Who’s The Boss? You Or Your Smartphone?

According to Australia’s Biggest Smartphone Survey we spend three hours a day on our phones, on average, with almost one in five of us admitting we check our phone at least once every 15 minutes. If you’re anything like me, leaving home without your phone, or going somewhere with little or no mobile coverage, is enough to make you feel pretty unsettled. So, are you a slave to your smartphone?

The survey says we spend about a quarter of our time on social media with texting and calls filling much of the rest of the time.

My problem is that the line between my professional and personal lives is blurring. In the old days, I kept Facebook strictly for friends and LinkedIn for work. But that’s changed as many colleagues are now friends. So, we end up transacting work stuff over social channels that used to be reserved for fun.

A few friends are bucking this trend, either dumping social apps from their smartphones or getting rid of their smartphones altogether and going back to an old school mobile that can only make calls and receive simple SMS messages.

I’ve started to create some boundaries by using iOS’ Do Not Disturb mode between 9:00PM and 7:00AM so text messages and calls, except from a select number of contacts, don’t set off alerts.

What do you think? Does your smartphone take up more of your time than it should? Is it a productivity drain or an essential tool?


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