Sure, we all need to look at our phones now and then. But for a growing population, “head down” is no longer merely a brief moment, but how all walking is done. The neck is bent, the headphones are in; collisions are barely avoided by a last minute glance.
Meet the “phoneheads”: the head-down marchers taking over city streets around the world. You’ve surely seen them; you may even be one yourself — and they’re destroying city life as we know it.
The look of streets is changing fast. What Jane Jacobs once called “the ballet of the good sidewalk,” looks today more like a hunchback bumper derby. The idea of men or women who “look to the horizon” — or even just the world around them — has been surrendered to more apelike aspirations. Not to mention that phoneheads are far more likely to get hit by cars and bicycles. One phone-tapper actually walked off a cliff.
Collisions aside, phoneheadism is also highly contagious. When another person is staring at their phone, you start to wonder if maybe they’ve seen something you haven’t. There’s an itchy-impulse to pull out your own phone and see what’s up. Soon the entire sidewalk is transformed into a zombie shuffle that cannot be described as attractive.
