Smartphone addiction becoming way of life
Print Edition
Cao Kai finds it hard to fall asleep and his eyesight is getting worse.
Cao blames it on his smartphone, which the 28-year-old says he feels compelled to check for updates on microblogs and other social networking applications.
His solution? Cao now turns off his phone’s 3G network at 10pm and cuts himself off from the virtual world.
Cao lives in Jinan, capital of Shandong Province, where he says life after work pales in comparison to cities like Beijing and Shanghai. His smartphone, loaded with apps, spices up an otherwise uneventful night.
More than 77 million smartphones were sold in the second quarter of this year, accounting for 85.3 percent of total mobile phone sales, according to a report released yesterday by Analysys International.
The increasing popularity has spurred concerns about the potential impact of smartphone addiction.
“As we get addicted to our smartphones, we spend less time socializing with people in real life, get distracted from work, and feel tired from staring at the screen for too long,” Cao said.
Netizens have even compared the obsession to smoking opium. But gadgets-loving consumers in China, home to the world’s largest number of smartphone users, totaling 380 million at the end of 2012, are unlikely to give up its latest obsession.
Apps like the Twitter-like Sina Weibo and instant messaging service WeChat are all seeking to engage their users on a deeper level. The latest version of WeChat has introduced interactive games that allow users to compete against each other for top scores.
In one extreme case, a woman in Zhejiang Province played a WeChat game for so long that she hurt her thumb joint.
Recent research by media investment management firm GroupM revealed 66 percent of those interviewed in China had broken up with significant others over the phone, 91 percent prefer to check the time on their phones instead of a watch, and 73 percent have used their phones to scan matrix barcodes.
A whopping 95 percent also said they spent an hour on average with their smartphones before going to sleep.
Xu Xiaonan, an app developer in Beijing, said the reliance on smartphones shows the growing need for services provided by popular mobile apps.
But, Xu said, “smartphones shouldn’t be made the scapegoat for the problems we have. Users should exercise self-restraint and use their phones wisely.”
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