How many of you feel naked without your iPhone? How about when your iPhone unexpectedly loses battery early in the day, leaving a useless touch screen in your pocket as a reminder of all the handheld entertainment being missed? Would you say that you have
iPhone withdrawals from time to time?
USA TODAY is suggesting that these might be the symptoms of an addiction, on par with shopping or Internet obsessions.
The newspaper tells the story of one particularly enthusiastic
Shake & Spell fan; Beth Adkins, a 54 year old women from Louisville, Kentucky who starts her day with a rousing game of
Shake & Spell,
a Boggle app, on her iPhone. Atkins tells the paper that she feels withdrawal symptoms when she doesn't play. The article sites Gary Small, author of iBrain, a "book about surviving the technological alteration of the modern mind," who thinks that "over-apping" may overwhelm the brain. He says:
"When we're constantly scanning the environment, waiting for the next bit of info from our devices, I think it puts our brain into a stressful state, and stress is not good for the brain,"
Small also says that feelings of withdrawal point to dopamine deficiency in the brain, suggesting an addiction. The most important part of this article was stressed the least, I think: "there is no research on the impact of apps on health yet."
So what if Beth Adkins can't get enough of Shake & Spell (she plays with her bedridden sister), and so what if we sometimes bump into you while "apping." Monthly iPhone service rivals a car payment, don't we deserve some of the joy our apps bring us? The utility and entertainment of the iPhone apps add to life, rather than hindering it -- like a
real addiction does.
