What do you call the habit of looking into smartphone while walking?

Solution 1:

There is the term smartphone zombie.

A smartphone zombie is a pedestrian who walks slowly and without attention to their surroundings because they are focussed upon their smartphone. Wikipedia

Technically, it is called distracted walking. I've seen cellphone-distracted walking as a more specific term also.

Another option is text walking and it looks like Belgium has a solution for it:

Image source: telegraph.co.uk

I've also found the slang term petextrian while searching distracted walking. I've never seen it before but it is a clever coinage. And yet another slang term is wexter.

Solution 2:

Smartphone zombie is a good candidate. But if you don't like comparing living humans to zombies, you could consider using "nomophobic pedestrians".

"Nomophobia", which is a compound noun from "no + mobile + -phobia", means:

the fear of being out of mobile phone contact. It is, however, arguable that the word "phobia" is misused and that in the majority of cases it is only a normal anxiety ... According to Bianchi and Philips (2005) psychological factors are involved in the overuse of a mobile phone.

[Wikipedia]

There is a nomophobia-related article that explains:

Nomophobia is a term describing a growing fear in today’s world — the fear of being without a mobile device, or beyond mobile phone contact.

[Psychology Today]

We never know how "popular" words such as "nomophobia" or "nomophobic" will become, but nowadays people use them more often than before. You would need an additional explanation (or scare quotes) when using them.

You could also consider using "phone-addicted pedestrians".

"Phone (or smartphone) addiction" is a broadly used term to describe "phone-separation anxiety".

Solution 3:

I've heard those to be called "walk and text" (also "text and walk"), which I believe is derived from the walk and talk trope.

Scientific studies and various news articles used "walk and text" to refer to this behaviour. As well as an Android app called Walk and Text that claims to prevent bumping into something while in the middle of walking and texting.

Google search comparisons (double quotes used to prevent superfluous results):

• "text and walk" - about 317,000 results
• "walk and text" - about 153,000 results
• "smartphone zombie" - about 63,100 results
• "nomophobic" pedestrian - about 665 results

Solution 4:

I've heard it called "dumbwalking", which I personally find apt and catchy. Here is a relevant BBC article.