Is the level of phone snatching in London exaggerated, that bad or somewhere in-between?

You know the stories, the facts and figures, it seems like a huge scale problem to the level where tourists are warned of it before coming here, like pickpockets in Barcelona or Paris.

And admittedly we all know it's a problem but is it that bad? The way it's made out in social media and in the news is like if you're texting for 5 seconds in the west end you'll get snatched. Very much the same with how the pickpocket problem in Barcelona is exaggerated.

Never happened anyone I know fortunately, but yeah I think the gangs that do it are very precise and targeted in how they do it, it's probably not as random as people may think. And it's not so bad that someone's getting a phone snatched every 20 seconds.

But maybe I'm wrong, im open to changing perspective. If you work in the west end/central and you're there day in day out, is it a regular thing? Are you seeing phone snatching that often or not? Interested to hear peoples experiences.