A Fortune Awaits Discoverer of Cure for App Addiction

Apps gone wild!

If you loaded one new application per day into your iPhone, it would take at least 27 years to try them all. According to Matt Richtel and Laura M. Holson of the New York Times, over 10,000 new apps have been posted to the Apple store, generating 300 million downloads. "The new status symbol is what your phone can do — count calories, teach Spanish, simulate a flute, or fling a monkey from a tree," they write. "The popularity of such applications for Apple’s iPhone, the leader of the transformation, is driving a fierce competition among the makers of the BlackBerry and Palm devices, and even Google and Microsoft." One venture capital company thinks it's such a goldmine that it has created a $100 million fund for iPhone developers.

Naturally, our favorite is the Stanza, the free e-book reader, and we've also written about the Android-powered barcode scanner. But it's not just the thousands of wonderful, stupid, crazy, and absorbing add-ons that make the phone-omenon notable, but their convergence into one device that brings us closer to the science fiction dream of a personal slave-device that carries out our every command at the graze of a fingertip.

But like any other convenience there is a danger of addiction and even abuse. In December Joe Wilcox, author of the Apple Watch blog, put a name on a syndrome whose symptoms are all too familiar to iPhone users: Apple App Addiction. "I've casually asked about two dozen other iPhone or iPod Touch users about their devices," writes Wilcox. "Nearly all confessed to being app addicts."

It looks like Apple App Addiction is the new obesity. What are the signs you're hooked? Says Wilcox,

Can you put the devices down? Do you use them frequently throughout the day—and more frequently than you would a vanilla cell phone or music player? Do you compulsively check your e-mail, Facebook or Twitter—or other app, perhaps? In a crowded room—maybe it's a party or business meeting—do you tap, tap, tap that touchscreen?

If 'yes' is the answer to any question, you're an Apple app addict.

Wilcox describes the technique for "hooking" users that sounds exactly like the way dope dealers hook victims:

Some of these app addict dealers are smart. Tapulous gave iPhone and iPod Touch users just a taste with Tap Tap Revenge. "C`mon, it's free. Try it." The game is highly addictive, and it's got a killer soundtrack. But successors like Nine Inch Nails Revenge and Weezer Christmas cost five bucks a piece. Damn, if they're not addictive, too. That taste leads to paid addiction.

There are organizations for treating alcohol, dope, gambling and even sex addiction. But I'm not aware of an Apps Anonymous (at least not one in my community) and because of the syndrome's potential impact on workplace and school performance, it may be the deadliest of all. Wilcox says, "People ask to be buried with their cell phones," and I can personally testify to that. Not long ago I attended a funeral in which the recently departed was laid out with his beloved cell phone hooked to his belt. "It was a part of him," his widow confessed to me. "No one ever saw him without it." When I viewed the corpse I noticed a blinking light indicating the phone was on. Someone else noticed it too, because, as a macabre practical joke or maybe just to see if the deceased would pick up, they called him and his unique ringtone warbled.

The thing is, nobody laughed. It seems like the most natural thing in the world.

RC