When you wake up in the morning, is checking your phone for missed calls the first thing you do? Do you get an anxious feeling if you don’t check your phone multiple times throughout the day? Do you use your phone at inappropriate times, such as while driving, while in class, at work, or when dining out with friends or family?
If you answered yes to these questions, you may be addicted to your smart phone, according to a Psychology Today report. This appears to be particularly true of teenagers and young adults, for whom texting and cell phone conversations are the most common ways they socialize, beating out face-to-face contact, voice calling, and even emailing.
It may sound amusing, but nomophobia, or the fear of being without your mobile devices, is now recognized as a serious enough affliction to warrant checking into a rehabilitation facility like The Ranch in Redmond, Washington. Offering a specialized treatment program for mobile fixation, The Ranch helps smart phone obsessed people successfully unplug.
Negative Consequences of Cell Phone Addiction
Besides the obvious anti-social implications of hyperconnectivity, cell phone addiction erodes personal relationships to the point that real relationships become difficult to maintain when someone is constantly using her smart phone.
According to a Baylor University study, cell phone and instant messaging addictions are driven by materialism and impulsiveness and can be compared to consumption pathologies like compulsive buying and credit card misuse, nothing to joke about.
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