People who’ve grown up with mobile phones tend to use their thumbs when
others would use their fingers. Today’s twenty-somethings have become so adept
at tapping out text messages on their mobiles that they now use their thumbs
instead of their fingers for tasks such as ringing doorbells, pushing buttons
and pointing.
Sadie Plant, who founded the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit at Warwick
University, discovered this new behaviour when studying the effect of mobile
phones on people’s behaviour. Over the course of six months, she collected data
on hundreds of mobile phone users in nine cities around the world, including…
