AMC’s Text-Friendly Theatres: Fail

Alexa Stephens
Staff Writer

Recently, AMC revealed that they were open to a trial run of allowing texting at some of their theaters during movies.

Head of AMC Entertainment, Adam Aron, released a statement to Variety magazine: “You can’t tell a 22-year-old to turn off their cellphone. That’s not how they live their life.”

Texting-friendly theaters seemed, apparently, like the appropriate response to what appears to be an obvious problem.

Movie theaters ask and usually require its customers to power down their phones for the duration of the movie, so allowing texting may result in an influx of customers – the ones who do not want to shut of their phones.

However, AMC received a large amount of backlash on social media with the release of their idea. No one seems to be up for these texting-friendly movies.

Even the possibility of having a theater allow cell phone use was ripped apart by the public. Thankfully, AMC listened.

The company released a statement on twitter: “NO TEXTING AT AMC. Won’t happen. You spoke. We listened. Quickly, that idea has been sent to the cutting room floor.”

An attached letter went on to say that the response was heard: “With your advice in hand, there will be NO TEXTING ALLOWED in any of the auditoriums at AMC Theatres. Not today, not tomorrow and not in the foreseeable future.”

Although the ordeal is over and solved, something bigger seems to have escaped from the minds of the public.

AMC thought having texting-friendly theaters would go over well because of one very important reason, millennials, and many other age groups seem to be glued to their phones all of the time.

No matter where anyone is, they are almost always on their cell phone.

As a society, we have all become reliant on our phones; whether to give us information, keep us entertained or help us out of awkward situations.

We cannot seem to put the phone down.

AMC took notice of this. Maybe people do not go to the movies because they cannot stand to turn their phones off for 2-3 hours.

The public backlash also proves one thing. People either do not know how attached to their phones they are, or they just do not want to admit it.

Almost everyone has taken their phone out during a movie at least once. Nine times out of ten, most of us do not even bother to turn them off in the first place.

It is an addiction we all have. We cannot function without our phones.

So, maybe it is time to stop relying on phones so much. Unless, or course, we want to be watching a movie while the person next to us is texting, or worse, while we are texting.

AMC has made the mistake of believing the public cannot go 2-3 hours without their phones. We have challenged them on that belief, and now we have to prove them wrong.

Put the phone down, even if for a few hours – even if to just watch a movie.

Email Alexa at:
astephens@live.esu.edu