Could you be addicted to your smart device?

HOW many times a day do you check your smartphone?

According to a recent survey, the typical American checks once every six and a half minutes, or approximately 150 times every day. Other research has found that number to be as high as 300 times a day.

For young people, the attachment is particularly acute: 53% of people aged 15 to 30 reported they would sooner give up their sense of taste than their smartphones.

This data strongly suggests many may be addicted to their smartphones. The fact that 80% to 90% of people use their phones while driving – which, by one estimate, causes 6 000 deaths and $9 billion (R123 billion) in damages annually – is a clear sign something is amiss.

But are some people more likely to become addicted to their smartphones than others? In 2014 I conducted research with several co-authors on the time young people spent on their phones. We found college students spent an average of eight hours and 48 minutes on their smartphones each day.

This joins a host of other findings that speak to an intense attachment: surveys have found that 79% of us reach for our phones within 15 minutes of waking, 68% sleep with them, 67% check our smartphones even when they’re not ringing and 46% state they “can’t live without their smartphones”.

Eschew

Yet there are still some who are less likely to become enraptured by the smartphone’s many trappings, who rarely use them or eschew them altogether. They’re at the other end of the spectrum from those who exhibit some of the classic signs of addiction – salience, euphoria, tolerance, withdrawal symptoms, conflict and relapse – that I identified when researching my book on smartphone use, Too Much of a Good Thing.

I recently conducted a survey to find out if people with certain personality traits were more or less likely to become addicted to their smartphones, using a sample of average American college students.

First, we discovered that low attention span and high impulsivity were related to smartphone addiction. These findings come after a 2015 study by Microsoft which found that the average attention span of the average person was about 8.25 seconds – shorter that the nine-second attention span of the common goldfish, and nearly four seconds shorter than our average attention span 15 years ago (12 seconds).

When it comes to personality traits, three were found to influence your likelihood of being addicted to your cellular device. The first was emotional instability. Moody or temperamental people may look for a combination of solace and distraction in their smartphones, and compulsively checking notifications may be an attempt at mood repair.

We found extroverted college students – who often seek to be the life of the party – were more likely to be addicted than introverted ones. A “sense of being connected” is the most important emotional drive behind smartphone use. So our introverted peers might be less inclined to succumb to the smartphone.

Lastly, materialistic students reported being more dependent on their smartphones. This may seem like a bit of an odd connection, but given the major role smartphones now play in the lives of young adults, it’s not surprising. Because they are constantly displaying and using their phones in public, the brand and features of their smartphone tells the world a lot about who they are; their smartphones have become a way to flaunt, the same way an expensive purse or watch might say something about someone’s wealth.

Our obsession with smartphones is a good example of what has been referred to as the “paradox of technology”. The modern smartphone can free us to do things in places only dreamt of 20 years ago, but they also, in certain ways, enslave us. Has smartphone use reached a tipping point, where it’s crossed the line from beneficial tool to detriment? It’s your call.