Allow me to put forth a utopian proposition. We have reached a tipping point in the problem of sociopaths using their smartphones while attending public performances.Future generations will find the notion of texting at the cinema or theatre as unacceptable as we now regard smoking in such places. In further naive speculation, every cyclist will stop at every red light and actual human beings will rapidly answer the phones at all public utilities.The tipping-point bit does, on cursory examination, sound plausible. People are always whinging about punters using their phones inappropriately, but the rush of such stories has, in recent weeks, been overwhelming.You may have read about the actor Rosamund Pike haranguing an audience member after a performance of Inter Alia in the West End of London. “Somebody was texting in this part,” she said, gesturing vaguely. “You know who you are and I’m not going to single you out.” (It could be worse. Two years ago Andrew Scott called out a groundling for using a laptop during the Irishman’s performance of Hamlet.)Then there was the singer Phoebe Bridgers announcing, this week, that, during her upcoming European tour, which hits Dublin in November, the use of mobile electronic devices will be strictly prohibited. A statement explained that “all phones, smartwatches and related accessories” would be “secured in pouches”.Less publicised was a slightly chilling incident during the final of the World Snooker Championship in Sheffield last month. The referee, Rob Spencer, a former police officer of forbidding aspect, had, after an earlier incident, warned the audience that “if a phone goes off and the security team see whose phone it is, you will be asked to leave”. Two frames later, as Shaun Murphy addressed the cue ball, chimes echoed from a punter’s pocket or handbag. Spencer identified the culprit with a terse “Out, please. Out, go, out.”I say “chilling” because, though one obviously applauds the zero-tolerance policy, one can’t pretend it’s inconceivable that – after, maybe, pressing the wrong button – this is an error any one of us might have made. It would be some punishment to have our shuffling exit broadcast to millions as we walked the gauntlet of hissing snooker enthusiasts.I experienced another manifestation of this justifiable intolerance for the omnipresent smartphone at Cannes film festival a few weeks ago. As Thierry Frémaux, director of the event, invited John Travolta up to the stage at the Debussy Theatre to receive an honorary Palme d’Or, he ordered the audience to put down their phones and prepare their hands for applause. This was a recurring theme at the 2026 event for Frémaux. “Put your f**king smartphone down!” he said when welcoming Tilda Swinton to another stage.There are contrasting problems here. Frémaux, not unreasonably, prefers audience members to clap rather than act as amateur videographers. There is also, at such public talks and at gigs, the disturbing phenomena of punters only ever seeing the stage as a video image on a small screen. If you are recording all of Bridgers’s performance of, say, Motion Sickness, then the resulting video is less a reminder of the experience than it is the experience itself. The auditorium is filled with little glowing squares that elbow aside the space once occupied by memory. You pick up a camera and then put it down. The smartphone sits permanently between consciousness and reality.The issue is different at the theatre, where the flickering of screens distracts fellow audience members and, at its worst, impinges on the actors’ concentration. Even if the culprit is eight or 10 rows away, the nagging awareness of their ignorance is enough to drive the more neurotic attendee (hello!) stark raving bonkers.“Maybe it was very important, and maybe you’re a doctor and you’re saving someone’s life,” Pike, a reasonable person, said when addressing the errant texter. There are, indeed, exceptional reasons why attendees may need their phones to remain on (in silent mode, please). Some people, with the assistance of wireless earphones, use the devices as hearing aids. And so forth.But let us not fool ourselves. Few shooting footage of Travolta or Swinton will be using the results to cure disease or feed the starving. Almost nobody whose phone goes off at the snooker is being called to the site of a mining disaster. Most such abusers are just part of the casual mob who care not if their electronic indulgence impinges on the experience of others. A tipping point? Probably not. We have come too far to turn back. [ I’m with Andrew Scott and Phoebe Bridgers. If you’re at a gig, put your phone awayOpens in new window ]Then again, if we can prove that texting at the theatre makes the early death of those next to you more likely we’ll be getting somewhere. That worked for smoking. Get on the case, so-called scientists.