Anyone who owns a smartphone knows how easily you reach for it in a moment of boredom, or because you’re convinced you heard it buzz (you didn’t).
The constant swiping, opening of all your favourite apps, only to realise nothing of any importance has happened, can quickly become an addictive tic.
Now an Austrian designer has designed a ‘substitute phone’ to try and combat this problem for the estimated 37 million people in the UK who now own a mobile phone.
Klemens Schillinger created the weird-looking ‘prosthesis’ essentially as a way to keep our hands busy when they instinctively want to be scrolling, zooming and swiping.
The same size and shape as a normal iPhone or Android device, the matte black case has a set of stone beads in various line formations across it.
These beads allow your fingers to make the motions they are conditioned to making hundreds of times a day, but without any digital function, reducing the device to just a prop.
It is, essentially, just a fidget spinner for adults.
Schillinger says of the product: “This calming limitation offers help for smartphone addicts to cope with withdrawal symptoms. The object as a therapeutic approach.”
Smartphone addiction is no laughing matter, a report by Deloitte found 10% of 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.
Scientists have also warned that if you are regularly experiencing the ‘phantom phone alert’ (when you think it has buzzed or pinged with a message or notification) this could be an indicator of neurosis and addition.
Daniel Kruger, a research scientist at the University of Michigan, said: “[Our] study provides some real insight and maybe some evidence that people can have a real dependency on cell phone use.”
The product is not currently available for purchase, but will be via an online store of the designer’s products, that is coming soon. Although there is no indication of price yet.