It is something I realize I am guilty of on a daily basis…being too reliant on my smartphone.

Smart phones have obviously become a way of everyday life, integrating talk, text, email, entertainment, and basically anything else you can think of.

I always promised to not become a person that sits there with my head buried in my cell phone, shut out from the world.  While I am not to that point, I absolutely rely on it for much of my daily life.

The notion of this hits me at various points during the day to reiterate the reliance.  I was watching a movie over the weekend from the 90s, and the characters lost touch at a crucial time for the plot…and literally could not communicate for a given period of time because they did not possess a cell phone.  Of course, cell phones were around then, but it was a whole different deal.

In 2012, smart phones are basically an identification tag, with family members, significant others, and friends getting annoyed if somebody does not respond immediately.  A recent story we covered reveals the emotional and financial attachment that smart phones have become.

Even more frightening now is with the amount of personal and sensitive information on phones, a thief could have an absolute field day, if they were to find or steal yours.  It is forcing carriers to adapt, leading to today’s report that technology is being worked on that could disable your lost or stolen smart phone, rendering it useless to anybody else.

The capabilities, especially with a Wi-Fi connection, have employers cutting back on bandwidth usage in the workplace because of the slowdowns on the networks and lack of production that smart devices can lead to.

Technology is moving so fast that it may be impossible to steer the ship towards less reliance at this point.  I use my iPhone daily to text, email, make a few phone calls, check various sources for news happening throughout the day, for social media, entertainment like changing my fantasy baseball lineup, and even as my sole alarm clock.

I had this idea for this story this morning when I realized that my reliance is to the point of my iPhone keeping me from being late to or oversleeping for work.  It’s actually a scary proposition, but I wake up at an extreme hour for our morning news coverage (1:45 AM), and my phone allows me to set as many alarms as I want.

So, naturally, I set about 6 staggered at various times until I wake up.  This always worked better than the snooze button.  This morning, as we put together our morning news coverage, deja vu hit.  A Hoboken resident developed an alarm clock meant to eliminate oversleeping.  The story was featured in our newscasts throughout the morning.

While the clock is expensive, it looks fantastic for helping to wake up!

So, while my reliance made not wane for most facets of my daily usage, maybe this alarm clock will help me knock one peg off my iPhone’s daily tasks.

I welcome your comments to hear how reliant you are on your smart phone, and if you have done anything to less your usage.

The iPhone is so much fun, but sometimes on a weekend, there is nothing more liberating than turning the phone off for a bit.  And so, the routine goes.

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