Cell Phones Are the Latest 'addiction'

Cell Phones Are the Latest 'Addiction'

Tuesday , July 18, 2006

By Michael Y. Park

The United States is in the midst of an epidemic of (Excuse me, I have to take this call.)

Sorry about that. Let's get back to the story.

Americans from all walks of life are jonesing for the latest (Hold on just one sec. I've been trying to get this guy on the line all day. I'll be right back.)

There we go. OK, let's try this again.

America's love affair with cellular phones -- 212 million carried them as of April 2006 -- may have blossomed into a full-fledged addiction, with the devices interfering with personal relationships, classroom lectures, businesses and, yes, journalists' deadlines.

Some have even called cell phones "the new cigarettes," seeing as how people fiddle with them in elevators, whip them out as soon as they leave the office, take "cell phone breaks" on the job and chat away while walking, driving, etc.

And when your phone isn't ringing, your brain sometimes tricks you into thinking that it is -- a phenomenon that has been dubbed "phantom ringing."

"I'm never without my cell phone," Courtney Tompkins, spokeswoman for the medical school at Des Moines University and owner of a small business, wrote in an e-mail.

"When we go to bed, we have one cell phone on each side of the bed. I use it as an alarm throughout the day; I text- and picture-message constantly. I can send a text message while driving or talking on another phone. I hear phantom ringing often. I've been teased at the gym for keeping my phone in hand while walking and next to me while I work out. Yes, I'm a cell phone junkie!"

Karen Gail Lewis, a therapist in Cincinnati, says she has even seen clients break out their phones in the middle of a counseling session.

"I have even had couples in my office for couples therapy where one takes the call," she said.

In 2003, information-science professor Sergio Chaparro wanted to test out just how deeply cell phones had insinuated themselves into the lives of his students at Rutgers University in New Jersey.

He gave them a seemingly simple homework assignment: to turn off their cell phones for 72 hours. Of 220 students with cell phones, only three could bring themselves to complete the assignment.

"They were afraid. They were truly afraid," said Chaparro, now a professor at the Simmons Graduate School for Library and Information Science, in Boston.

"What I found was basically a high level of dependence on cell phones. Most students were particularly, I would say, scared of the experience."

As part of the experiment, the students were required to keep logs of their thoughts and feelings while going without their mobile phones. The responses were telling, he said.

"They had high levels of anxiety, high levels of stress, high levels of insecurity," he said. "Some of them also told me personal stories. One student told me that the year before she went on a spring-break trip for a week, and the minute she got on the plane, she realized she had forgotten her cell phone. So her mom had to FedEx her the cell phone because she couldn't be without her cell phone for a few days. She was afraid of even driving without her cell phone."

But as bad as it seems, the obsession with cell phones for the most part doesn't qualify as a genuine addiction, many experts say. And you'd hard-pressed to find someone to take you in as a patient suffering from a pure case of "the talkies."

"I firmly believe that cell-phone use, as with anything that's a behavior in life, can turn into an addiction, and the way I would define addiction in a clinical sense is any behavior in which a person becomes dependent to the detriment of an important part of their lives," said Christopher Knippers, who holds a doctorate in clinical psychology and is an assessment specialist at the Betty Ford Center in Rancho Mirage, Calif.

"Quite frankly, the average person doesn't have to really worry about becoming addicted. A glass of wine can be a wonderful accompaniment to a meal, but most people aren't going to become alcoholics. If you already have a certain set of personality traits or biological traits in yourself, you're going to become addicted to something anyway."

Andrea Macari, an instructor of psychology at Suffolk County Community College with a doctorate in clinical and school psychology, said it could be a long time before a cell-phone addiction might be recognized as a genuine mental disorder, if ever. Nevertheless, it can definitely qualify as maladaptive behavior.

"The symptoms are similar to the symptoms we see with other types of addictions,"