iPhone addiction will RUIN YOUR LIFE – if only that were true

My Iphone ringing while I am completing a task during my working day causes the same emotional response as my old S3, and the Blade before it, and the 6230i before that etc...

"People know my hours why the **** are they ringing me now when taking a call is not possible...?"

Which coincidentally is a similar emotional response to those who ring me late at night/when I am in bed...

This study sounds more like a prior assumption looking for validation.

Another completely...

pointless exercise conducted by students looking for an easy pass in a paper.

Where was the control group? Where was the group who conducted the word search without any phone, ringing or not? How do you know you've not just got a group of fucking eejits that can't do a word search? Did they identify if any of the students were expecting an urgent phonecall about a sick family member? Why the iPhone branding? Because otherwise it's just not cool and doesn't hit the headlines. It could easily have been: "mobile phone users" but no, had to be branded.

This stuff is just a waste of everyone's fucking time.

The same could apply to ...

Gamers

you know those poor sods who want to spend every waking hour playing shoot'em up games on their consoles.

There are also those addicted to flappy birds, candy crush, farmville etc etc.

Just as addictive IMHO.

Posting AC because I have an offspring who is a recovering gaming addict.

I'm quite surprised they didn't shoe horn "exo-cortex" in there somewhere. Not a great study, with seriously ambitious conclusions for one with no control group and such a small, non representative sample size.

Meta

Perhaps the the study is fake and is designed to test the real research question which is about measuring the response of tech journalists and/or commentards to click bait iphone 'research'.

OTOH perhaps this comment is the trigger to a study of the response to comment threads disappearing up their own arses.

Occam's razor says that it was just about pub stats and grant money though.

Easy enough to test at home.

Lock up all the personal telephones in your home for three or four days.[1]

Many folks get the shakes, the cold sweats, major anxiety attacks, and other systems of withdrawal when deprived of "always on" connectivity for just half a day.

Seriously. Don't take my word for it, try it for yourself. If you dare.

[1] It's not like they are needed for life itself to continue, right?

I drove out of the car park at work last Friday, and got 1/4 mile down the road and realised I'd left my iPhone on charge on my desk.

I just kept going. It was still there on Monday, the world hadn't changed.

Is it just disturbance?

Did they try some people with other phones ringing?

I did a test last Friday....

I met a journalist friend at his office for a drink - when I said we're off to the pub, there was visible shaking from those that still had work to complete and couldn't come to the pub immediately.

Maybe they should have wrote half-assed stories about "Beer/crisp/pork scratching addictions will RUIN YOUR LIFE". At least they would have got to the pub faster but not sure if the content would have been appreciated in a technical publication.

Is that sufficiently scientific or should I continue to repeat the experiment to gather more evidence? Am I eligible for a research grant?

Meta Study?

The only thing that makes sense to me is if this is actually a study/research into how to carry out "blind" research experiments.

1) Selecting for iPhone ownership seems arbitrary but it turned out to be the largest group. This was almost certainly done out of a prior assumption that this would be the case as a small group makes for bad Significance.

2) The only things that were done aith any scientific merit were all designed to ensure the test subjects did not guess the true nature of the test and skew results accordingly.

Sure, adding the brand recognition of "iPhone" in the title, much like adding "Star Wars" or any other popular cultural icon is a good way to get interest in your research (and to get it published far and wide) but I think that's secondary.

On reading this, the first challenge to the findings of this research would be "How have you shown that this phenomenon is uniquie to iPhone or even smartphone use and not due to cultural programming that a ringing telephone must be answered?"

Where and how do people get the money and time to carry out these stupid tests!?

surly a better test would be to get a phone to ring thats not their tone... i dont care if someone elses phone is ringing or was it just the fact that a phone was ringing!?!?!?!?!?!?!??

tell me

TELL ME!?

Iphone selection

I assume as they had to take it out of silent which is simply sliding a switch in the side it was easier than having to know how to do this for multiple models/types.

I would have thought some of the anxiety was from thinking you'd left it on silent and now it's ringing and will that cost you $50 for not following instructions .