Mobile Madness

“I went to the opera the other night to watch ‘ Madam Butterfly’ and just as she was about to kill herself, with the knife above her head, a mobile phone started to ring somewhere in the opera house”.

British people seem to have gone “mobile mad”. 20% of British people spend an astonishing quarter of their day on mobile phones. We have become so obsessed with the little gadget that we can't leave our house without it! One in three people confess to having used their mobile in the bathroom! The question of mobile telephone addiction is now being taken seriously in many countries. Special clinics are now offering therapy to people who cannot live without their mobile. A Scandinavian driver had to receive treatment in a specialized clinic for his addiction to SMS texting (short message services). The twenty-five-year-old worked nights and spent his daylight hours sending an average of 217 text messages per day. His quarterly mobile phone bill quintupled to 12,000 crowns (£967) – unaffordable on his Danish driver's salary, in Britain, a nineteen-year-old girl asked for help because she would rather spend money on pay-and-go vouchers for her mobile than on food or clothes. She admits to sending around 1,600 text messages a month. “I only feel happy when I hear my mobile beeping. When I don't have any credit left I become depressed. I need to check my mobile every two minutes. I stopped going to classes at college because I couldn't answer my phone”.