A survey of Stanford University undergraduates has found that students love their iPhones, but maybe a little too much.
The San Jose Mercury News reports that a survey of 200 students found that about a third worried about becoming iPhone addicts and more than a third heard concerns that they used their iPhones too much. About 75 percent of those surveyed said owning an iPhone made them happier.
A graduate anthropology class in research methods at Stanford conducted the survey last spring. Tanya Luhrmann, who taught the course, told the Mercury News that one of the most striking things her group found was the way students identified with their iPhones.
“It was not so much with the object itself, but it had so much personal information that it became a kind of extension of the mind and a means to have a social life,” Ms. Luhrmann said. “It just kind of captured part of their identity.”
5 Responses to Students Worry About iPhone Addiction
dallasm12 - March 1, 2010 at 4:48 pm
Identifying with technologies is not a new phenomena. Peer reviewed research already exists on this subject. http://www.techlearning.com/article/14726
newmath - March 1, 2010 at 9:27 pm
I wonder who financed this study. Let me add that during my lectures some students can’t stop texting often about silly things.
eelalien - March 2, 2010 at 6:41 am
Three words of advice: turn it off.
newmath - March 2, 2010 at 10:02 am
I do ask them to turn them off if they are just texting, but the phones can also be used as calculators. Most students can’t do basic math operations without technology anymore. In adding the most basic things like 1/3 +1/2, they make silly mistakes, even in our most elite institutions. So demanding that they turn off their phones can affect their grades. Also, many of them have applications installed in their phones that allow them to graph expressions, others might be recording the lecture. So asking them to turn off their phones is not an option. Most of them of course are just texting to friends back and fort about nothing.
ambouche - March 2, 2010 at 9:34 pm
“Most students can’t do basic math operations without technology anymore” — right, because their teachers aren’t insisting that they know their basic math operations, and aren’t giving them lots of opportunities to practice, or reasons to develop those skills. Most people, especially those to whom math doesn’t come easily, need to be able to calculate and estimate accurately and intelligently before they can start developing more complex concepts. Those “silly” mistakes adding fractions aren’t silly at all–they are a symptom of a profound lack of understanding of what fractions are, and an equally profound inability to problem-solve independently. Letting them use a machine to do the adding isn’t going to help them internalize concepts or develop reasoning skills; instead, it contributes to passivity and a mechanical approach to solving problems. By all means give them calculators for graphing, if you have to, but don’t give them more reasons not to develop and practice their basic math skills.