Would you give up your smartphone for a month in exchange for a day with George Clooney or any other celebrity?
If you answered “yes,” you are in a disappearing minority. Almost three-quarters of smartphone users worldwide refuse to substitute their artificial intelligence extension with a celebrity. 56% declined a 10% salary increase, 50% an extra week of vacation, 41% said “no” to $1,000 dollars (!), and 28% were willing to forego a holiday at their dream destination. They are also willing to give up family, friends or sex for a week before their smartphone.
Studying smartphone addiction has become a cottage industry 10 years since Steve Jobs changed the world—or at least changed the way we live today. There is a professionally-sounding name, nomophobia (as in no- mobile phone-phobia), the self-reported Problematic Use of Mobile Phones (PUMP) scale, and every now and then we learn about a new survey showing how our human intelligence is increasingly augmented by an artificial one to such an extent that increasingly we can’t live without it.
The latest entry is the B2X Smartphone and IoT Consumer Trends 2017 survey of more than 2,600 people in Brazil, Germany, India, Russia and the United States conducted by Facit Research in cooperation with Professors Anton Meyer and Thomas Hess at the Ludwig-Maximilian University of Munich. Here are the highlights of the state-of-our-AI-addiction which has become a serious Millennial affliction:
- 25% of Millennials spend more than 5 hours on their smartphone each day and more than 50% spend at least 3 hours compared to a quarter of Baby Boomers.
- One quarter of Millennials look at their phone more than 100+ times a day and nearly half look at their phone more than 50 times a day.
- 85% of consumers worldwide keep their smartphone in direct reach all the time, and more than a quarter keep it on their body all the time, even at night.
- 57% of smartphone users expect friends and family to respond to messages immediately or at least within a few minutes.
- Americans were the most likely (11%) to give up their partner or spouse for a month in order to not lose their phone for a year.
- Consumers worldwide regularly feel frustrated (27%), lost (26%), stressed (19%) and sad (16%) without their smartphones. 4% would even go to prison for a month to not lose their smartphone for a year.
The increasing dependency of younger generations on artificial extensions has been corroborated by other studies. Last year, for example, a survey conducted for Common Sense Media found that 50% of teens felt they are addicted to their mobile devices while 59% of parents reported their teens were addicted. Another study, the ICMPA-Salzburg Academy study, asked close to 1,000 students in ten countries to abstain from using all media for a full day. The results? A clear majority in every country admitted outright failure of their efforts to go unplugged.
