Applications Can Be Extremely Useful, But Also Quite Addictive And Controlling

Smart devices have become an integral part of our lives, we rely on our smartphones, tablets and smartwatches a great deal nowadays. Those devices can be really useful on one hand, but also bad for our social lives on the other. Applications are an integral part of our smartphone experience, no doubt about that. There are some great applications on Android which we use on a daily basis, I’m sure that each one of you has a list of apps that you just love to use and use them constantly. Well, using those apps can become addicting, let me elaborate.

Some apps are fun, some are productive and some of those we just like to keep on our phones just in case or we use them from time to time for one reason or another. We use some apps for like 5 minutes a day, some even less than that and some… even more than we think. According to a Nielsen research firm’s report, we spend 65% more time each month using apps that we did a couple of years ago. At the end of 2013 we spent 30 hours and 15 minutes per month using apps (on average), so, putting this into perspective, we basically actively used apps for two full days within that one month.

It does sound a bit intimidating when someone puts it into perspective. Want some more numbers? Sure! According to Venture capitalist and mobile analyst Mary Meeker’s report from 2013, we check our phones 150 times every day. That not enough for you? Well, a mobile analytics company Flurry defined someone who launches apps more than 60 times per day a “mobile addict”. Using that as a guideline, the number of “mobile addicts” grew 123% between 2013 and 2014, which is just crazy.

Applications make you stay on them longer in one way or another, but the most popular way of doing this is rewarding users for coming back. This can be achieved in various ways, games, for example, literally reward you with all sorts of power-ups and similar goodies in order to get you to come back as soon as possible. Some shopping apps, for example, constantly send you all sorts of discounted goods for you to purchase, no matter if we’re talking about push notifications or e-mails. Other apps are not as direct, but they find a way to lure you back in, there are many ways to do it.

It is obvious to every single one of us that we should use our smart devices moderately and avoid being addicted to them in a way. That’s hard to do though nowadays and I do have a feeling this will become a serious issue in not-so-distant future. Let us know what you think, we’d love to hear from you.

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