Does your smartphone accompany you, like some kind of overly loyal manservant, on urgent visits to the toilet? During leisurely vacations do forgo the scenery to nervously monitor your battery's rapidly depleting charge? Did an enthralling game of Zombie Gunship cause you to forget your own wedding?
If you've answered yes to these three questions, then you're probably one of the many adults who, according to an survey by British telecommunications regulator Ofcom, class themselves as smartphone addicts. Reluctant to switch them off in cinemas or theatres, compelled to lovingly glance at them while stopping at traffic lights, distraught without their gently glowing presence by the pillow at night; they have supposedly become emotional slaves to these lozenges of connectivity.
And for those in the business of scaremongering, it's causing humanity to slide irrevocably downwards to hell in a digital handcart. You see, studies like this emerge all the time. Often they're pegged to a PR campaign by companies whose services are threatened by smartphone use. Sometimes they're solemnly delivered by self-proclaimed experts who, in the next breath, offer pricy online counselling sessions via their website. But does this compulsion to tinker with a phone really equal addiction?
If you're using a phone to play games, or gamble, or look at pornography, then these are recognised problems that have their own forms of treatment. But the thing that's increasingly demonised is the act of connecting with other human beings - the texts, the tweets, the Facebook chats, the video calls. I'm not ashamed to say that these innovations have brought about changes in my life that are overwhelmingly positive. Yes, this might have caused me to scream "stop!" at a taxi I've left my phone in, or repeatedly press the "check email" button, or experience the odd "phantom ring" when I've rushed to answer the phone and discovered that I'd imagined it. But it's hardly comparable to whacking heroin into my femoral vein.
Granted, there's a similarity between this kind of behaviour and our use of slot machines. Through associative learning we know that, more often than not, a message from a friend makes us feel great. We never know precisely when we're going to receive one, so we keep checking. We're usually disappointed but occasionally we're not - so we keep doing it. Though some psychiatrists are pressing for this kind of behaviour to become a recognised psychopathology, there are many more who believe that you can't be addicted to human contact any more than you could be addicted to hanging out at a social club.
