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Nomophobia - or no mobile phone phobia - the onset of severe anxiety on losing access to your smartphone has been talked about for years. But in Asia, the birthplace of the selfie stick and the emoji, psychologists say smartphone addiction is fast on the rise and the addicts are getting younger.

A recent study surveyed almost 1,000 students in South Korea, where 72% of children own a smartphone by the age of 11 or 12 and spend on average 5.4 hours a day on them - as a result about 25% of children were considered addicted to smartphones. The study, to be published in 2016 found that stress was an important indicator of your likelihood to get addicted.

Smartphones are central to many societies but they have been integrated into Asian cultures in many ways: there is the obligatory "food porn" photograph at the beginning of any meal; in Japan it is an entire subculture with its own name - keitai culture.

Asia and its 2.5bn smartphone users provides a stream of phone-related "mishap news", such as the Taiwanese tourist who had to be rescued after she walked off a pier while checking Facebook on her phone. Or the woman from China's Sichuan province rescued by fire fighters after falling into a drain while looking at her phone.

For more : http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-33130567

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I'm torn on this issue. I can't stand not being able to have a complete conversation with someone because of interruptions from these devices. I will never become like that. At the same time, I couldn't [b[live[/b] without my smartphone.

Actually I don't have a smartphone per se, I have a 10 inch tablet with SIM card, and pen, which is basically still an oversized smartphone. I probably do 80% of all my work on it now. Aside from being able to do most of my own web business, we are doing business with people in three different countries and staying connected via wechat. Because of the time differences, it means messages coming in at all hours, but we can get more done as a result. Having a SIM card means I can be on the internet anywhere and all the time, even out in the mountains. I never realised how important that was until I lost it.

In meetings, I can pull out my tablet and pen and take notes. Better than paper, I can do google searches and drop images and information from those searches right into my notes. My Chinese is not perfect, so I can keep my dictionary and translation software at hand at all times.

These devices are just to damn convenient.