Tag Archives: D30

Our Attachment to the Cellphone

Here on a holiday I’m posting a more light-hearted blog, but one that shows the degree to which people have become attached to their cellphone.

D30, a manufacturer of hard cases for cellphones, conducted a survey across the U.S. and the U.K. asking about how people feel about their cellphone. Some of the questions were silly, but the responses demonstrate how important cellphones have become to people.

Here are the responses to the survey listed in the press release of the survey:

  • 58% of respondents would dive fully clothed into a pool at a wedding to retrieve a cellphone.
  • 56% would climb into a dumpster
  • 54% would retrieve a dropped phone from a festival toilet.
  • 51% would miss an international flight to retrieve a phone.
  • 38% of respondents would skip food for an entire day to keep their phone safe. (Would that mean somebody is holding their phone hostage?)
  • In perhaps the most intense response, one in five people would climb onto subway tracks to retrieve a dropped phone.

In the survey, people described what losing a cellphone would mean to them:

  • 25% said breaking or losing their phone would be more upsetting than crashing a car or losing their child in a supermarket. (That last comment makes me fear for parenting).
  • Nearly a third of respondents have cried when they lost their phone.
  • 38% would rather lose their wallet than their phone.
  • 74% said a broken phone leaves them anxious and frustrated.

As a counterbalance to a story of people being attached to their phones, I’ve been reading a number of articles in the last week that describe the experience in schools that have banned student cellphones during the school day. Students and parents were upset at first, but within a month, most had grown happy with the change. Not having phones meant that students have to actually talk to each other. Lunch rooms are again full of student interaction instead of everybody staring at screens.

I’ve never lost my phone in a terrible place, but the survey does make me wonder if I would retrieve my phone from a festival toilet. There is a huge chance that I wouldn’t have my phone at a festival, but if I did, I might retrieve it – after reading this survey, I can see it would make a good story.