In the crowded morning metro in Helsinki, silence prevails. Everyone is hunched over their smartphone screens, reading the news, checking emails or watching videos.
A loud “yeah!” breaks the quiet, along with delighted screech from a toddler whose mother has just handed him her smartphone to calm him down with a video.
Finland, once a world leader in mobile telephony with Nokia, is in a class of its own when it comes to internet usage on smartphones and tablets, thanks to cheap subscription plans.
In the first half of 2016, Finns used nearly twice as much mobile data on portable devices as South Koreans, who came second in a recent comparison of 32 European and Asian countries by Swedish telecommunication specialist Tefficient.
Finns spend so much time on their phones that authorities are concerned: The city of Helsinki’s department of health and social services recently launched a campaign telling parents to get their priorities straight.
In a controversial video that angered many parents, a black raven swoops down and carries away a little girl on a beach while her mother focuses on her smartphone, followed by the message: “Negligence is modern day violence.”
Offended Helsinkians flooded the city with negative feedback, accusing it of criticising all phone usage, and especially women by depicting only the child’s mother in the video.
But the city said it was intended to highlight the fact that some mothers spend too much time on their smartphones instead of playing with their children, and that some fathers are largely absent from their children’s lives.