Mobile Phone Addiction: Is It Real?
I know, this sounds like a joke at first but if you think about it and the rising popularity of presence tools like Twitter, the “social impact” of mobile phones and technology starts to make sense. This post is based on a news report from Australia which tells us about mobile phone addiction. This week one reader of my blog post commented on how people in Pakistan seem to have little courtesy or etiquette when it comes to mobile phones.
Shari Walsh, from the Queensland University of Technology, has done some research on this topic. She conducted focus groups and surveyed about 500 mobile phone users and presented results at the 2007 Mobile Media Conference which suggested mobile phone addiction could be the new psychological disorder of the 21st century. Over 90 per cent of Australians own a mobile phone. Here’s more from the article referenced above.
The study says that the length of time a person spends on the phone does not necessarily mean they are addicted to it.
“It all depends on whether or not they have negative outcomes, so whether they have a distress when they’re unable to use their phone, whether there are times that they should be doing something else like driving for instance, but have such a strong conviction to use their phone that they’ll actually use the phone while driving, even though they know they shouldn’t,” she said.
Ms Walsh says people do not get addicted to phones, it is more likely they get addicted to being connected to other people.
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