Study: Taking photos at live events can come at a social cost

As you and a friend sit back in your seats and wait for the concert to begin, a voice may come over the speakers warning members of the audience not to take photos or videos of the performance.

Still, in the middle of a song, your friend pulls out a phone and starts scanning the stage. 

Known as “documenting,” such behavior has become a regular feature of shared experiences  like concerts, fireworks shows and stand-up comedy routines. A University of Oregon researcher has now found it can lead to social penalties, even affecting relationships between friends.

In a series of experiments conducted with colleagues from DePaul University and Vanderbilt University, Freeman Wu, an assistant professor in the UO’s Lundquist College of Business, showed that observers regarded people taking photos at concerts and other live events as less engaged with the experience. Observers also noted that they would be less likely to invite friends to future events if they saw them using their phones to make recordings.

Wu and his colleagues reported their findings in the Journal of the Association for Consumer Research.

Ironically, prior research by others showed that documenting may offer benefits for the person holding the phone, such as increased memory of the event.

“As a people watcher, I wondered if that was the whole story,” Wu said. “We know that recording events can increase personal enjoyment, but I wondered if it can lead to negative social consequences for the person who’s engaging in this behavior.”

Wu and his colleagues began their research by evaluating online comments on a New York Times story about audience members taking photos at concerts. They found that more than three-quarters of the comments reflected negative opinions of the documenters. Many commenters specifically mentioned disengaging from the performance and distracting others in the audience.

“These seemingly innocuous decisions can have unintended social consequences,” said Wu, who studies the effect of interactions between consumers and technology.

Wu and his colleagues then dug deeper, setting up a series of online experiments. They speculated that observers’ perceptions might stem from being distracted by nearby screens, but whether documenters were close or far away didn’t change the observers’ opinions, they found.

Perceptions also did not depend on the kind of device being used. The use of digital cameras and phones resulted in similar social observations.

Wu himself has taken photos at concerts and says that, as this behavior has become more ubiquitous, performers and producers have responded differently. 

“The reality is that everyone has their phones with them, so there’s really nothing we can do to stop them short of implementing drastic measures,” he said.

Such measures can include requiring attendees to place their phones in locked pouches that can only be unlocked by the event staff. 

Some performers have explicitly invited the audience to record a portion of a show and then asked that phones be put away. Other performers have called out audience members for making recordings and asked them to stop.

“It’s not all or nothing,” Wu said. “It’s not like you can’t take any photos. We know people are going to take photos, but the degree matters. Taking a couple photos at the beginning or maybe halfway through a concert and then just putting it away and enjoying it, that doesn’t lead to these negative consequences, or at least not to the same extent.”

Wu notes that documenting is distinct from “phubbing,” the tendency for some people to check their phones during social gatherings.

“We always have a good reason to use our phones, like checking messages, right? But then I think we underestimate what happens,” he said. “When you’re at a party or having dinner with friends and then start using your phone, people may end up liking you less.”

While phubbing may indicate that a person is bored or disengaged in a social situation, documenting may reflect a feeling of being swept up in the moment. But Wu’s findings suggest that social perception carries a “documenting penalty.”

The most important takeaway from the research, he added, is to be mindful of the social circumstances of phone use.

“Don't underestimate the impacts of these seemingly innocuous decisions in our everyday lives,” he said.

—By Nick Houtman