Do you use your smartphone way more than you should? Do you have a panic attack when you reach for your iPhone and it’s not where you thought it was? Do you find yourself starting to sweat when the remaining charge on your Android handset gets down to a single digit percentage? It might be time to admit you have a problem. Of course, simply being a heavy smartphone user doesn’t necessarily mean you’re addicted, so how can you tell if your usage has crossed the threshold from frequent to addiction?
Rather than guess at the answer, let’s take a look at a simple new smartphone addition quiz put together by an expert at Baylor University’s Hankamer School of Business.
DON’T MISS: 10 million stolen passwords were just released – here’s how to see if yours is one of them
Dr. James Roberts is a professor of marketing at Baylor University, and he recently penned a post on Yahoo Tech that can help people determine whether or not they might be addicted to their smartphones.
“Cellphone addiction is in the same family as other technology addictions, such as computers and gaming, which are all part of a larger family of behavioral addictions (to gambling, exercise, sex, etc.),” Roberts wrote. “Anything that can produce pleasure in your brain has the potential of becoming addictive. Loss of control is the essential element of any addiction.”
As Roberts notes, six signs of addiction have been identified: salience, mood modification, tolerance, withdrawal, conflict and relapse. With that in mind, he devised a simple quiz that should tell you whether or not you’re addicted to your smartphone.
The quiz includes just 12 statements that you have to agree or disagree with, and here are some examples:
The first thing I reach for after waking in the morning is my cellphone.
I would turn around and go back home on the way to work if I had left my cellphone at home.
I become agitated or irritable when my cellphone is out of sight.
I have argued with my spouse, friends, or family about my cellphone use.
Once you’ve finished all 12, tally up the number of statements you agreed with and you’ll find out just how bad things are.
The full quiz is linked down in our source section.
