Smartphones are turning people into “apathetic bystanders” who would rather document unfolding events than help those in trouble, a London psychologist has warned.
Dr Linda Papadopoulos said an obsession with filming incidents on mobile devices had turned people into “passive observers” instead of “active participants”.
She made the comments after footage showing a man kung-fu-style kicking a female police officer into the path of a bus in the borough of Merton went viral online.
Dr Papadopoulos told the Evening Standard: “Don’t just document — engage if you can help someone yourself, or by getting somebody. Be aware of your surroundings as an active participant, not just as a passive observer. Put the phone down, look around you sometimes.”
Dr Papadopoulos, who is based in Ladbroke Grove, warned modern society was turning into one where people are “watching and telling on each other all the time”.
She compared it to an experiment in classical conditioning by Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov, who found dogs could be conditioned to salivate for food when they heard a bell being rung.
“One could argue it’s good to document (an incident) because then you can go to the teacher at school, or the police,” she said.
“But I would argue this is not why people are documenting it, because they come over with a Pavlovian reaction of ‘I see something, I need to share it — so I can watch this horrible thing unfolding, but I don’t really have to be part of it’. One has to wonder if there is maybe a desensitisation to what we see.”
She added: “We need to talk to our kids about curating your consciousness — part of which means engaging with the online world and the real world.”
The footage from last month’s incident in Wimbledon shows a man aim a flying kick at a female officer.
A male officer is then dragged across the road as he tries to stop a second suspect from running away. Someone behind the camera is heard saying he was “getting this live”.
Several cars are also seen driving past without stopping until a member of the public intervenes. The footage was posted online and watched more than 130,000 times.
Metropolitan Police Federation chairman Ken Marsh said: “Society has changed so much, it seems to be OK [to be] more interested in mocking and filming us.”
Two men have since been charged with ABH, which they both deny.
