Smartphones; transforming the way we socialise

Our lives are getting easier with smartphones.

With their great capabilities such as emailing, maps supported by GPS, social networking, games, advanced cameras and vast amount of apps, smartphones offer more than we would envisage 10 years ago. As they are getting more popular every other day and taking over traditional mobile phones, they started to have significant effect on our social lives. Call it addiction or not, since they are multi-functional, one needs to use a smartphone much more than as it would be before when people was using their phones just to receive and make calls and text messages.

Mobile Phone Addiction

According to Ofcom’s research in 2011, out of 1810 adults and 502 teenagers (between 12-15), the ones that chose the option “I am completely addicted to my smartphone” comprises  37% for adults and 60% for teenagers. These values are 12% and 33% for regular mobile phones respectively.

Occasions when use the phone for teens

Ofcom also investigated the usage patterns of consumers which also yields to some interesting results. According to the research, 51% of the adults use their smartphones while socialising with others. Given the fact that one of the most frequent used functionality of smartphones is identified as social networking by the same study, this is an interesting result. Moreover, 23% uses them during meals with others and 18% uses in venues where they are asked to switch them off. As expectedly, the figures are even higher for the younger segment; 65%, 34% and 27% respectively.

Occasions when use the phone for adults

These results not only show us how smartphones changing our way of socialising and the social etiquette but also provide us with an initial picture of a “smart society of the future”. I urge you to visit Ofcom’s website and read the section on “Smartphone Revolution” to have detailed idea of the tech surrounding us. (yes, sounds slightly sci-fiction)