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Comment by daanavitch | Hacker News Reader

I'm a European and I just left Korea after living there for a month. I was absolutely shocked how addicted Koreans seemed to be to their smartphones. I had so many people bump into me because they were watching videos while walking around, on public transport pretty much everyone was staring at their screen, even older people were playing those mundane mobile games. Sure, pretty everyone around the world is addicted to their smartphone nowadays, but I've never seen it as bad as in Korea.

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In Hong Kong this is daily life, on public transport everyone is glued to their phones. When walking, people are just walking around like zombies, often bumping into each other because they aren’t paying attention.

Admittedly, I’m on my phone too while on the bus or metro. But when walking I rarely take out my phone.

I'm not young by any stretch of the imagination, but I also consume content on my phone whenever I'm doing mundane tasks that allow for it, such as walking or riding public transportation. (Of course if I'm walking I look up every couple seconds to avoid bumping into people/things.)

I see it as a better use of my time: if I can walk from A to B and catch up on HN, that's better than walking from A to B and spacing out.

But I wouldn't call it addiction, because as soon as the mundane activity is over, I put the phone down.

If it interfered with my work, sleep, safety, or other important aspects of my life (such as for the teenager described the article) then it would be an addiction.

I've seen very few people who can walk and read content on their phones at the same time effectively.

Where in Europe are you based? I'm seeing the exact same behaviour you're describing here in Germany all over the place, all the time, and I think it's a serious problem.

German resident here, around Cologne/Dusseldorf/Bonn. This has not been my observation (Might be due to my social circle bias), unless you are talking about high schoolers. The general population does not seem to have this behaviour.

I live in Koeln (and lived in northern parts of Germany before that) and I just don't see it. There are a couple of people glued to their phones, but the vast majority simply aren't. And this is taking public transportation throughout the day, especially morning and evenings at rush hour. It's far from problematic.

Kenyan here (but currently living stateside), the inverse is seen in cities like Nairobi for one simple reason, high occurrence of petty crimes like phone snatching/muggings will make you think twice about walking around like a zombie staring at your device. Situational awareness is a necessary survival skill.

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