phone Users: This Is The Rudest Thing You’re Doing

The smartphone may be one of the greatest pieces of technology ever placed into the hands of everyday people, but judging by the results of a new survey on "tech etiquette," smartphones can be incredibly annoying when they're in the hands of someone who's not concerned with, or knows nothing about etiquette at all.

As of June 2024, it's been estimated that 91 percent of American adults have and use smartphones. To break that into population terms, there are around 258 million adults in the nation, so that's about 234 million people having and using smartphones in the United States alone.

Some of the most commonly mentioned rude behavior or annoyances with smartphones include:

• Smartphones being used at the dinner table
• Constant phone checking
• Ignoring people in favor of a smartphone
• Excessive photo taking, especially of food
• Smartphone use while on the toilet

But, none of those were named as the rudest thing you're doing with yours.

Although The Photos Above Would Indicate Otherwise, The Rudest Thing People Do With Their Smartphones Is Not Talking On The Speaker In Public (but it's close)

PCMag.com recently conducted an interesting survey on tech etiquette, and they found that "75% of US adults consider it unacceptable to video chat or take phone calls on speaker without headphones in public spaces like coffee shops or grocery stores. However, a full quarter of folks find this behavior acceptable."

Not only were the majority of the 2,000 adults surveyed totally against the whole speakerphone-at-all-times mentality by a 75% to 25% score, they found that playing music out loud off of the phone's speakers to be even ruder. 82% find it unacceptable, while 18% are just fine with it (probably because they're the jerks doing it).

PCMag.com:

When it comes to tech etiquette, there is often evidence of a generational divide. Our survey of more than 2,000 adults, conducted by YouGov last month, finds that 87% of Boomers believe using speakerphones in public is inappropriate, while 41% of Gen Z deems this sort of behavior acceptable.

Using your phone's speaker to take and make calls in public has a 75% disapproval rating, and blasting the tunes out of your phone in public is disapproved by 82%, but those are still not the absolute rudest thing you can do with your smartphone. So what is?

Talk Loud On Your Speakerphone Or Crank The Music Up Loud If You Absolutely Have To, But Whatever You Do, Don't Do This

According to the PCMag survey, the single rudest thing you can do with a smartphone is to snoop through the smartphone of a friend or family member. Doing that is absolutely unacceptable to 92% of survey respondents.

When it comes to snooping through your significant other's smartphone, 84 percent of those surveyed found it to be unacceptable, while 16 percent were okay with it. Interestingly enough, nearly 1 in 4 millennials think that going through a partner's smartphone is totally okay behavior.