Young people really are more likely to fall over when texting while walking, according to a new study.
And the quality of text messages are not so good when typed while on the move, show the findings of the novel research.
Experts have been divided until now over whether texting while walking increases the risk of an accident for young adults glued to their smartphones,
Some studies have shown that texting pedestrians are more likely to walk into oncoming traffic, while other research suggests that young adults have mastered the art of multitasking and are able to text accurately while navigating obstacles.
But few studies previously have measured how texters respond to unpredictable hazards.
And the quality of text messages are not so good when typed while on the move, show the findings of the novel research.
Experts have been divided until now over whether texting while walking increases the risk of an accident for young adults glued to their smartphones,
Some studies have shown that texting pedestrians are more likely to walk into oncoming traffic, while other research suggests that young adults have mastered the art of multitasking and are able to text accurately while navigating obstacles.
But few studies previously have measured how texters respond to unpredictable hazards.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00 What happens if you're just texting and you hit a gutter or there's a banana skin that
00:11 we might be walking along and slip?
00:20 The experiment we're doing today is to see how people respond to hazards and whether
00:27 other tasks that they're doing like texting on their phone is going to make them likely
00:34 to just walk in front of a bus or not be able to recover.
00:37 Oh my god.
01:01 Oh my god.
01:10 Please use your phone to text without errors and type in the sentence "The quick brown
01:19 fox jumps over the lazy dog."
01:21 Turn around.
01:34 Start texting and walking in 3, 2, 1, go.
01:47 This is her texting.
01:49 You can see there's a few errors in there.
01:56 Humiliating.
02:00 Everyone give her a round of applause.
02:16 Do you think it's safe or not to be thinking about other things and texting when you're
02:26 like crossing a busy road or in some hazardous environment?
02:30 Absolutely not.
02:32 Or will we see that it makes no difference because this young generation has grown up
02:39 with phones and they've become part of their system and actually it makes no difference
02:43 to them now.
02:44 Now that's old guys.
02:46 If we were to digs, we couldn't cope.
02:49 We'd probably walk into a lamppost.
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