Be honest: how much do you really like the people that you hang out with?
If it was up to almost 40% of you, you wouldn’t think twice about ditching them on the side of the road in favour of your trusty smartphone. At least, that is what a survey conducted on behalf of Kaspersky Lab revealed.
As part of the research conducted, people were asked to rate people and objects in their lives in order of importance, and it turns out that 37% or respondents rated their smartphone as highly or more important than their closest friends.
To make things a bit weirder, nearly a third said their smartphone was equally important, or more important, to them than their parents; while one in five set their digital device equal or even more important than their partners.
17% of respondents probably wished that they lived in a digital-only world, as they rated their smartphone in the highest importance category, although only 1% said their smartphone was more important than anything else in their life.
“Our phones are an integral part of our lives, and this study brings psychological proof of this. Our friend-like connection with our smartphones means that we place an incredible degree of trust in an inanimate object – so much so, that we consider it a closer and more important element of our lives than many other people,” said Astrid Carolus, Media Psychologist at the University of Würzburg, who led the study.
To complicate matters a bit further, 93% were more than happy to give up their smartphone PIN when asked.
“With this in mind, we were surprised to see that it was nevertheless very easy for us to get hold of smartphone PIN codes. We asked people to sit in a waiting room for a period of time, and then asked them for their body height and smartphone PIN code. Without much hesitation the vast majority of people gave it to us. This is worrying, because it suggests that we are willing to put our digital friends – and the data they hold – at risk,” Carolus added.
Would you be willing to give up your friends in favour of your smartphone if you could? Let us know in the comments below.
