Try, if you can possibly bear it, to cast your mind back to London in summertime. Dappled sunlight filters through trees. Londoners spill on to the streets outside pubs holding amber-golden pints, the arms of their work shirts rolled to the elbow. Armies of Lime bikes litter the streets. The foxes have abandoned their relentless, deafening winter shagging and started raising sweet, summer cubs. Dry January has long been forgotten. It’s beautiful, really.
And then there are the obligatory day festivals; All Points East being the mothership. I love that festival because of what happens the moment everyone gets inside the gates of Victoria Park. Each year, at that exact moment, you get to witness some of the most chronically online individuals in London see their phone buckle in real-time under the pressure of 50,000 other people trying to do the exact same thing.
Find their friends. Post an Instagram story. Forget about it, mate, signal’s gone. And it won’t come back again until you’re at least one mile from the festival site, probably lost, undoubtedly spangled and often forced to navigate yourself from memory on a long, winding walk home across the capital.
This is one of the sacred few remaining moments of forced offlineness left in the city since the rollout of 4G and 5G on the Underground commenced in December 2022. It is, I believe, one of the worst developments in London’s history.
There is not a single day now when I am not assaulted auditorily by someone else’s phone. I’m starting to think we might need to come up with a new category of psychological disorder for people who have been forced to listen to the maddening stop-start melange of short-form videos being scrolled through on someone else’s phone, day in, day out. Forget whispering voices in my head, I’m being relentlessly subjected to shouting Reels and high-pitched YouTube videos. It’s schizophrenia on double speed.
We gave horny men who don’t know how to behave constant access to the internet while in public
Oh, and you’re visually assaulted, too. I have seen men browsing softcore porn and having actual FaceTime phone sex while on public transport before, and I’m not even that surprised about it. We gave horny men who don’t know how to behave constant access to the internet while in public. They weren’t ready for it, and now we all have to endure it. Great!
There’s also the issue of people being distracted by their phones so much that basic manners have gone out of the window. TfL recently implied that Londoners are offering their seats to others less frequently because they’re not looking up from their phones while travelling. And anyone who’s used the Tube recently can attest to the wall of people you’re met with while disembarking, some staring at their phones, others staring into space and none observing the most fundamental principle of the London transport network: let people off before you try to get on.
I hate to break it to you, but it’s about to get even worse: Sadiq Khan is trialling a London-wide free wifi system (currently only available in Westminster) to offer a “seamless roaming experience” across the city. This threatens to make things so much more unbearable, especially considering that London’s 5G performance isn’t actually that good — it’s currently the worst in Europe — so imagine what things will be like with even more connectivity. The godsend hiccups that stop the videos from loading and the FaceTime calls from connecting will be no more. We will have no choice but to be subjected to relentless, never-ending content.
I am hand on my heart, tears in my eyes, knees to the ground, begging the Mayor to change his mind. Or at least to supplement this rollout with a mandatory etiquette course on phone use for all Londoners and tourists because, honestly, we really need it.
The quiet comfort of seeing a bunch of people reading books and newspapers on the Tube is basically dead
Plus, think of what we’ve lost: the quiet comfort of seeing a bunch of people sitting in a line reading books and newspapers on the Tube is basically dead in the water. No longer do we get to judge our compatriots’ book of choice (I once saw a man rather pointedly reading a book called The Art of Female Pleasure on the Overground), or smile as we see someone reading a paragraph of the paper over another person’s shoulder.
The constant availability of Google Maps rules out asking people for directions, too, squashing those quiet slices of stranger interaction that have the chance to make someone’s day, and doubling the amount of people traversing London’s streets while staring obstructively at their phone.
It’s all contributing to the wider loss of community. People aren’t helping each other anymore, whether that be with directions, buggies on buses, trollies on staircases, seats on Tubes or simple conversation. I’m a Gen Z, I understand the general wish not to have to interact with anyone, it’s in my bones. But after living in London for six years, I’ve witnessed first hand what is lost when we all get sucked into our phones. And it’s good for you, individually, too. Now, as soon as I’m on public transport, I put my phone away and enjoy the few precious moments where I don’t have to be plugged into the mainframe. And that means I’m present when a child falls over next to me and needs helping up, or an older woman needs a seat.
Because, without sounding too tinfoil hat, it is our responsibility to manage and police the pull of constantly available “connectivity”. Put your phone down, don’t be afraid to ask others to use headphones, and help people when they need it. 5G has ruined London, and wifi risks making it even worse. But it’s up to us to resist it. Ferris Bueller said it best: “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”
Maybe you’ve heard it before — it went viral on TikTok.
Maddy Mussen is a London Standard writer
