You’re emotionally attached to your smartphone, says new research

You can’t keep your hands away — you’re so smitten, it even lives in your pants and follows you into the loo.

You’re utterly infatuated with your smartphone and now there’s proof, experts claim.

Design researchers say users grow emotionally attached to their smartphones and the connectivity the device gives you.

Boffins at Loughborough and the Uni of Iceland in Reykjavik quizzed smartphone users and found they experienced a sense of emotional baggage as they poured their lives into apps and felt they needed to keep their devices close by.

Dr Tom Page on the research team said: “Today it is considered the norm for people to repeatedly and distractedly check their phones, not for missed calls, but for the countless notifications that social sites, apps and other software spit out at them via that touchscreen.

“In some circles — teenagers, journalists, business users and other professionals — it is even considered something of a social faux pas, a sign of being inept not to have a constant connection with the outside world via one’s smart phone regardless of the circumstances one finds oneself at any given time.

“Smartphones are creating a huge ripple in the pond of human behaviour and it is important that, as smartphones develop, we continue to study the way they affect behaviour, emotions and emotional attachments.”