In today’s world, the use of mobile phones is essential to humans of all ages, while smoking is definitely not. Phones made our daily lifestyles a lot easier and more comfortable in many different aspects of our day-to-day activities, whether it’s checking forecasts, navigating maps, banking and financial services, communicating with others, or for entertainment _just to name a few_, it is our most used technology, while for smoking, I can not see any benefits to anyone’s life, even the smokers themselves.
To begin with, smoking is by far the most hated and frowned upon activity that anyone might do in public places. It is a major cause for a stinky breath that will drive people away in disgust, not to mention the health harms caused by negative smoking to the people occupying said places where smoking is happening.
Using phones can be for emergencies or for urgent matters and it won’t be a bother if the person uses hushed speech and is not obnoxiously loud. Nonetheless, if the latter was the case, and social manners were not followed, then I can see it being an inconvenience to others, but not as severe as smoking at least.
On one hand, I think smoking should be banned in any social context, as personally, I don’t want to compromise my health for someone who doesn’t care about their own, and on the other hand, using phones can be more tolerated, especially if it was used within the social attic.
In conclusion, the social stigma against smoking is more evident than screaming on your phone in any context, publicor private.