Male college students spend nearly eight hours a day on their phone. Granted, you’re not in college, but this is probably relevant to you because a) the technology is the same for everyone, and b) you have real work to do, and some of that work is on a phone.
A study published in the Journal of Behavioural Addictions surveyed 164 students and found that:
- Most time is spent texting (94 minutes a day), followed by email (48 minutes), Facebooking (38 minutes), internet surfing (34 minutes), and listening to music (26 minutes).
- Men send the same number of emails as women, but spend less time on each email.
- Women spend about ten hours a day on their phones. Men spend around eight.
- Men spend more time on games and utilitarian apps, women spend more time on social media. Twitter, however, is used pretty equally.
Participants also had to respond to statements like “I get agitated when my cellphone is not in sight” and “I find that I am spending more and more time on my cellphone”, which are similar to statements used to gauge addiction to other things, like drugs or work. They found that sixty per cent of the participants qualified as addicted.
Of course, the problem with technology addictions is that you can’t just give them up—you need this stuff for work. One solution may be to turn the thing off after work ours, as German firms are doing. The other solution would be to retire. Man, wouldn’t that be sweet?
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Photo courtesy of i.am.leon.
