Should Phones Be Banned at Concerts?

Fans Surrender Phones for Phoebe Bridgers Shows

Outside the Barclays Center in Brooklyn on a Thursday evening, people used their phones with a frenzied urgency ahead of the first of Phoebe Bridgers’s three sold-out shows. Attendees chatted with loved ones in hurried tones and snapped selfies featuring outfits that nodded toward Bridgers’s macabre aesthetic and skeleton suits. Lindsay Zoladz reported for nytimes.com that she thumbed out a work email before joining the long, crawling line to surrender her electronic devices into a securely locked Yondr pouch, mandatorily living in the moment for the next three hours.

The Pressures of Visibility Behind the Tour Ban

Bridgers banned electronic devices from all stops on her Lost Tour, where she performs material from her album Lost Weekend. In the middle of her set, clad in a long black lace dress, Bridgers thanked the crowd for setting aside their phones and explained the decision as an act of self-preservation, nytimes.com reported. She told the crowd of 14,000 that her recent successes, including her 2020 breakout album Punisher, brought her considerably more attention than she was used to, coinciding with difficulties in her personal life such as her father’s death. The pressure of visibility led the 32-year-old artist to consider quitting music entirely, and she stated she could only feel comfortable returning to the stage and sharing such personal material if she played phone-free shows.

Precedents and Early Adopters of Device-Free Venues

Bridgers is not the first musician to ban phones from concerts. Alicia Keys, Childish Gambino, and Jack White were early adopters of Yondr pouches, which are fabric satchels also utilized in Broadway theaters, comedy clubs, classrooms, courtrooms, and wedding venues, nytimes.com reported. Other performers rely on softer bans. Bob Dylan utilized Yondr pouches, while ushers at Forest Hills Stadium enforced a phone-free experience by chastising anyone sneaking pictures or recording video, backed by the social pressure of adhering to Dylan’s policies.

Online Critics Debate the Phone Ban

Bridgers’s phone ban drew more vehement online debate than any recent policy, largely because her audience skews younger and consists of digital natives who do not remember a pre-smartphone era, nytimes.com reported. A small contingent criticized the choice as classist, arguing that fans unable to afford tickets lose the ability to vicariously experience the concert via videos or FaceTime calls, and ableist, due to concerns from attendees reliant on phones to monitor medical conditions. Neither argument gained traction, as concert ticket costs preceded smartphones, and venues are legally required to allow phone access for medical reasons. A more persistent argument maintains that telling people what they can and cannot do lacks rock-and-roll spirit. Musician Damon Albarn mused in a 2024 interview regarding Dylan’s phone policy that starting bans sets a difficult precedent, arguing that artists simply need to engage audiences correctly.