Is Your Teen Addicted To A Smart Phone?

Is Your Teen Addicted To A Smart Phone?

Submitted by Stephanie Andre on October 31, 2013 – 12:45

These days, it’s hard to find a teen who doesn’t live on a cellphone. From texting and social media to the web and apps, it is, arguably, a teen’s most valuable item. 

But have teens become too reliant on their gadgets? The numbers seem to indicate the answer may be ‘yes.’

Stats Don’t Lie
In fact, according to a 2011 Pew Internet & American Life Project study, 63% of teens use texting for communication every day. That’s up 9% from 2009. Even more recently, a UK study says the teen texting average jumped to 75% in 2012.

What’s more, the daily average of number of texts is constantly increasing. In 2009, the average number of texts per day was 50, yet in 2011 it is up to 60. Girls text more than boys, and the average number of daily texts is 100, while it’s 50 for boys.

The study divided participants into three groups: light message users (sending and receiving from 0 to 20 texts per day), medium message users (21 to 100 texts per day) and heavy message users (more than 100 messages per day). The heavy message users group also showed more tendencies to spend longer time talking over cellphones. This group also uses various social networks more than the other two groups.

Additionally, teens who text more than 20 messages a day are more likely to own a smartphone. Some 39% of all teen participants spend a significant amount of time talking over cellphones every day. Only 19% of teens use landlines to make or take a call. Nearly one-third of all participants said they never use landlines to talk to someone.

But Is It Really ‘Addiction?’
Maybe not, according to a 2012 study by Paul Atchley and Amelia Warden at the University of Kansas.

Atchley and Warden used behavioral decision-making techniques with about 100 university students to come up with the findings. They assessed if students were willing to wait to text to gain a monetary reward—can you delay responding to a text message?

We all know people who feel a compulsion to respond immediately to incoming text messages, no matter what else they are doing at the time. They asked college students to imagine receiving a text with a request to “text me when you can.” The students then evaluated options to text back immediately with a small monetary reward or wait to text with a larger monetary reward. Most students wanted to text now and pass on the extra money that would come with waiting. Texting immediately was more important than extra money.

“What we found is, people are willing to wait, but they aren’t willing to wait that long,” says Atchley. “I think this is because responding to a text doesn’t make sense if too much time goes by. If you asked me a question and it takes me a day to get the answer to you, there’s probably no purpose to me responding at that point. So, young adults feel like they need to respond quickly for it to be relevant.”

However, the UK study, sponsored by SecurEnvoy, yields different results. It surveyed 1,000 people and found that two-thirds of respondents feared losing or being without their phones, a condition known as nomophobia—an abbreviation of “no-mobile-phonephobia.”

Symptoms include:
» Experiencing anxiety or panic over losing your phone

» Obsessively checking for missed calls, emails and texts

» Using your phone in inappropriate places, such as the bathroom or church

» Missing out on opportunities for faceto-face interactions

While the two-thirds number of adults is quite significant, even more concerning is that the number increases to 77% for young people ages 18-24.

Emotional Ties
Some recent studies suggest there’s an emotional connection that makes people gravitate to their phones.

According to recent surveys by Shari Walsh and colleagues, who studied the attitudes of teens and young adults, many individuals consider their phones to be part of their self concept. Identifying your cellphone as part of your self predicts not simply how frequently people use their phones, but also their involvement with their phones. Cellphone involvement included measures such as keeping your phone nearby, thinking frequently about your phone, interrupting activities to respond to your phone, feeling distressed without your phone and being unable to reduce phone use.

Parental Responsibility
So, where are the parents in all of this? It seems as though most just accept this behavior as a rite of passage for their teenagers without realizing a real danger. That said, there are things parents can do:

Set a good example. Are you always on your phone? Are you driving and talking? Or, even worse, texting?

Ask the right questions and pay attention. Do you notice that they cannot break away from their phone? Check how many texts they’re actually sending every week, every month.

Establish cellphone-free times. Start things such as, no cellphones at the dinner table or no cellphone use after 9 p.m.

Know the signs of addiction. Understand that they may actually have some sort of dependence on their phone.

Spend time teaching your children etiquette. Start when they’re young, before they ever get a phone. Teaching proper manners now extends beyond “please” and “thank you.” Constantly staring at a phone in certain situations is just plain rude.

Cellphones, like anything else, are fine in moderation and with awareness. Don’t let your teen become a cellphone zombie. Talk to him or her. Like anything else in life, they may think they know everything, but you know better.

- See more at: http://thesafetyreport.com/2013/10/is-your-teen-addicted-to-a-smart-phone/#sthash.JJnMlgXw.dpuf