WIRED ON GADGETS
Our growing addiction to smartphones poses potential pitfalls for Canada’s Big 3 telcos
The constant lure of social media likes and follows, communicating with loved ones and playing online games keeps people tethered to their smartphones like gamblers at slot machines.
There’s even a word for the fear of being without your mobile phone: nomophobia (no-mobilephobia), which Merriam-Webster deemed fit for its dictionary in 2016.
Research on smartphone addiction is preliminary, but there’s no doubt we’re more and more attached to the devices sometimes described as adult pacifiers.
Smartphone penetration reached 77 per cent among Canadian adults in 2016, up from 51 per cent five years ago, according to the country’s telecom regulator, and those devices are being used ever more frequently.
Monthly mobile data usage jumped 25 per cent to 1.2 gigabytes last year, with a quarter of subscribers opting for plans with 5 GB of data or more.
The increased usage and resulting revenue have boosted Canada’s largest wireless players. Stock prices for Rogers Communications Inc., Telus Corp. and BCE Inc. have increased about 25, 12 and five per cent this year, respectively, amid rising demand for more and faster data on higherend devices.
On quarterly calls where analysts praise their results, telecom company chief executives say consumers use up to 50 per cent more wireless data each year.
But a growing volume of research is revealing potential negative effects of excessive smartphone usage, which raises questions about how much responsibility — if any — telecom companies have for the potentially detrimental effects of the products they sell.
Scientists at Korea University in Seoul in November revealed preliminary research that found neurochemical imbalances correlated with depression and anxiety in the brains of teenagers diagnosed with smartphone addiction.
In July, researchers at Ben Gurion University in Israel found heavy smartphone usage was associated with impaired attention and changes in social cognition. Closer to home, Toronto’s Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) found higher psychological distress among high school students who spent at least five hours a day on social media.
Even the guy who helped create the Facebook like button — much like the behavioural reinforcement from pulling a slot machine lever, users get a dopamine surge when rewarded with likes — is trying to be more mindful about constant technology use. Justin Rosenstein told The Guardian his assistant put a parental control feature on his smartphone so he can’t download any apps.
Clearly, multiple players profit from the huge business of capturing and keeping attention on mobile devices, including smartphone makers, app creators, advertisers, social media giants and wireless service providers.
The technology also provides enormous consumer benefits including connectivity, access to information and participation in the growing digital economy, but research suggests there are also drawbacks such as depression, anxiety and impaired cognition from excessive use.
Canada’s Big Three wireless players declined interview requests on how they perceive smartphone addiction and whether they have taken steps to deal with the issue.
All three have data management platforms that allow parents to manage teenagers’ data usage. Bell and Telus have programs to teach youth responsible technology use and digital literacy, including help with cyberbullying.
They also all have corporate responsibility departments that tout their commitment to the environment, society and the economy, with particular emphasis on access to technology.
But those responsibility reports don’t mention tech addiction.
In a statement, Bell said it supports the safe and balanced use of any technology, pointing to its digital literacy program for young people, parents and educators. When it comes to addiction in general, Bell noted it’s a primary supporter of CAMH.
But given legal developments in corporate responsibility, Carol Liao, an assistant professor at the University of British Columbia’s law school in Vancouver, said it could be a wise move for the telecommunications industry to get ahead of the curve in considering any effects of smartphone addiction.
“There are very good business, legal, ethical reasons why the telecom industry may want to get ahead of this and proactively put in safeguards to minimize risks to their more vulnerable consumers,” she said.
For one thing, consumer and investor demands over the past decade have evolved to put higher emphasis on responsible corporate behaviour, whether in the booming eco-industry or socially responsible investment funds.
In a landmark 2008 Supreme Court case that (coincidentally) involved BCE, Canada’s highest court ruled that corporations should consider both the shortterm interests of shareholders as well as the long-term interests of acting as a good corporate citizen.
The decision opened a discussion about the consideration of stakeholders and required boards to question their wider influence, Liao said.
To avoid additional government red tape or regulation that could hurt competition, she said the telecoms may want to create their own industry standards on the issue.
“It’s better that the industry anticipate environmental and social risks and self-police,” Liao said.
Aside from regulatory risks, there could also be business opportunities for telecoms that manage smartphone addictions in the workplace.
On the one hand, “These devices unquestionably can help people to collaborate, to communicate,” said Shamel Addas, an assistant professor of information systems at Queen’s University’s business school in Kingston, Ont., who researches how smartphones, emails and chats affect workflow.
He adds that even interruptions can often provide positive feedback that helps resolve problems, but there is a cost since constantly being interrupted can make it harder to focus and it can spread discord among teams, even when the communication is important for work.
“There’s no escaping it. Almost everybody is using smartphones at work,” he said.
One potential solution is to use artificial intelligence to monitor how people work and deliver interruptions at opportune times.
Since telecoms could capture this data, almost in real time, they could help develop algorithms to reduce the costs of constant smartphone use in the workplace. This is nascent technology, Addas said, but transparency should be a key priority if telecoms use data in this way.
In the meantime, CAMH social worker Lisa Pont said it’s important for people to be mindful of their own behaviour. If they’re tethered to their phones too much, they could take steps such as removing smartphones from their bedrooms at night, turning off alerts, deleting apps, putting devices on airplane mode, blocking certain sites or having tech-free time.
CAMH has a clinical program for problem gambling and technology use and problematic tech users over the past few years have grown to half the clientele, she said.
For the most part, CAMH counsels “emerging adults” — those aged 16 to 25 — whose loved ones are concerned their out-of-control tech use is leading to negative consequences such as sleep loss and the inability to complete work or school assignments. People with problem tech use also commonly have depression or anxiety.
Easy access and availability are huge factors in addiction — for example, Pont said, people who live within 50 kilometres of a casino are more likely to have a gambling problem — and people’s smartphones are with them all day, and often next to them all night.
“With that smartphone, you can access many different activities that are compelling in and of itself like social media, gambling, gaming, pornography, Twitter,” she said, not to mention more critical information such as schedules, alarm clocks, contacts and work. “It’s like a whole universe in your hand.”
There are certainly advantages to having smartphones, but Pont said preliminary research indicates the effects are not benign. Still, the constant connection is being normalized.
“It’s normal to have our cellphones out at our staff meetings,” she said. “It would be harder to pull out a cigarette.”