The antisocial network(2)

"Whatever harm there may be to health must be very limited," said Song Meng, a student at Huazhong Agricultural University. "It has been a source of entertainment before sleeping. I cannot imagine if not having a phone."

Human distance

Liu Juan's cousin, 30-year-old Su Huijun, said that her college life was different.

"When I was in college around 2000, there were no smart phones at all. We had dorm chat every night after the lights were switched off and it was one of the happiest memories of college life," said Su, who also admitted that she has become gradually hooked to the smart phone. "But I would rather have spent my college life without such phones."

In Su's opinion, smart phones have enlarged the distance between people. "People stare at their phones but ignore friends nearby," she said.

Su gave a widely reported example: A grandfather arranged a dinner party for two grandchildren, who spent the entire evening staring at their phones. The old man became irritated and left before the meal ended.

Sina.com, one of China's leading Web portals, recently conducted a survey on smart phone addiction among people under 35 years old. The results showed more than 50 percent of young people preferred communicating via smart phones or social networking sites than by talking face to face.

"Almost once every half an hour, I will check on my micro-blog account with my smart phone to see whether I have new messages or not," said netizen Rainingbow. Self-proclaimed as an introvert, he said that being able to closely follow friends' movements via smart phones provides the feeling of being involved in groups.

"It is hard to say whether smart phones make the distance between people longer or shorter," said another netizen, Ancleer, who claimed to be a sophomore in college. "It all depends. It truly makes me interact less with my classmates, but it shortens my distance with my friends in other places, even overseas. I can get in touch with them any moment I want."

But for Gao Qi, a 29-year-old man living in Beijing, smart phones are more of a headache than useful tools. As the main organizer of Beijing fans of an Argentinean football team, Gao's club gathered together almost once every week, but now he doesn't want to participate any more.

"In the past, the meetings were a lot of fun," said Gao. "We met new friends here and played games or cards. But now that everybody carries a smart phone, the atmosphere has changed a lot."

Gao revealed that many people in the parties, no matter what they were doing, were always checking messages and couldn't concentrate. "It is really annoying and impolite, but they don't care and take it for granted."

Xiao Linqiu, a woman living in Shanghai, echoed Gao's frustration. Xiao likes to have dinner with friends, but almost every time there are one or two people at the table who don't talk with anybody and stare at their phones instead. "I think it is basic etiquette not to do that. It seems they don't need anything in the whole world but that phone," Xiao said. "I doubt whether they still have the ability to communicate with people face to face."

Quest for liberation

"I really want to change this harmful habit. I cannot get my hands away from the smart phone and I cannot concentrate on my work at all," said a netizen known as Sunflower, who asked other netizens for methods to control the habit. But the replies elicited were not optimistic. Many said that their addictions were more severe. One even said that he had to get up at midnight every day to check the news on his phone.

Ma Meiying, a professor of sociology at Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, east China's Zhejiang Province, thinks the reason for smart phone addiction lies mostly in the immense pressure and spiritual emptiness of modern life. "When people live under great pressure and there are not many channels for release, smart phones are the choice to relax and kill time."

Ma regards smart phone addiction as an extension of Internet addiction. "It can be more severe as the phone is much easier to carry," he said. "The user should have a stronger mind to control this. Smart phone producers should notify users of the harms of overuse as well."