Half of the adult population admit to being hooked on their smartphones
Smartphones have become so ubiquitous that most people consult them within the first hour of the day. In fact, so dependent are people on their mobiles that a third of adults now feel the need to check them within five minutes of waking up.
A UK survey also revealed that half of the respondents agreed that they were “completely hooked” on their phones.
Experts are calling this a “landmark moment” in the development of these devices, with 2014 being the year in which the smartphone overtook the laptop as the favourite device for getting online. Only 12 months ago, the laptop was twice as popular as the phone for accessing the Internet.
Today, two-thirds of all Britons own a smartphone, compared to a year ago, when only one-third of the population did. The rise of the smartphone is propelled by the increased use of 4G mobile broadband, for which subscriptions grew by the millions in 2014. It is little surprise therefore that smartphone users are spending more time online, from 17 minutes per week in 2013 to 20 hours in 2014!
But while many admitted to spending too much time online, most people said they still prefer meeting family members face to face and many did not like users to check their phones during dinner, whether at home or in a restaurant.
One gadget losing out in the increasing smartphone usage is the television. Television viewing declined for a second year in a row, with the amount watched by children in 2014 tumbling to less than two hours a day.
With most young adults declaring that the mobile phone as the device they would miss the most, it seems that the smartphone dependency is set to grow even further – unless something is found to replace it.
(All images - credit: Wikimedia Commons under Creative Commons licence)
