Mind the App – Digital Diversions Cause 50% of Commuters to Miss a Stop

A new report says that half of commuters miss their stop twice a year due to social media, emails and games on their mobile devices.

- Michael Walmsley

Mind the App – Digital Diversions Cause 50% of Commuters to Miss a Stop

A new report says that half of commuters miss their stop twice a year due to social media, emails and games on their mobile devices.

- Michael Walmsley

In a survey commissioned by O2 and Samsung over 50% of commuters say that they have missed a stop on public transport because they have been too distracted by activity on a smartphone or tablet and lost track of time. 15% of those surveyed say that it has led to them being late for a business meeting.

The culprits for this are:

Social Media       35%
Emails                   28%
Games                  27%
Calls                       15%
Video/TV             7%

On average a commuter will miss two stops per year through this sort of activity but in extreme cases there are some commuters who are missing this number of stops on an almost monthly basis.

I suppose it is not really surprising that social media is the main culprit in causing commuters to miss there stop. I do not think that there are many people who have not at some point or another been on their favourite social network and then looked at the clock and thought “Where did the last 30 minutes disappear to?”

I can also understand why emails can be so distracting, especially if you are trying to send one from a mobile device in which you are generally trying to type with one or two fingers and inevitably make a multitude of spelling mistakes, or even worse, predictive text substitutes the correct word that you wanted to use with something completely different.

The one that I found surprising was video/TV at only 7%, I would have thought that this would be much higher. Generally when you are watching video on a mobile device in public you are likely to be wearing headphones and this means that you are less likely to hear an announcement to say that you have reached your destination. At the same time video is, by its very nature, a visual medium and this is likely to capture a lot of your focus and attention. The fact that relatively few people miss their stop through video would suggest that not many people watch it while commuting.

If you are an app developer then perhaps there is a market for an app that allows you to choose which stop you want to get off at and when you are approaching that station the app will give you an alert to let you know.

Perhaps in light of this report it should be less “Mind the gap” and more “Mind the app”. I spoke yesterday about the importance of keeping your social media/life balance in the right proportions, it would appear that