To this day I don’t get the big deal why people feel it’s rude to use your phone on trains, in public places, etc. It’s not considered rude to have a conversation with your friend sitting next to you, so what’s the problem if you’re talking into a piece of plastic rather than at another piece of human flesh sitting next to you?
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Two reasons:
1- Volume. A lot of people talk WAY too loud into their phones.
2- Coversations are easier to ignore if you hear both sides. If you only hear one side, it can lead to instinctive curiousity about what the other person is saying, etc. Or maybe this one’s just me…
Sometimes it’s the subject matter. Conversation on cell phones seems particularly stupid and brain dead “What are you doing? What am I doing? Nothing. Why didn’t you call me?” And just for the record, I find loud, banal conversations between two live people annoying, too. And don’t get me started on people who use the cell phone in the bathroom.
And again volume. You hear a voice in your ear which is very quiet in relation to the surrounding background noise, and unconsciously speak louder to compensate. It’s almost impossible not to do it, even you are trying not to. The result is that people speak into their phones much louder than they would speak to a person sitting next to them. So it’s not to do with whether you are speaking to plastic of flesh as such: shouting at your neighbour is just as socially disruptive as shouting at your phone. But most people are much more often to be found shouting at their phone than at the person beside them.
I would argue that is it not persevered to be rude to use a mobile in these places, but it is rude to disrupt the calmness, and using a phone will do this.
Talking discreetly into your phone is fine, having a boorish conversation with your neighbour isn’t.
I suppose it also depends on how close the other people are- if you’re talking to your neighbour you’re probably sitting next to them, if you’re on your phone you might well be sitting next to a stranger.