If your smartphone is the last thing you look at before you go to sleep and the first thing you look at when you wake up, you are not alone.
A new study has revealed that one in ten smartphone owners in the UK habitually reach for their phone as soon as they open their eyes.
Not to mention, the 30% who wake up in the middle of the night to check for messages. How popular do we think we are?
The research by Deloitte revealed the true extent of the UK’s addiction to technology, as well as the impact it is having on our relationships with one in three people reporting that their phone usage had caused arguments with partners.
And you can forget socialising IRL as an adequate substitute, as even the offer of a meal out at a restaurant or spending time with friends couldn’t detract from the lure of checking our notifications.
A third of people admitted using their device while around friends and that they use their phone ‘always’ or ‘very often’ while eating at home or restaurants.
Paul Lee, at Deloitte told Today: “It is clear from our research that we are reaching an age of ‘peak’ smartphone.”
There are an estimated 37 million people in the UK who now own a smartphone, equating to four in five adults.
Lee explained that our overuse can be attributed to the novelty of these devices: although we feel like we can’t live without them, smartphones are still relatively new and as a society we are still trying to work out the optimum consumption.
Not only that, but we can also blame FOMO, or our crippling fear of missing out: “What smartphones enable people to do is to keep tags of what’s happening, what people are saying, what people are posting,” said Lee.