The iPhone is killing independent Dave

I love my iPhone, but I can say - without a doubt - that this electronic tether to email and instant messaging that the iPhone is making me more neurotic. With the phone in my pocket, I´m constantly waiting for new email (and probably subconsciously waiting for signals that I´m needed by others), which distracts me from the "real life" around me.

Since I´ve been in Europe, I´ve gone through two stages: one in which I checked email once a day, and the other when I had easy access to computers (at school and my hostel) and checked email 3-4 times a day. Without easy access to email, I actually had to talk to other human beings. With email, I find myself wasting time waiting for email replies, reading irrelevant news stories, etc. I would much prefer not to have to rely on email, but that´s the world we live in. My ideal: get up, read the newspaper (NOT online), do actual work (instead of the "fake work" that so often happens over email), check email as needed in the afternoon, and then escape the computer for the rest of the day. However I don´t think this is possible for a simple reason: I´m addicted.

Here´s a quick article on the rise of smartphones, and some exerpts:

“The social norm is that you should respond within a couple of hours, if not immediately,” said David E. Meyer, a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan. “If you don’t, it is assumed you are out to lunch mentally, out of it socially, or don’t like the person who sent the e-mail.”

So she got an iPhone instead, allowing her to be online no matter where she was, without having to lug a computer around. “I absolutely got it for the job search,” she said. “I don’t know if it’s really an expectation, but if another job candidate returns an e-mail message eight hours later, and you get back immediately with a message that says ‘Sent from my iPhone,’ I think it has to be a check box in your favor.”

Such a digital connection can have its downside. The perils of obsessive smartphone use have been well documented, including distracted driving and the stress of multitasking. CrackBerry, a term coined years ago, is telling.

The smartphone, said Mr. Meyer, a cognitive psychologist, can be seen as a digital “Skinner box,” a reference to the experiments of the behavioral psychologist B. F. Skinner in which rats were conditioned to press a lever repeatedly to get food pellets.

With the smartphone, he said, the stimuli are information feeds. “It can be powerfully reinforcing behavior,” he said. “But the key is to make sure this technology helps you carry out the tasks of daily life instead of interfering with them. It’s about balance and managing things.”