The Trouble with Technology
Is technology making us less courteous? We surveyed Canadians to find out what annoys them about today’s wired world
By Liz Crompton
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Annoyed by today's wired world? |
I was once at a play when the cellphone of a man a couple of rows in front of me began to ring. Not only did he launch into a friendly chat, but he spoke so loudly I’m sure the actors onstage could hear him. Those around him glared, hoping perhaps to bore a message into his head: “You are being unbelievably rude! Hang up immediately!”
This is but one of many incidents of techno-rudeness I’ve witnessed over the years. I was pretty sure I wasn’t the only one who felt manners have been on the wane thanks to cell phones, PDAs and the like. Now, thanks to a Reader’s Digest survey, I know I’m not.
According to the survey, carried out by Leger Marketing,* 60% of Canadians felt advances in technology have made people less courteous over the past ten years. (Just 2% felt technology had made people more courteous, while the rest thought courtesy levels were about the same.) Women were significantly more likely to feel technological progress has had a negative impact, as were people age 45 to 64, residents of Ontario, and anglophones. More than 60% of each of these groups felt their fellow citizens are now less polite.
To what can this be attributed? “You don’t have to be courteous to technology, you don’t have to say please or thank you to a cellphone, computer or automated teller,” says Nancy Marchant, who works for the Town of Markham. “There’s so much interaction now with technology and such a reduced level of interaction with humans that we’re forgetting how to behave with one another.”
A whopping 94% of Canadians felt that Atlantic Canadians were the most courteous. Next most polite, at 88%, were people in the Prairies. Quebecers need to work on their image: Only 44% of those surveyed felt the province’s residents were courteous. Interestingly, 73% of Francophones thought Quebecers were courteous, but only 36% of Anglophones thought so.
Most people—a healthy 83%—felt that seniors (60+) were the most courteous age group, with those under 18 the least so. Boyd Ross of Moncton was one of just 29% who thought this group was generally courteous, especially when it comes to technology. “Younger people are comfortable enough with technology that they know how to use their voicemail and how to put their phone on vibrate in the movie theatre,” said Ross, a 28-year-old IT worker. “[If] a call comes in at an inopportune time, they push the ignore button or forward it to voicemail. I don’t see older people doing that.”
What Would You Do?
Reader’s Digest/Leger put forward eight scenarios, asking respondents how they’d respond if they found themselves in each situation. The results held some surprises about what people will and won’t tolerate.
The majority would suffer in silence through “techno-boorish” behaviour such as someone speaking loudly on their cell in a restaurant (69% would think it very rude but do nothing) or a senior executive checking and returning emails on a PDA during a meeting (54%).
“I’ve even been in church when cell phones ring,” said Wallace Mackenzie, a retired meat cutter from Sydney, Nova Scotia. He doesn’t feel that the level of courtesy has changed much over the past decade, but he does think it rude when people leave their phones on in public places. That, however, wouldn’t faze 20-year-old Meranda Pilipchuk at all, not even if someone’s cell went off in the movie theatre and he started a conversation. “I wouldn’t really pay attention,” said the Winnipeg cashier.
Leaman Long, from Farnham, Quebec, was recently surprised when another member of a selection committee started replying to messages on her BlackBerry while they were interviewing a candidate. Part of the problem, he said, is that people don’t even realize what they’re doing. “I later said, ‘You must have been really bored with [the applicant’s] answers, because you were looking at your BlackBerry.’ And she said, ‘Was I doing that?!’”
Lack of a proper salutation, such as you’d find in a traditional letter, and delays in replying to chatty emails left more than 55% of those surveyed unfazed. Emails are apparently not viewed in the same way as snail mail. Marchant and some of her friends recognize that they all lead busy lives: they have an agreement not to freak out if they don’t get an immediate response to an email, that the “silence” means nothing.
What got people’s ire up enough to provoke them to action? Someone blocking their way because she was wrapped up in a cell call or text message: 7 out of 10 Canadians would be annoyed enough to interrupt and ask her to move. If someone carried on a cellphone conversation at the movies, 63% would ask him to end the call. And if a group arrived at a park and cranked up a ghetto blaster, 44% would ask them to turn it down; 27% would simply stew.
Why is it important to be polite?
“Courtesy denotes a certain level of respect,” Marchant sums up. “If you’re not courteous, it’s the first sign of a lack of respect.”
* The survey of 1,510 people was conducted June 22 through 27. It has a margin of error of ±2.6%, 19 times out of 20.