Internet And Smartphone Addiction

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Internet Addiction (Photo credit: Remolacha.net pics)

After posting my article on the IT’s Seven Worst Addictions (And How To Cure Them), I came across a posting on coupons.org where they expand on “Online Junkies and Brain Shrinkage: The Rise of Internet Addiction.”

For my readers’ convenience I include the infographic from their website below this article.

But worse might be the Smartphone addiction. Because we have it with us all the time. And it is difficult not to react to all the tweets and updates from your friends and circles. Reports say that some are even leave the phone on at night not to miss anything.

Effects at the workplace are equally detrimental. How often are we now in meetings where one person speaks and everybody else is checking email or twitter on the phone. Constant distractions make us work less effectively and efficiently and are becoming a danger for business.

I know that our mobile service providers do everything they can to help us here with the data tariff systems here in Europe. Whenever we cross a border (in my case a few minutes by bicycle from my home) we have to pay such high prices (USD 7.- per 10 MB) for data roaming that many of us turn this function off. Smartphones like to be on the net and I had already data traffic of 100 MB in 20 min. without touching the device . . .

Maybe a good way to deal with distractions is concentrate on one thing (your work) and to read your tweets, status updates and mails only a few times a day at planned intervals and turn the notifications off.

What are your experiences with internet and smartphone addictions? What would you recommend?