Study says obsessive cellphone users either have poor self-esteem or are extroverts
posted Mar 11th 2005 7:56AM
Not sure we want to get too reflective about our own compulsions and obsessions, since you can usually find us
curled up in the fetal position whenever we're without our trusty Treo, but some researchers at Monash University in
Australia did some psychological testing of obsessive cellphone users and concluded that there is definitely a
connection between personality type and "problem phone use." (Define "problem"!). Apparently these problem phone users
are more likely to either be people with poor self-esteem who "seek reassurance using their phones or they are unhappy
and using their phones to reach out to others," or extroverts who tend to use their cellphones to "make social
arrangements with a large network of friends." Which sounds like we're straying into the territory of the obvious here.
C'mon should we be all that surprised that people are using their phones to stay connected to other people, and that
people who have an overarching need for connectedness might become a little dependent on their cellphones? Man, it's
amazing we still have a functioning society, ain't it?
[Via textually.org]
In other news...
As you're reading this, the time is either AM or PM.
And you're either male or female.
In fact, we can go so far as to say that everyone who has ever lived is either alive or dead.
I wish people stop knocking studies that state the obvious. The main objective of studies (or any experiment) is to confirm, not to find. Does anyone expect every study to find something new? And if it confirms common sense, that doesn't make them useless, cos common sense has been wrong before.
hmmm, i think they're basically coming out with a nice way to say that people who use their phones so much are losers, and they'd be right!
No, what I'm makiing fun of is a study that predicts all possible outcomes.
People are all introverts or extroverts to some degree or another.