Cell phone addiction

iPhones and Children Are a Toxic Pair, Say Two Big Apple Investors

From the Wall Street Journal

Two activist shareholders want Apple to develop tools and research effects on young people of smartphone overuse and addiction. The iPhone has made Apple Inc. and Wall Street hundreds of billions of dollars. Now some big shareholders are asking at what cost, in an unusual campaign to make the company more socially responsible. A leading activist investor and a pension fund are saying the smartphone maker needs to respond to what some see as a growing public-health crisis of youth phone addiction. SNIP

SCREEN ADDICTION: WE ARE ON THE BRINK OF A SMARTPHONE HEALTH CRISIS

Excerpt: Israeli rocker Shalom Hanoch was at his best. Performing in an intimate concert at the state-of-the-art theater at the Elma Arts Complex Luxury Hotel in Zichron Ya’acov, Hanoch crooned for over two hours, reinterpreting 50 years of hits on acoustic guitar with just Moshe Levi on piano accompanying him. At 71 years old, Hanoch is a bundle of white-haired, lean-bodied energy. The audience, who’d paid top shekel, should have been sitting, clapping or dancing in appreciative reverence. Instead, the darkened concert space was awash in a sea of light.

People were on their phones. In the row in front of me I could see one person checking her email, another WhatsApping with his kids, a third flipping through Facebook and reading the latest news on the Bibi bribery crisis. The man to my left gripped his phone ferociously throughout the concert. He checked his screen every few seconds to see if he’d received a new message, and seemed compelled to respond to messages immediately. SNIP

Are smartphones causing unhealthy teenage isolation?

Today’s teenagers are known for spending hours on end holed-up in their bedrooms scrolling through Instagram feeds and snapchatting with their friends.

Professor Jean Twenge from San Diego State University says there has been an abrupt shift in teen behaviours since 2012 and believes young people are on the brink of the worst mental health crisis in decades.

Her new book, “IGEN: Why Today’s Super-Connected kids are growing up less rebellious, more tolerant, less happy — and completely unprepared for Adulthood” explores the changing world of teenagers. SNIP

Admit it, mums and dads, you’re addicted

Excerpt

From the Canberra Times

Admit it, mums and dads, you’re addicted

Allison Pearson

My name is Allison and I’m an addict. There, I’ve said it. If I’m honest, the symptoms have been evident for some time. Tell-tale irritability, even anger, if I couldn’t get my hands on my drug. It was the first thing I reached for when I woke up and the last before I fell asleep. Then, over the Easter weekend, things came to a head.

Himself and I had gone to see A Quiet Passion, a film about the poet Emily Dickinson. I love Dickinson’s poetry so why wasn’t I enjoying the movie more? OK, Terence Davies isn’t a director to throw in a car chase when the camera can dwell lovingly on a begonia or a recently expired corpse. Scenes set in the Dickinson family’s parlour in Massachusetts were as solemn and airless as they would have been in 1880, although Cynthia Nixon gives a performance of furious incandescence as the thwarted poet. She wasn’t the only one who was frustrated. Around us in the cinema little windows of light started to open. People were checking their phones. I just about contained the urge to join them. SNIP…

The Sydney Morning Herald on smart phone addiction

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Smartphones are ruling our lives and killing our imaginations

March 18, 2016
Kim Arlington

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It wasn’t too long ago that smartphones were a novelty, something the ardent tech-heads would queue up in the street to buy. But now we must go to the ends of the earth to escape them.

When Suzie Blackwell hiked through the mountains of Patagonia, she stayed at a camp with no Wi-Fi. “It was really noticeable how friendly people were,” she says. “Everyone was very open and approachable, and really engaged when you sat down and talked.”

Blackwell, who uses a work mobile as well as her own smartphone at home in Sydney, found it liberating. With no prospect of connecting to the internet, people made personal connections the priority.

Since Apple launched the iPhone in 2007, smartphones have saturated society. More than 80 per cent of Australians have one; only 4 per cent of 18 to 34-year-olds don’t.
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We use them to email, take photos, check social media, listen to music, surf the internet, find directions, watch movies. We even use our smartphones to use our smartphones less, installing apps that monitor and limit our activity….. The pressure to be constantly available and responsive on social media can cause depression, anxiety and decrease sleep quality for teenagers, according to University of Glasgow researchers.

It’s not just teens feeling that way. Thirty per cent of those surveyed for the latest EY Digital Australia: State of the Nation report said their smartphone or tablet negatively affected their sleep or stress. Thirty-one per cent felt “addicted” to their device – a figure that rose to 46 per cent among 18 to 34-year-olds. They are a major contributor to the breakdown of the work/life divide; one study found working from smartphones and tablets adds two hours to the average working day.
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Nomopobia: fear of being without your mobile phone: a quiz

Posted on August 26, 2015 by Stone Hearth News

Newswise – AMES, Iowa – If you’re wondering how to respond to that question, an Iowa State University study can help you find the answer. ISU researchers have developed a questionnaire to help you determine if you suffer from nomophobia or a fear of being without your mobile phone.

Caglar Yildirim, lead author of the study and a Ph.D. student in human computer interaction, and Ana-Paula Correia, an associate professor in ISU’s School of Education, identified four dimensions of this modern-day phobia. The study was published in the journal Computers in Human Behavior.Watch this video to learn more about nomophobia and then answer the questions below to see if you are nomophobic.
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Japan’s smartphone ‘zombies’ wreak havoc on the streets

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Tokyo (AFP) – When the lights change at the Shibuya crossing in Japan’s capital, one of the world’s busiest pedestrian thoroughfares, hundreds of people with their eyes glued to smartphones pick their way over the road. Despite being engrossed in the latest instalment of Candy Crush or busy chatting with their friends on messaging app Line, most manage to weave around cyclists, skateboarders and fellow Tokyoites.But the growing ranks of these cellphone addicts are turning cities like Tokyo, London, New York and Hong Kong into increasingly hazardous hotspots, where zombified shoppers appear to be part of vast games of human pinbal
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