Cell Phone Addiction and Distraction...

A recent small study at Baylor University suggests that cell phone addiction may be a real phenomenon. The poll was conducted by James Roberts, Ph.D. who is a professor of marketing. This may come as no real surprise to those of us who feel that social media is the real rabbit hole of life, but it raises some other interesting questions. First, it should be mentioned that the study was conducted with only 164 college students and extrapolating meaningful data from that sample would be impossible. But logic and observation of the behavior of people driving, walking, in stores, and in eateries, indicate a seemingly misappropriation of time. Here are the study highlights:

• Of the top activities, respondents overall reported spending the most time texting (an average of 94.6 minutes a day), followed by sending emails (48.5 minutes), checking Facebook (38.6 minutes), surfing the Internet (34.4 minutes) and listening to their iPods. (26.9 minutes).
• Men send about the same number of emails but spend less time on each. "That may suggest that they're sending shorter, more utilitarian messages than their female counterparts," Roberts said.
• Women spend more time on their cell phones. While that finding runs somewhat contrary to the traditional view that men are more invested in technology, "women may be more inclined to use cell phones for social reasons such as texting or emails to build relationships and have deeper conversations."
• The men in the study, while more occupied with using their cell phones for utilitarian or entertainment purposes, "are not immune to the allure of social media," Roberts said. They spent time visiting such random social media sites such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Among reasons they used Twitter were to follow sports figures, catch up on the news—"or, as one male student explained it, "waste time”.  

But, the trend that I see, in addition to the addictive aspect, is that we are making modifications to our technology to accommodate distraction and the need to attend to more important parts of life. For example, we are building cars to reflect our need to use a cell phone and not pay attention. The newer cars have automatic stopping when they sense an object, cameras to watch everything, lane change warning, and of course the ultimate luxury, self driving cars. And what about hands-free via Bluetooth?  We are paying attention to the conversation and not as much on traffic. And the beat goes on.
And with full disclosure, I waste time on the internet as well! But no social media for me and if I need to make a call while driving, I pull over. I’ll probably get hit by a car without all of the amenities by someone texting…

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