Is smartphone addiction something we should be laughing about?
Yes and no. I once heard a wise Buddhist nun give a talk to a huge audience. She explained one of our big problems: we go about our lives assuming that everyone and everything – from our spouse to our job to the car in the lane next to us – exist merely to cater to our whims. The second one little preference or caprice doesn’t pan out, bam! We get grumpy.
The audience laughed, but a bit wide-eyed.
I remember what she said, because it was so absurd and so true. Sometimes humor is a means of pointing out our mistakes in life that’s a bit more effective than a long report or a bunch of statistics.
The quotes below are meant to be funny, but they’re also meant to hit home. This is what our lives have come to, staring at little boxes to the exclusion of people. Maybe we can laugh our way into self-improvement.
Here are 10 signs of smartphone addiction, reasons you might want to rethink your relationship with your device:
Your priorities are a little warped
“You know you’re addicted to your smartphone when you know where your phone is but can’t find the gym.”
– Brent Summers, senior account strategist at Digital Telepathy
“You know you’re addicted to your smartphone when you’d rather talk to Siri than your spouse.”
– Bonnie Zaben, COO of AC Lion
“You know you’re addicted to your smartphone when you set your alarm for 5:45 am to have an extra half hour surfing the web on your phone before you have to get up and get ready to go to work!”
– Carrie Aulenbacher, author
Your pets get jealous
“You know you’re addicted to your smartphone when your dogs try to steal it away and bury it in the backyard. Seriously!”
– Hilary Kennedy, TV host at Eye Opener Morning News
You’re a little too attached
“You know you’re addicted to your smartphone when you get separation anxiety when leaving your phone in another room.”
– Patrick Merfert, director of marketing at 9Lenses
“You know you’re addicted to your smartphone when you have a panic attack when the 10% battery life warning pops up on your screen.”
– Bryan Clayton, cofounder and CEO of GreenPal
“You know you’re addicted to your smartphone when your four-year-old smartphone finally bites the dust, so you hold a funeral and bury it in the backyard.”
– Jennifer Bolton, cofounder of Zuzutot
Rules, what rules?
“You know you’re addicted to your smartphone when you are willing to risk your safety and that of the other 200 airplane passengers because watching that cute cat video is obviously more important.”
– Max Galka, cofounder of Revaluate
Your other relationships suffer
“You know you’re addicted to your smartphone when you start entering your password on the TV remote.”
– Joey Panek, web entertainer
You’re reading this article on your smartphone
“You know you’re addicted to your smartphone when you get an email inquiring about smartphone addition on your smartphone, go to Google on your smartphone to look up reasons why people would be addicted to smartphones, end up downloading an app on your smartphone that was advertised on the media site with the article on smartphone addiction, waste 30 minutes in that app, then get back to responding to the original email about why people get addicted to their smartphones, on your smartphone.”
– Aaron McLean, SVP of marketing and strategic partnerships at Meg.com
