People are more likely to spend time together in public spaces than they were 30 years ago

Has the rise of mobile phones made us more likely to be isolated and alone in public? New research from Keith N. Hampton based on observations of thousands of people in public spaces in 1979-1980 and again in 2010, shows that we are in fact less alone, and more together in public. He finds that there has been a substantial decline in the number of people alone in most of the public places examined, that there has been a large increase in the number of women visible in these public spaces.