As if the evidence wasn't right around you out in public or at work. People are getting lost in their smart phones because they are no longer just phones, they are truly small computers with a wealth of practical capabilities. Perhaps we take it for granted that each day we have satellite access to world communications in our pocket with customized preferences and stark reliability. People should expect so much in a significant other, but according to recent studies and commentary, our significant other is really our smartphone!
An article just published in the NY Times and various other sources reflects a recent survey conducted at Stanford University on iphone addiction statistics: The study is also posted on NowPublic.Com. This is a great and recent summary of these 200 ivy league guinea pigs. 34 % of them scaled themselves at a 4/5 level of addiction (meaning just about total addiction) to their iphones. The other resounding statistic is that of those who said they were not addicted, 89% of those people use their iphones as an alarm clock, and 85% as a watch. They were not addicted other than the fact that they depended on them to tell time, wake up, and remind themselves of important events daily.
This where the definition of addiction gets controversial, just because we use something everyday, doesn't mean we are addicted to it, the levels of psychological studies that delve into "addiction" are infinite, but in this case the main barometer are the user's themselves.
It is more than just a sign of the times to see so many people engaged in their own jungle of applications, email, wireless net, texting, ... all the time.
Just like checking the time, or using an alarm clock, why is any less or more of a sin to use that same phone for other uses? Do all these uses together constitute an addiction? Or is it just that people spend too much time on their phone doing nothing? After all, did you really have get on FaceBook for an hour while commuting, should you have been reading a book instead?
What if the argument is that it's an iphone, and it's already a book. In fact podcasting audio books is probably the newest and hardest hitting wave of sellable writing on the horizon. Are people really addicted to listening to music and audio books too? Maybe like other technological trends in the past, we need to consider not how much we use something, but what we do when we use it.
It's safe to say there is way too much mundane texting, posting, blogging and just plain time wasted on vanity, everyone could always cut back on that stuff, but still that isn't the part that's creating iphone addictions.
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