Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Mobile
  3. News

Texting while walking can make us look a bit silly, study shows

Trevor Mogg
By

honolulu texting walking street ban distracted
SV Luma / Shutterstock
Apparently some of us look a bit funny when we text and walk at the same time. It’s not quite Ministry of Silly Walks, but the contrast with our regular walking style is apparently stark enough for researchers to note the fact.

The change in movement is apparently a protective measure to help us avoid bashing into obstacles or tripping over steps, and is evolving as we get increasingly used to texting while walking, results of a study showed.

Related Videos

Conducted by Bath University in the U.K. and A&M University in Texas, the joint research team presented 30 participants aged between 18 and 50 with a walking course containing obstacles such as bollards, curbs, steps, and people. They were asked to navigate it three times: once while walking without a phone; a second time while texting and walking; and a final time while while figuring out a series of simple math questions as they navigated the course.

It won’t come as a great surprise to learn that when completing the final two courses, the “cognitively distracted” participants needed more time to reach the end. The research showed that while doing so, the participants slowed down and took smaller steps, adopting a kind of shuffling style of movement in contrast with the larger, more confident strides you tend to see with people who’re actually looking where they’re going. Distractions also decreased the participants’ ability to walk in a straight line, the researchers found.

Besides slowing their pace, the participants also made “large, exaggerated movements to negotiate crowds and compensate for their diminished vision.” In other words, they lifted their legs more than necessary to ensure they cleared a curb, or made bigger steps to get around a bollard or when confronted by an approaching person.

Commenting on the findings, the University of Bath’s Polly McGuigan said the study’s participants had been “very good at adapting the way they walk to limit their risk of injury, and there were very few occasions when a participant hit an obstacle,” explaining “this may be because many of the participants had grown up using a mobile phone and are very used to multi-tasking.”

Despite the study’s findings, it’s clear from headlines over recent years that many of us still lack the skills to perform text-walking with the necessary with grace and style, while there’s also the small matter of possible death to consider. We may be getting better at fiddling with our smartphones while on the move, though the advice – for your own safety as well as the safety of others – is to leave the practice till motionless moments rather than when you’re strolling about.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Seoul campaign addresses latest public safety issue — texting while walking
increase chlamydia social media text walking

As amusing as it may be to watch texting walkers barrel their way straight into a pole or fall into a mall fountain, the prevalence of distracted pedestrians has become a serious public safety issue. It's not only those behind the wheel we now have to warn not to text, but also those outside of vehicles altogether who seem more dedicated to sending that last email or seeing that last Instagram post than noting their surroundings, sometimes with deadly consequences. So now, the Seoul Metropolitan Government has unveiled traffic and pedestrian signs whose purpose is to alert walkers to the dangers of using smartphones while traversing the busy streets of a metropolitan city.

The move comes just a couple months after Germany began embedding traffic signs into sidewalks themselves in hopes of actually getting texting pedestrians to pay attention, even while on their phones. But Seoul's authorities haven't yet resigned themselves to the reality of texting while walking -- instead, its signs, which are to be installed in five areas of the city, are more of a safety campaign. It's a joint effort between the government and the National Police Agency, and is aimed primarily at children, teens, and young adults, the major smartphone-using population of South Korea.

Read more
Texting while walking? These in-ground traffic lights should get your attention
increase chlamydia social media text walking

Can't make them come up to you? Go down to them. Such is the logic behind Germany's new traffic lights, which see distracted pedestrians and chronic texters, and raise them traffic lights that they just can't miss. It's an interesting way of combating an international smartphone addiction, adopting street safety signs with the times rather than trying to fight the onslaught of near-ubiquitous mobile technology. Officials in the city of Augsburg have now embedded lights directly into the sidewalk, so that even if you're looking down at your screen, you'll (hopefully) notice whether the light is green or red.

"It creates a whole new level of attention," city spokeswoman Stephanie Lermen told local media. While the lights don't come cheap (each actually carries the hefty price tag of 10,000 euros), city officials say it's well worth the cost to keep its citizens safe. Recently, a teenage girl was killed in a traffic accident while looking at her smartphone, and a recent European survey concluded that around 20 percent of pedestrians were distracted by their mobile devices, creating numerous hazardous situations for drivers and non-drivers alike.

Read more
Walking while texting could get you arrested, if a NJ law is passed
honolulu texting walking street ban distracted

Distracted walkers are everywhere these days. Take a stroll along any busy street and you'll see them, checking their phones, sending texts, making a call, and listening to music. Sometimes all at once, or at least it seems that way.

If they're not bumping into you, they're bumping into someone else, or causing others to leap out of the way to avoid a collision of limbs. Even worse, distracted walkers sometimes step out into the road without a care in the world, unaware there's a bus coming right at them.

Read more