Venues in Melbourne are banning mobile phones or placing stickers over phone cameras in a bid to get patrons to switch off from technology and connect with each other.
Bar Le Splendide in South Yarra issues customers with a red heart sticker to place over the lens on their phones as part of a growing backlash against phone use.
Le Splendide bar manager Jimmy Pluet with co-owner Jean-Paul Prunetti at the bar which requires patrons to put a sticker over their mobile phone camera. Credit: Eddie Jim
Venues including Sanctum private members club and Sense of Self bath house restrict mobile phone use, while some performers and musicians are also trying to make gigs phone free.
Rock band Tool implemented a no phone policy at the Good Things Festival earlier this month and Ian Moss banned fans from taking photos and filming footage on his national tour this year.
“Be present and enjoy the performance with your eyes,” Moss said to fans before his tour.
Le Splendide owner Jean-Paul Prunetti said the bar’s policy was a response to a feeling that phones were increasingly dominating restaurants and bars.
“A lot of people basically don’t like to have their photo taken when they go to a venue for a private reason,” he said. “Most people are really actually happy not to have to worry about their phone. People are a bit more engaged to talk to each other.”
Prunetti also owns restaurant France-Soir, next door to Le Splendide, and said he was concerned about the impact of phones on conversation and connection.
“Sometimes a couple or even two couples in a table of four, they are basically all on their phone, and they basically don’t talk,” he said. “They’re somewhere else, even though they are present at the restaurant.”
At private members club Sanctum, which opened in the ground floor of the Pullman Hotel in September, members are asked not to take photographs on their mobile phones and “phone booths” are provided for people to speak on their mobile phones so they do not disturb other members.
Red heart stickers are placed on patrons’ phone cameras at Le Splendide. Credit: Eddie Jim
Phones are banned entirely at Collingwood bathhouse Sense of Self and owner Freya Berwick said this was integral to the space being an antidote to people’s increasingly busy and “over connected but disconnected lives”.
“It was hard to enforce in the beginning, particularly when we opened, because everyone wanted to take pictures,” she said. “Our tendency of experiencing something that we are excited about is to get our phones out now and to capture it.”
However, Berwick said strictly enforcing the phone ban made the bath house a calmer and more relaxing place for everyone.
“People being on their phones disrupts their own experience and ability to drop into their body and just be present,” she said.
Le Splendide patrons are talking more now that they are off their phones. Credit: Eddie Jim
The backlash against phones is coming to nightlife as well, with clubs around the world trying to tackle the issue of dance floors filled with people taking selfies or filming rather than dancing.
Berghain in Berlin, House of Yes in New York and Hi in Ibiza have all implemented a version of a “no phone” rule barring clubbers from filming and taking photos inside.
Brad Marshall, a psychologist and director of the Internet Addiction Clinic, said restricting or banning phone use was a practical way for venues to embrace human experience.
“Oxytocin, the feel-good chemical and the love and connection chemical, can only really be elicited in big doses through face-to-face social interaction, not through online,” he said. “I think what we’re seeing more and more, is some novel ways of live venues trying to fight back for that.”
Marshall said this was likely to be a growing trend in the food and dining space.
“Are you at a bar or are you at a restaurant to be there and connect with your friends?” he asked. “Or are you there to walk into that restaurant and see all of your friends just on their phone?”
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