10 signs you’re hopelessly addicted to your iPhone

Admit it, you couldn’t live without it  
Shutterstock / Kaspars Grinvalds
Liz Connor29 June 2017

Ten years ago today, the iPhone was released onto the market and our lives were never the same again.

Over the past decade, more than one billion iPhones have been sold, more than two million apps written and more than 130 million apps downloaded.

That’s a lot of screen time.

If you’ve gotten to the stage where you’d rather sleep next to your phone than your partner, you’ve confided your darkest secrets to your ‘Notes’ app and you basically rely on Siri to answer all of your mundane life questions - well, you might just be addicted.

Here are ten glaringly obvious signs to look out for:

1. You panic check your bag or pockets about six times a day in the fear that you’ve misplaced your phone

You’ve basically taken to gaslighting yourself on a daily basis. Even if you know you put your phone away safely, you still thrust your hand into your belongings to triple check that it’s still there. On the days when you genuinely can’t find it, you proceed to panic throw your belongings onto the floor in a stressed meltdown before you realise it’s been in your hand the entire time.

Shutterstock / Tatiana Chekryzhova

2. You scroll through Instagram every night before bed

Even if your eyes are bloodshot with lack of sleep, you’ll still diligently scroll through your feed, just incase you miss an important meme or life quote. And when you wake up randomly in the night, it’s the obviously first thing you reach for.

3. A cracked screen has never stood in your way

A broken screen is annoying, but it will never deter you from your efforts. Did you just type an ‘R’ or a ‘T’? Who cares... you simply can’t risk getting left out of the Love Island group chat.

4. You’re impressed by your own typing speed

If there was an Olympic sport for replying to your WhatsApps in the precious minutes before you go Underground and lose signal, you would definitely be Mo Farah.

5. Your phone battery doesn't last a day

You’ve accepted you need to carry a charger with you at all times and you’re not ashamed to ask at the local pub, gym or restaurant if you “can be cheeky and stick your phone on charge for 10 minutes.”

If you’re not near a convenient plug socket, your heart sinks when your phone gets into the ‘red zone’. Oh, and you feel you’ve been truly wronged when your battery jumps from 30 per cent to 10 per cent without warning.

6. You’re constantly bombarded by the dreaded ‘your storage is full’ message because everything in life is on your phone

Every day is a constant struggle to choose which app to axe in a desperate bid to clear more space. Seriously, how important is your internet banking app anyway?

Despite your addiction, you’ve started to see your iPhone as a nagging partner, constantly hassling you to devote more time to its issues. The photo count on your ‘selfies’ folder is a thing of shame, yet you will not part with a single one. You’d so much rather delete Citymapper first.

12 years of Apple's iPhone

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7. You take your iPhone to the bathroom for some light reading

When nature calls, so does your iPhone. Sitting on the toilet is where you catch up with the day’s most pressing events.

Shutterstock / Diana Grytsku

8. You check your phone even if there’s no notifications

Zombie notifications are a very real thing. You swear you saw your phone light up from the corner of your eye, but when you pick it up - there’s nothing there.

9. When someone asks to borrow your phone, you freak out a little bit

Your phone is basically an extension of you, so when someone asks to borrow it to do a quick Wikipedia search, it’s a huge invasion of your privacy. The thought of them ‘accidentally’ scrolling through your unnattractive failed selfies is enough to have you lobbing your phone into the nearest toilet before they can attempt get their hands on it,

10. You add ‘i’ before anything that sounds technical

“I’ll transfer you some money on the iBank”, “I’ve just downloaded that iRunning app”... You’re basically so involved with your iPhone, you think everything in the tech world is somehow related to your iPhone.

When it gets to this stage, you know it’s time for an i-Intervention. The only way to kick the habit? Dig a hole in the ground, bury your phone in it and never look back.

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