I am obsessed with my iPhone. Utterly completely totally rabidly dreadfully obsessed with my iPhone. To the point where if I cant put my hands on it in 3.2 seconds I start to get nervous. Cant find it in under 30? Full blown panic stations. If it hasn’t been found in 2 minutes I’m comatose... I wish that was hyperbole... but its honestly not.
It dies in a couple of hours with heavy use which means I am practically tied to a power point where ever I go, that bell sound makes certain people in my life twitch and that the fact I can hear the alerts through walls is probably unhealthy... But for the convenience of being able to look up who sang that song for the 80’s that goes “bop bop do bop” without it driving me mental until I get home and google it (or having to ring my Mum at 2am) I think its a fair trade.
The more I think about it the more I realise I am obsessed with the convenience that the iPhone offers more than with the iPhone itself. The sheer ease of being as a friend of mine puts it “Plugged In”
I don't write things down anymore. Everything is saved in my phone. Dates, Birthdays, Blog Ideas my Routine and Stats at the gym. Everything. Its backed up on 2 computers just in case as well. My whole life is on that phone (Yes its backed up!)
I am addicted to the convenience of being able to access information everywhere and anywhere. The convenience of being able to connect to the internet, to look up directions, movie times, that song from the 80’s, names, my bank balance, in a very real sense everything I could ever want or need to know is at my fingers tips. Its a habit that started with texting. Being able to let my Mum know I wouldn't be home for dinner and once I got an iPhone it spiraled into being able take my entire digital life with me wherever I go!
Until I got my MacBook (yes I am officially that friend.. the Mac Friend) I hadn’t turned my PC on except to blog, add music to my iphone or use photoshop in months! My Email, web browsing, transferring money, and pretty much everything else that a PC can do my iPhone can do too. Everything I needed was done on the shiny piece of technology that I can carry with me everywhere and fits into the palm of my hand.
When speaking to a friend and fellow Mac devotee he pointed out that this is the case with most people. An iPhone fulfills the basic computing needs for the majority of people. Think about it. What do you use your computer for most of the time? Checking Email? Internet Banking? Browsing the Net? Catching up on news and current affairs? Chatting to friends on MSN? I can do all that from my phone and it fits in my pocket, it can come on the train with me, It plays music, Unlike my laptop I don't have to be sitting down to use it. Mac has created a product that has plugged me into the world where ever I am! Its fiendish because it works. Im so used to the utter super ease of it that I don’t want to give it up.
I am not the alone in this, Apple has sold around 17 million iPhones (estimated to be more like 23 million) and over 1 Billion Apps have been downloaded! . Several of my friends own iPhones and we can sit and geek out over the latest app together for ages while our friends who don't have them roll their eyes and point out that we are obsessed. Either that or like my cousin beg me to let them play with mine. I have had conversations with complete strangers that started with ‘Do you have that
Gen Y is the most addicted generation ever and I fully admit to being addicted (duh). The question is is this healthy? Should we be trying to cut back on this addiction to technology and information? Is this entitlement to access information wherever we go a good thing? Reporting is now 24 hours I cant help but wonder does the accuracy suffer because we demand answers now? Does more access mean more knowledge? Does it mean quality or just quantity? What would happen if we suddenly didn't have access? In the case of social media iPhone and some other phones such as googles Android have meant that we now have geo tagging on things like twitter posts (if enabled). What does that mean for privacy? I don't have answers to any of these questions but I do wonder. With so many hours in the day are we giving up anything to fill up time to spend our iPhones tweeting, blogging etc or was this time just being wasted? is there just such a thing as wasted time?
I dont know the answers to any of those questions and any of those questions could for a whole blog post on their own (maybe at a later date) but until then I know that I am unlikely to go back to owning something else. I really like owning a phone that is as convenient, intuitive and plain nifty as an iPhone and Unless someone else makes something that works better its looking like I am an iPhone girl for life I think
So what about you lovely people? Do you own an iPhone? Are you addicted to it? Is it merely a tool for you? Could you go back to a regular phone? Let me know if I am the only iPhone Addict!
Love and Obsessions
Miss Addict
