I first recognized the look when I was sitting at the bar in Pure Wine Café last week: head tilted down, eyes lowered, luminescent glow from a smartphone on the face. As I scanned the rest of bar I noticed that this look wasn’t just confined to the guy sitting by himself, it also graced the faces of people otherwise engaged in conversation. I saw the same phenomenon at Iron Bridge Wine Company over the weekend. Even couples do it. Phone face is everywhere.
In his Faster Forward column in The Washington Post, Rob Pegoraro called the growth of smartphones “the most exciting, fastest-moving part of the electronics industry.”
The irony is that these devices are more about connecting to social networks than they are about placing a call. We don’t hold these phones to our ears so much as we glance down at them and tap away while they glow back at us in approval.
Of course the phones are simply our conduit for Facebook, Twitter, Linked In and other social networking sites that connect us now. There is a symbiotic relationship between the two.
“You can't write the story of any of these sites without noting how smartphones have allowed their users to connect from so many places.”
It’s really noticeable in places with dim lighting when phone face is more pronounced.
I can hear it already, “If you think I’m going to kiss you with that phone face you’ve got another thing coming.”
