Do you watch YouTube during a cinema show? “Many people can no longer watch a movie without doing anything else”

Part of the explanation for the culture clash in cinematic complexes is quite obvious. Movie theaters are having one of their best summers in a long time. Thanks to the movie studios who dared to deal with it Barbie And Oppenheimer To release two blockbuster movies over the summer months. The weather gods also played their part. While he’s with us for weeks elderly women It rained, and it was very hot in other parts of the world. Both climatic conditions made the prospect of spending a few hours in a perfectly temperature-controlled cinema dark so attractive. Only, the more people you pack into that cinema room, the more likely they are to get annoyed with each other.

Resentment increased

“The number of complaints we receive is already increasing in direct proportion to the number of visitors to our cinemas,” says Anneleen Van Troos of Kinepolis. Although she is quick to say that Kinepolis complexes have not received more complaints than usual in recent weeks. “If there is an international trend, it is not over yet.” We hear a similar story at the Ghent arthouse’s Skoop cinema studio. Although director Walter Vander Croys also noted that a movie like Barbie Attracting both younger visitors and the traditional cinema audience, this has not yet led to any incidents. “On the contrary, the atmosphere in the room is usually very good during that movie.”

But the growing numbers of visitors is not the only explanation for the growing dissatisfaction with the advantages of cinema seats, believes Levin de Marez, Professor of New Communication Technologies at IMEC-UGent. Stories about mobile phone use and other disturbing behavior at the cinema don’t surprise him. Marez is one of the driving forces behind Digimeter, an annual survey of our media use. Year after year, this shows how the smartphone is gaining in importance, with huge consequences for our ever-declining attention span. “Since Corona, we spend an extra 38 minutes a day on our smartphones. We have twenty more applications on it and on average we carry the device eighty times a day. Then it is not surprising that we fail to keep this thing in our pocket at the cinema.”

This phone and the constant stream of notifications that come on it is also a disaster for our ability to focus. “Focus is a skill you have to train. But that rarely happens these days.” We are now seeing this in the cinema as well. “Not many people can watch an entire movie without doing something different now and then.”

Long term business

According to De Marez, the solutions mainly lie in education, as he would like to see smartphones and laptops banned at least a few times a day. But parents also need to teach their kids to use smartphones in a healthy way and, above all, set a good example for themselves. But this long-term business is of no use to cinema operators at present. At Kinepolis, they video call their visitors during the pre-show to turn off their phones, or at least put them on silent mode.

In large complexes, a phone number is also sent to which you can send a text message in case of problems in the hall. But in the letters that come in, it’s usually about technical issues, according to Kinnipolis, “like a light that hasn’t been put out yet while the movie is actually playing or people who turn out not to be in the right seat.” At Studio Skoop, they mainly try to avoid problems by working preventively. “For us, the movie is always central,” explains Vander Cruysse. “For example, you can’t get popcorn here. By operating a cinema this way, you’re going to attract a certain audience anyway. And we know from experience that the audience has nothing to do with correcting those who don’t obey the unwritten rules.”