Are we now married to our mobiles?
Most of us now own a mobile phone, and most of us take them everywhere we go and spend an inordinate amount of time interacting with them. With that in mind, who needs a husband or wife, boyfriend or girlfriend, partner or lover?
It’s amazing to think that mobile phones were still niche products just 20 years ago. In 1990 just 12.4 million had cellular subscriptions. The figure at the beginning of 2010 was 4.6 billion, a 370-fold increase in the space of two decades. And it isn’t just developed countries where the mobile is king, with people in developing countries now using them in huge numbers.
What would we do without our mobile phones? Hell, what DID we do before we all had mobile phones?
The Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project interviewed 2,252 adults through May to build a picture of how, and how much, we use our mobile phones. The results show that while many of us get annoyed by certain aspects of phone ownership we couldn’t live without them.
A whopping 91 percent feel safer as a result of owning and carrying a mobile, while 88 percent appreciate how easy mobile phones make it for us to arrange plans with friends. On the flip side, 86 percent consider it rude when someone constantly checks their mobile while having a conversation or meeting. And 42 percent get irritated when their mobile interrupts them.
Texting is rising in popularity, with 72 percent now regularly sending messages compared to the 65 percent who were in September 2009. The figure is even higher for teenagers, with 87 percent texting an average of 50 times per day. A significant 65 percent of people sleep with their mobile phones right beside them, but I’d assume that is mostly due to people using them as alarm clocks.
So, the majority of people love their phones, sometimes get annoyed with them, and sleep next to them. A bit like a marriage or serious relationship.
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