Ten years ago Apple brought smartphones into our lives, and now we have trouble putting the darned things down. We check them, on average, 80 times a day.
A company called Asurion asked 2,000 people about the regular phone habits and learned that most people look at their phones once every 12 minutes. No wonder we’re sleep deprived. “They can’t even sleep because they’re thinking, ‘Oh my gosh, somebody’s going to text me back about what I said to them before I went to bed. I want to make sure I respond to them.’ They’re not being present so their mindfulness is struggling,” healthy living expert Dr. Fabrisio Mancini tells News Radio 740 KTRH. He’s been closely monitoring our obsessive-compulsive relationships with telephones.
Most people can make it four hours without pulling their phone from their pocket for a quick peek. One in ten have to check every four minutes.
“How many times have you talked to your children or sitting at a sinner table trying to have a conversation about the day, but they keep checking out because they’re texting their friends, or texting what they are going to do later,” Dr. Mancini says.
Not only is our blind obsession to the devises that keep us constantly connected impacting our mental states, Dr. Mancini says the threat of “text-neck,” a condition caused by standing or sitting upright while bending your neck to look down at your phone for an extended period, is very real physical danger.