Mobile network 3 has published another insightful and useful study into the actions of today's younger generation, this time finding out that a third of men have pretended to be on their mobile phone at some point.
'Communifaking' is the practice of pretending to talk or text when by yourself according to a recent release from the network, and follows on from 'Mo-Phos', or mobile photographers, from 3's insane press department.
Apparently, waiting for friends is the most important reason people do it, followed by a third who have tried to avoid someone by being on the phone. And also... oh, come one, we really don't care about the other reasons.
"These days many people, especially young people, feel the constant need to be communicating, so we either text, call, instant message, social network or email," says Lesley Haswell, psychotherapist at Haswell, Martin & Rose.
Wait for the beep
"Social status can be defined by the amount of friends we have on Facebook or how often our mobiles beep. Therefore people experience the need to appear socially busy at all times and 'just waiting' is a no-no. Our basic human instinct is to be part of a group. Alone we can feel more vulnerable."
We would like to clarify that TechRadar does not care about the amount of friends it has on Facebook (loads) and neither is it feeling strangely triumphant that it has more text messages received than sent.
TechRadar is fast falling in love with 3's press release department, which appears to have very little else to do other than find out about useless things... but we think that's brilliant!
And the ending of this earth-shattering press release? "So don't sweat it – it's very common, it happens to a lot of guys and it's not a big deal… ;-)"
