Apple has “sold more than 217 million iPhones worldwide and sparked a commercial, cultural and — most surprising — behavioral revolution, Bloomberg Businessweek reports in its June 25 issue,” Peter Burrows reports for Bloomberg.
“According to a study of medical workers at the Baystate Medical Center in Springfield, Massachusetts, 76 percent said they’ve experienced ‘phantom vibration,’ that insistent buzz from an imagined text or phone call,” Burrows reports. “Scientists speculate it’s the result of random nerves firing, biochemical noise that our brains tuned out until they were reconditioned by the iPhone.”
Burrows reports, ““The iPhone has changed everything about how we relate to technology, for both good and bad,” said Larry Rosen, a psychologist and professor who is the author of iDisorder: Understanding Our Obsession with Technology and Overcoming Its Hold on Us [US$11.99 via Apple’s iBookstore]. According to his research, almost 30 percent of people born after 1980 feel anxious if they can’t check Facebook Inc.’s website every few minutes. Others repeatedly pat their pockets to make sure their smartphones are still there… ‘The great thing about the iPhone is that we carry it with us all day long,’ Rosen said. ‘The bad part is that we carry it with us all day long.'”
Much more in the full article – recommended – here.
MacDailyNews Take: Okay, Facebook? Pfft. Phantom vibrations? Not so much. But, we have to admit, we have patted our pockets more than once to make sure our iPhones were still where we left them. Oh, Steeeve, what have you done to us?!