Carnaby Street lights filmed by sea of phones prompts backlash

For Dr Kaitlyn Regehr, from University College London and the University of Toronto, the interesting bit here is not the people filming en masse, it’s the people angry about it online.

“This is not the first year that people have attended events and watched those events through screens,” said the smartphone academic.

“But what’s significant is that this year there’s a lot of critical public discourse happening. And that, I think, is really, really positive,” she added.

The professor said the comments, such as those on the Carnaby Street video, “say a lot about where we are as a society at the moment,” and said it showed “our discomfort with the amount of influence that big tech is playing on our lives”.

Dr Regehr said this shift in attitudes towards phones, and recording events was down to a number of factors, including the social media ban for under 16s in the UK, due to begin in March 2027, as well as lawsuits against social media companies in the US.

She said these more negative news stories were building “public understanding”, and said it was encouraging people to “want to take greater control over these technologies”.