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iPhone Scientifically Proven To Be AddictiveiPhone Scientifically Proven To Be Addictive
Obsess much? According to a study undertaken by Stanford University, the iPhone can be addictive. My favorite nugget from the study? Seventy-five percent of respondents admitting to falling asleep with their iPhone in bed.
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Obsess much? According to a study undertaken by Stanford University, the iPhone can be addictive. My favorite nugget from the study? Seventy-five percent of respondents admitting to falling asleep with their iPhone in bed.Stanford conducted a survey of 200 iPhone-toting students. The responses don't necessarily prove that prying the iPhone from the hands of its users is going to render them cowering freaks suffering from withdrawal, but it does highlight a few interesting trends.
85 percent of the iPhone owners used the phone as their watch
89 percent used it as their alarm clock
75 percent admitted to falling asleep with the iPhone in bed
69 percent said they were more likely to forget their wallet than their iPhone
30 percent called it a "doorway into the world"
25 percent found the phone "dangerously alluring"
41 percent said losing their iPhone would be "a tragedy"
15 percent said the iPhone was turning them into a media addict
3 percent said they don't let anyone touch their iPhone
3 percent have named their iPhone
9 percent have patted their iPhone
8 percent admitted that they have at some time thought "My iPod is jealous of my iPhone"
7 percent said they had a roommate or partner who felt abandoned because of the student's iPhone obsession
How much do the students rely on their iPhones? Well, 10% said they were fully addicted; 34: said they were mostly addicted; only 6% said they could give up the iPhone at any time.
Alarming? Weird? Pathetic? You be the judge.
Professor Tanya Luhrmann, the Stanford anthropology professor behind the survey, had this to say about the whole thing, "One of the most striking things we saw in the interviews was just how identified people were with their iPhone. It was not so much with the object itself, but it had so much personal information that it became a kind of extension of the mind and a means to have a social life. It just kind of captured part of their identity."
What I want to know is, would the study have produced similar findings with another smartphone, such as the HTC Nexus One, Motorola Droid, or BlackBerry Bold 9700. Are these responses limited to just the iPhone, or can they be equally applied to all smartphones that have similar feature sets?
Perhaps we'll get lucky and Stanford will conduct another survey.
[Via LiveScience]
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