Smartphone Addiction in Hong Kong: 13 Warning Signs

Walking zombies blocking the pathway, MTR advertisements featuring broken screens, chirporactors reporting brisk business in the neck and wrist discomfort department, and statistics numbers scream of more contact time between smartphones and owners than their children or wives.

It is not hard to see that Hong Kong is filled with smartphone addicts. And why not? A smartphone is a perfect complement to aid productivity-obsessed and multitasking environment of this city. It organizes your schedules, inform of the day’s news updates, provide video and audio entertainment on the go and enables one to communicate with family, colleagues and friends with ease. Hong Kong’s broadband speeds and cheap data costs only encourage everyone to make use of it more.

To some, a smartphone is an indispensable tool. To others it’s a distraction that isolate them from the conventional way of life.

For the sake of argument, let us enumerate the warning signs of smartphone addiction.

1. You maintain multiple threads in Whatsapp, Viber, WeChat and other tools — updated multiple times within the day. That’s not counting the private chats you maintain with several people.
2. You bring your smartphone with you in the bathroom so you can listen to music during shower, kitchen when cooking or washing the dishes and beside you when you sleep.
3. Your day is basically ruined when you forget your phone at home.
4. You are never ashamed to bring out your phone in public even with cracked screen.
5. You have at least fifty apps installed, and you use 90% of them.
6. You panic once battery runs out and don’t mind sitting on a dirty public place just to get it charged.
7. You use your phone as default device to check time, date and temperature and use it as calculator and music player too.
8. You use your phone even when watching the television, eating on your dining table.
9. Your smartphone’s fully charged battery does not last an entire day.
10. You use your smartphone to cure boredom or when things go awkward as open your phone for no exact reason.
11. Your phone becomes the first thing you check in the morning and last one to hold on to before going to bed.
12. You would rather hold your phone instead of putting it in your pocket or bag.
13. You are reading this post in a smartphone.

Photo credit: Pixabay. License: CC0 Public Domain