Analysis: New social norms and behaviour are behind the rise of headphone dodgers on public transport showing zero consideration for those around them
It's been called "bare-beating" and "sodcasting" and the people responsible for it have been called "headphone dodgers". Earlier this year, Irish Rail introduced new etiquette guidelines and a €100 fine for playing music or videos out loud on trains. Irish Rail Communications Manager Barry Kenny told The Journal that inspectors "have and will" make use of the penalty. Dublin Bus, the National Transport Authority and Transport for Ireland have also beefed up an etiquette campaign to encourage people to consider some 'small acts of self-awareness', including using earphones.
In the UK, the Liberal Democrats proposed legislation that would make playing content out loud a fineable offence of up to £1,000. A poll commissioned by the party found 54% of people would not feel comfortable asking someone to turn down their music on public transport. London mayor Sadiq Khan also launched a campaign to encourage public transport users to wear headphones.
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From RTÉ Radio's Today with Claire Byrne, RTÉ reporter Brian O'Connell explores public transport etiquette in Ireland
It's an "ambient hell" of our own making, wrote Hannah Ewens in The Guardian. It seems to have become norm and yet not quite. After all, if it was the norm, none of us would be that bothered by it. So why do some people appear to have zero consideration for those around them on public transport, while the rest of us metaphorically bang our heads against the window and reach for our own headphones to block them out?
"There's a couple of angles to it," says Dr Aisling O'Donnell, Associate Professor in Psychology at the University of Limerick. "Why would someone do that in the first place? And then why does it become a widespread thing that you can write articles about and people will all recognise? Probably everyone's been somewhere public, such as public transport, and witnessed someone doing this."
A lot of it comes down to social norms: the unwritten rules for social behaviour. "We don't usually have to be told what these are and that's why I think the new [etiquette] guidelines are so interesting, because [they're] picking up a formal piece where an informal rule previously was perceived to exist."
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"Norms can be associated with certain groups or roles or they can be pretty universal. The most universal norm would be the norm of reciprocity. Which is the expectation that people repay in kind what other people have done for them. That could be things like if your friend bought you a coffee one day, you don't have a list in your notebook, but somewhere in your mind you're thinking, 'I must get her back next time'.
But this also extends to more general situations, like social situations around politeness and kindness, she says. "So when most people have a general expectation that it would be rude or inconsiderate to play things that you want to listen to out loud for everyone to hear, and then some people seem to start violating that, it feels so strange. You’re sitting there thinking, ‘what’s going on here?’
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Those who choose to scroll through videos with the sound on, take a video call, or play their music out loud, might be in some way unaware or unconcerned about the norm, O'Donnell says. It might also be a kind of rationalisation around the fact that phones no longer tend to come with headphones when we buy them. "Does that create an expectation that you're not required to use them?"
"One of the things I find most interesting is, why is that becoming widespread? You can speculate the reasons why people might think it was normal to do - the breaking down of the expectations of what it means to be in public since Covid is a definite possibility," she says. "But the thing is, imagine you're sitting on the train or something and somebody is watching video after video out loud, you could police that [yourself]. You could say ‘excuse me, we don't all want to listen to your video’. But actually to do that breaks another norm - it’s a confrontation - and it might not feel like something that's comfortable to do."
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"For those who are [playing content out loud] it might feel like they're part of a group for whom this is normal. For example, sometimes this gets attributed a lot to younger people. If it feels like a normal thing for people your age to play their videos, to share with other people and not worry about whether others want to listen to it, that might seem perfectly acceptable. And the more you see this, the more likely the original norm to not do it actually starts to shift. Because what a norm does, is it tells you what is normal and expected."
"We could have thought before that everybody knew that you weren't supposed to do this, as if that was an actual rule. But in fact, the only thing that made it normal to be quiet and to put your earphones in was the fact that everybody else was doing that," she says.
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The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ
