A smashed phone screen could give dates and colleagues the wrong impression, according to new research.
Over half of Brits (62 per cent) make assumptions about a person purely based on the state of their smartphone, with Generation Z (aged 18-24), and Millennials (aged 25-34) angriest at the sight of a broken phone.
Assumptions about broken smartphone owners:
- 20 per cent assume the person is careless and unkempt
- 12 per cent assume the person is in debt
- 11 per cent assume the person is unreliable
Forty-four per cent of 2,000 professionals surveyed associate a cracked screen with someone being unreliable and 26 per cent assume that they are bad time-keepers.
Despite this, 49 per cent of millennials admitted they have broken their own phone more than once in the last two years and continued to use it.
“Over the last decade mobile phones have become an integral part of everyday life in both personal and professional settings,” said Julian Shovlin, founder and managing director at iSmash, which conducted the research.
“Unfortunately, they’ve also become easier to break which means there are more people walking around with cracked phone screens than ever before.
“Our research shows that regardless of whether you’re going on a first date, or going for a job interview, a cracked screen can send negative signals out about you and immediately put you on the backfoot.”