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Half Of Teens Think They're Addicted To Their Smartphones (cnn.com)
An anonymous reader writes: A new poll confirms just how much teens depend on their phones. Fifty percent of teens feel they are addicted to their mobile devices, according to the poll, which was conducted for Common Sense Media, a nonprofit focused on helping children, parents, teachers and policymakers negotiate media and technology. A larger number of parents, 59%, said their teens were addicted. The poll involved 1,240 interviews with parents and their children, ages 12 to 18. "Technological addiction can happen to anyone," said digital detox expert Holland Haiis. "If your teens would prefer gaming indoors, alone, as opposed to going out to the movies, meeting friends for burgers or any of the other ways that teens build camaraderie, you may have a problem."
What does gaming indoors have to do with smartphones? Oh I get it, a "digital detox expert" is trying to make a buck doing nothing with their life.
"If your teens would prefer writing poetry, alone, as opposed to going out to the theater, meeting friends for rolls or any of the other ways that teens build camaraderie, you may have a problem." - ancient Rome ~ 0AD
If you're addicted, by all means seek treatment, but honestly, most of this is simply another round of how decadent kids are, and this has been going for many thousands of years, probably since the first ever sucessful hunt. Furthermore, most of this is pales to a real addiction - if your symptoms are that you don't like being around others, how about we talk about being addicted to books? Being addicted to movies? Being addicted to schoolwork? Hell, being addicted to being an introvert? The symptoms are all the same. Undoubtly there are people who truly suffer from this, I'm not saying there aren't, but I suspect much of this to be overblown out of proportions.
"Set a man a fire, he'll be warm for the rest of the night. Set a man afire, he'll be warm for the rest of his life."