The well-known quote, said by Ashton Kutcher in the 2000 film "Dude, Where's My Car?"has transformed -- as we enter the mid stretch of 2015 -- to a more relatable phrase: "Dude, where's my phone?"
To say you have not encountered one friend who begged for you to call their silent phone is false. Many of us know the miniature heart attack we have when our phone seems to be missing, only to have slipped underneath the couch cushion. Face it (no, not FaceTime), our best friends are not people anymore. Our best friends are four-inch screens. The greatest part about this inanimate friend? We don't have to worry about breaking his heart, only his screen.
According to a 2015 study completed by Pew Research Center: Internet, Science, and Tech, 64 percent of Americans own a smartphone. This number has increased since Spring 2011, a time when only 35 percent of Americans owned a smartphone.
What makes our society dependent on this small piece of technology?
With a smartphone in our hands, it may seem as if we have the world in our possession. We can catch up on the latest Hollywood gossip, check the weather in almost any city of the world, or ask Siri for a way out of an abandoned forest in what seems like the middle of nowhere. Your best friend is halfway across the Earth on a mission trip? Give her a call. You need a quick answer to someone's mind-bending question? Ask Google.
Everything is crammed into one little device -- a device that 46 percent of smartphone users say they could not live without, according to the Pew Research Center 2014 infographic pictured below.
Why can't these people who compose 46 percent of smartphone owners surveyed for the 2014 study live without their cellular devices? Baylor University marketing professor James Roberts explains why he believes behavior addiction is a sole cause of this technological dependence epidemic in writer Kathiann Kowalski's 2014Science News for Students article "Watch out: Cell phones can be addictive."
Kowalski writes, "Some cell phone users show the same symptoms that a drug addict might have, Roberts explains. Certain people use smartphones to lift their moods. And it may take more and more time on those phones to provide the same level of enjoyment."
That could explain an increase in smartphone dependence, which may also explain why we tend to go into panic mode when we misplace our cell phone. Next time you lose your cell phone under the couch cushion, don't be alarmed like Ashton Kutcher's character once was. It's not the end of the world -- be smarter than the phone.
