When Grown-Ups Get Caught in Teens’ AirDrop Crossfire

Veronica Belmont, a product manager at Adobe Spark, was riding the train down to Silicon Valley, doing some work on her phone, when dozens of teenagers plopped down into the seats around her. Within moments, her phone began blowing up. She received an AirDrop request containing an image of several boys’ Bitmoji characters dressed in chicken suits. A group of them snickered as she opened it and looked around. Belmont was confused. “I was like, I don’t know what this means!” she told me.

Anyone who has accidentally left their AirDrop settings open around a group of teens is likely familiar with the deluge of memes, selfies, and notes that arrives so quickly it can often freeze your phone. “Another day another group of french teens trying to AirDrop me memes on the subway,” one woman . “In a crowd of teens and they keep trying. One young Twitter user joked that she was going to a music festival last weekend “.”