Are you a smartphone addict?

Over a year ago, I blogged about how annoyed I felt watching parents at a park who were more interested in their mobile phones than their children. Was I being judgemental? Maybe a little but I was really shocked at how these people didn’t seem to be able to put their mobiles down. How times have changed!  I had only had my smart phone for a mere six months at that point.  Little did I know that I was going to join the ranks of the mobile phone addicts. Luckily, I am starting to come out the other side and I do now leave my phone in another room for periods of time (five minutes) so that I don’t get sucked into blog related or social media stuff.  But how do you know if you are addicted to your smart phone?  Let’s see…

1. What is the first thing you do in the morning?
Do you rush over and kiss your children / partner good morning? Do you go down and make a cup of tea? You don’t do you? Admit it, you check your phone. After a night detached from your much loved handset, you just have to check and see if anything exciting happened in the world while you were sleeping. And when I say world, I mean the world of social media, blogs, emails etc. Who would want to know what’s going on in the real world?

2. What is your reaction if you think you’ve lost your phone? So you shrug your shoulders and not worry too much? Do you think that it is annoying but not the end of the world? Or is the real picture and sorry sight of a person possessed tearing around the house like a maniac whilst having palpitations about how your life will continue without easy access to social media?  This has happened to me on a small number of occasions; one of them being a practical joke by my husband.  Not a very funny one, especially if it ends in divorce.  (Not really, I did see the funny side … eventually.)

3. Do you use text/ social media abbreviations as real actual words. Not something I do (yet) but I recently overheard a conversation in a café where someone old enough to know better kept using ‘lol’ as a word. A verb in fact “I was lolling it was so funny” “that really made me lol”. With a sprinkling of OMG’s and even a WTF, I did start to wonder if this woman had lost the plot but sure enough her smartphone was glued to her hand which explains everything.

4. Do you still read actual real books and newspapers? Why would you do that? Why go to the trouble of buying things to read, when you can pretty much download or browse all types of reading material on a screen so small it gives you double vision. No, books and newspapers are so last century.

5. How many times a day do you check your emails? Once? A handful of times? Ten times. A minute. Back in the day, I used to check my emails daily, once a day. More if I was expecting something. Recently, I seem to have been overcome by OCECD – obsessive compulsive email checking disorder. I pick my phone up to text someone and before I know it I am in my inbox. I do get a fair few emails these days, but it is getting ridiculous. I get sucked back into phone world and quite often completely forget to send the message I picked the phone up to send in the first place.

6. Do you take your phone everywhere? Under the pillow or next to the bed whole you sleep? In your pocket during the day? Do you have a quick check while your having a wee? Do you take your phone in the bath? I don’t take my phone in the bath I have to say, that is just too risky for someone as accident prone and clumsy as me. But it is about my person for pretty much all of my waking hours. I don’t sleep with or any where near it, mainly due to the fact that sometimes when you get caught up in social media conversations that continue to mention you, even when you’ve gone to bed,can drive you nuts when you are trying to sleep and your phone keeps buzzing or beeping.

7. Even when your phone is on silent, can you hear it vibrate, wherever it is in the house (although you do sometimes imagine it ) and that little buzz is enough to send you scurrying to your precious phone, whatever you were doing? Whatever that message is, it more important than anything else.

8.  Do you have smart phone related health issues?  This is one where I really do have to hang my head in smart phone overuse shame.  Last summer I developed a problem with my elbow.  It became really painful, so much so I made a rare appearance at the doctor’s surgery.  Tennis elbow was the doctor’s diagnosis.  But I don’t even play tennis was my reply. Smart phones.  Yes apparently this strangely named disorder is nothing to do with tennis but actually a repetitive strain disorder and the repetitive straining that I had been doing was sitting on my bottom and constantly using my phone.  I pleased to say that my elbow did get better after time (although not through me stopping to use my phone) and now I have a problem with my texting thumb.  Not a problem though as I have two and can happily use the other one.

9.  Have you long forgotten the ability to have a real conversation with real people and would much rather tweet, text or Facebook with them or with complete strangers?  Don’t get me wrong, I have met some lovely people through the wonders of blogging and social media which has been very positive and it is nice to know that there is always someone to chat to online, but you really can’t beat sitting down with a friend and having a really good chat over a cup of tea or a glass of something nice.

10.  In the event of an emergency which would you save first; your smart phone or your husband/wife?  I don’t need to answer that do I?