Give millennials smartphones or give them anxiety.
A survey by Coupofy found that 43 percent of millennials won’t go to the bathroom without their smartphones. Another 42 percent of millennials said they’ll skip the gym when choosing between working out and charging their phones, and 20 percent admitted that their smartphones are the only reason they don’t get enough sleep.
The attachment to smartphones has negative effects on millennial mental health. Fifty-eight percent of millennials surveyed by Coupofy think that anxiety is the main effect of compulsive smartphone behavior.
Without smartphone access, people have been shown to get anxious. A 2010 study by One Poll, an English marketing research company, found that more than half of British mobile phone users got anxious when they lost their phone or network coverage or it died.
Seventy-seven percent checked their phones 35 times or more per day. Another study done by AnxietyUK reported that 45 percent of respondents said they feel “worried or uncomfortable” when email and Facebook are inaccessible.
However, anxiety doesn’t go away once someone has a phone in hand. People still have anxiety when they’re reunited with their phones.
For students, frequent cell phone usage is connected to reduced life satisfaction. In a study published by PubMed, scores for anxiety and depression were higher among more frequent smartphone users. Another study done by Elements Behavioral Health found that teenagers who frequently use their cell phones and/or social media experience increased levels of stress, aggression, depression and distraction. This same survey also showed the same frequent cell phone users had lower levels of self-esteem and didn’t sleep as well.
With a generation that feels anxiety from paying off student debt and dealing with high living costs, cell phones add to it.
