Why phones on loudspeaker may become just another noise
Why phones on loudspeaker may become just another noise
16 hours ago
Angus ThompsonSenior Journalist on Digital Live
Listen to Angus read the story here
Most days on my commute, I am treated to the contents of strangers' phones.
It could be a teenage boy slouching on a seat on the top deck of the number 29, holding his device inches from his face, either unaware or indifferent that everyone else can hear what he's watching too.
Or a woman taking a phone call on loudspeaker before scrolling at volume through her social feed.
Surveys suggest that many do find this modern phenomenon - known as loudcasting, sodcasting, or headphone dodging - similarly frustrating.
In recent years, Ofcom, YouGov and Transport for London (TfL) have all published polls showing the vast majority of people dislike it. TfL has just relaunched its Travel Kind campaign across the London transport network this summer, reminding people to use headphones.
The phenomenon has grown as we become ever more connected. Figures published in July by Ofcom show that mobile data use has increased by 13% year-on-year in the UK. 5G is being rolled out across the country, meaning that more people can get faster connectivity while travelling. And research has found that many data packages have become cheaper, meaning customers are less likely to have to ration their data use when out and about.
So as we become ever more online in public, will we see increasing attempts to clamp down on loudcasting? Or will it end up becoming as normal a part of our soundscape as the hum of passing traffic or the roar of a plane's engine thousands of feet above us?
Am I out of touch?
This phenomenon isn't entirely new and neither are our reactions. Boomboxes in the 1980s and 1990s, for example, caused a stir. Bath University professor David Ellis points out that each new technological trend - including the very use of mobile phones - has often prompted odd looks when deployed in public.
"I remember when my mother was mortified that I was walking down the street with a phone to my ear," he says.
Loudcasting has piqued the interest of experts who study how technology shapes our behaviours, and they agree there's a strong generational factor. In an Ofcom survey of 1,010 people in August 2022, of the 13-to-17-year-olds questioned, 69% said it was acceptable to make video calls, 73% to listen to music and 83% to watch videos without headphones.
University of Sussex physiology professor Harry Witchel, who has a long-running interest in soundscapes, argues that it makes sense in the context of young people's brain development. He notes that adolescence is when young people move from their parents to their peers, and loudcasting is a way of expressing this. "That's what they're doing, they're saying 'I'm here'," he says.
So it's mostly young people? "I would say it is," says Dr Rachael Kent, a senior lecturer in digital economy and society at King's College, London. She adds that it's not wholly borne out of a lack of consideration for others - loudcasting can be a tool for connection.
"Travelling to and from school on public transport with friends, they're experiencing their devices together."
She also argues it's "performative… a way to rebel. 'I'm going to play music, watch stuff', that's a way to express who you are, what your tastes are."
Witchel says he began observing loudcasting around 2011, a few years after the release of the iPhone.
That year he spoke to the BBC about young people playing music aloud from their phones in public, in what he described as a "fascinating human phenomenon of marking social territory".
Fast-forward to 2026, and - alongside tech advances such as improved audio quality - he posits the idea that loudcasting is thriving with the help of a decline in social policing of public spaces and a loss of etiquette in the wake of Covid-19 lockdowns.
"People were just used to walking around their homes in their bunny slippers, and when they came back into the commons and the social space they forgot there were rules they had to follow," he says.
But what is it about the sound of someone scrolling on loud that I find so abrasive when any city or bus is already a cacophony of competing sounds?
"Noise is like weeds," Witchel says. "Noise is a sound out of place. If we think that the railway sounds are supposed to be on the railway, then we don't think of it as inappropriate.
"The issue isn't so much just pure decibels… the issue is actually attention and how we deal with certain soundscapes, and how that sound environment relates to us. It has a contextual meaning."
Witchel says we can "habituate" to a train noise, which becomes "much easier to put up with than if someone has a loud conversation".
Enforcement problems
Transport for London (TfL), which operates the capital's trains and buses, last year launched a public awareness campaign calling for passengers to be considerate after the results of a survey of 1,000 people said 70% of respondents found loud music and phone calls without headphones a nuisance.
The Liberal Democrats say such behaviour should be punishable with fines of up to £1,000.
The party's transport spokesman Olly Glover puts the trend down to a growing lack of social awareness. "Since the pandemic a lot of people live in their own head more than ever before," he says, adding, "they don't necessarily think about their impact on other people".
Glover says technology companies should bear some responsibility, suggesting they should provide headphones at railway stations or return to automatically selling them with phones.
The BBC contacted tech companies including Apple, Samsung, Meta, and TikTok about their awareness of loudcasting and whether they were responding to it in any way. None of the companies commented.
The Lib Dems' push has also garnered some Tory support. Rebecca Smith, Conservative MP for South West Devon, says "things have moved on a bit since a few people carried around a Discman", adding it wouldn't hurt to have the rules "beefed up" to allow passengers to tell others what they're doing is against the law.
Smith says she doesn't notice it in her Devon community, but it's something she's observed on the commute between Plymouth and London.
The government has previously said that under existing railway by-laws, disruptive passengers are already liable for £1,000 fines.
TfL says when its officers encounter someone playing their device out loud, they will typically ask them to stop, with most people complying. If they don't stop, then further enforcement action can be taken, such as referring them for prosecution.
In February, transport under-secretary Keir Mather told a committee hearing he would "engage with officials about how we can more robustly enforce the by-laws". Asked about the result of those discussions, the Department for Transport told the BBC it expected rail operators to use existing powers.
The department said the government was also "cracking down on nuisance passengers" with the Bus Services Act, passed in October, which empowers local authorities to create by-laws to prevent nuisance passengers.
However, the Liberal Democrats say existing by-laws aren't explicit enough, and want the law to specifically ban playing music and videos played out loud. They are currently trying to insert an amendment into the Railways Bill.
A key barrier to enforcement is resourcing.
In an exhaustive list of enforcement activities carried out between 2020/21 and 2024/25, TfL says no one has been fined but identifies prosecutions in which no further action was taken due to lack of evidence or discretion being exercised, including due to a passenger's age.
In one 2022/23 matter, a case was withdrawn from court because the defendant was not from the UK and had returned to their own country.
Despite the evidence that so many of us find it annoying, we also appear hugely reluctant to actually do anything about it. Few official complaints are made. Even though I find loudcasting intensely grating, I have never registered an official complaint and have only occasionally asked other passengers to turn the volume down on their device.
"In train carriages, if there are no conductors, it becomes more difficult in practice to make a public nuisance complaint," says Lisa Lavia, managing director of the Noise Abatement Society, a charity which addresses noise from neighbours, as well as from aircraft and trains.
TfL says it monitors enforcement activity around headphone use, but that complaints where headphones and music are cited are decreasing. It also says that there are only a "small number" of complaints that relate to people streaming content out loud in the context of the billions of journeys each year.
Similarly, Great Western Railways says it has received just 10 complaints of this nature since January 2025.
London Mayor Sir Sadiq Khan said during Mayor's Question Time in June that "a lot of people are concerned" about this behaviour and acknowledged the number of prosecutions was low, adding he was happy to look at what else could be done to educate Londoners, including looking at what other cities and countries were doing.
"Sometimes people are not aware of the impact they are having on others, of their antisocial behaviour," he said.
Lavia says loudcasting is now something the organisation is asked about "quite regularly", including whether it is reasonable to be put off by it, and what can be done.
She says that while the proportion of inquiries the charity receives is small, "it's representative of something much wider", believing the organisation's relative obscurity means people are at their wits' end before they come to them.
The cultural gap
While many dislike loudcasting, do some people find it more acceptable than others to play their phone out loud in public depending on their background?
The 2022 Ofcom survey recorded statistics of people who loudcast by ethnicity, and it found higher proportions of people from non-white backgrounds said they watched videos in public without headphones. It found 43% of white respondents, 58% of people with an Asian background, 58% of black people, and 60% identifying as being from a minority ethnic group saying they did this.
Though when it came to being annoyed by loudcasting, people of all backgrounds had strongly negative reactions, including 76% from Asian backgrounds, 73% of black respondents, 72% from a minority ethnic background, and 82% of white people.
Though it's not just the UK where this behaviour is met with eyerolls. In February last year, a man in France made news for being fined €200 (£171) for making a call on loudspeaker. Portuguese authorities are also fining commuters for phone noise.
Loudcasting is a global phenomenon, but where you are in the world can make it more or less socially acceptable, says Rich Ling, a retired professor of communications at Singapore's Nanyang Technological University. He cites Japan as a classic example of a place where "you're breaking a lot more norms by doing something like that in public", adding that Scandinavia is similar. By contrast, he uses the US as an example of a more individualistic society where outlandish behaviour is more tolerated.
Furthermore, Professor Orla Muldoon, the head of the School of Psychology at Queen's University Belfast, says people aren't necessarily being antisocial by sharing their music or conversations with strangers nearby - in fact, it could be the opposite.
"It is quintessentially social to play music and hope your peers appreciate that music," she says.
Whatever your view on it, experts generally agree that loudcasting has already become ingrained.
In an effort to inject some perspective, Ling shares a paper he wrote in 1997 – nearly 30 years ago – about the appropriateness of mobile telephone calls in public spaces, including restaurants.
"You were seen as being vulgar and gauche to the highest degree," he says. "Now if you get a call in a restaurant it's no big deal."
He suggests of loudcasting that "in two years' time we're not going to worry about it", and that those ruffled by it will be more tolerant while offenders modify their behaviour somewhat.
The next time I sit through another auditory gauntlet on the number 29, I will keep that in mind.
Lead image: Getty
来源与核验
来源名称：BBC
原文标题：Why phones on loudspeaker may become just another noise
原始发布时间：2026-08-05T23:43:03.712Z
数据来源：BBC原始报道及文中列明资料
核验日期：2026-08-05T23:43:03.712Z
本页当前为内部编辑草稿，尚未完成本站独立分析、版权复核和发布审核，不构成投资建议。