10 Mar, 2010

If you belong to the growing tribe of new iPhone owners, chance are, you may have heard the following line from a friend before you made the purchase:

"Believe me, this will change your life."

While this may come across as slightly melodramatic at first, the truth is, our iPhone dependency has now become a proven fact.

A survey of 200 university students at Standford University has shown that nearly half of the respondents admit to being completely to very addicted to the device, reported Live Science.

What's more, 32 percent of the people who are not "completely addicted" believe that they will turn into an iPhone junkie one day.

The study also revealed that 75 percent of the respondents would "fall asleep with the phone" and 69 percent are "more likely to leave their wallets behind".

Perhaps more surprising is the sentimental value we attach to our prized mobiles.

Nearly two out of five consider losing their iPhones to be a "tragedy". Three percent of the students admitted to naming their iphone, another 3 percent said they don't let anyone else touch it -- and 9 percent revealed they have "patted" their iPhones.

Stanford anthropology professor Tanya Luhrmann told the San Jose Mercury News, "One of the most striking things we saw in the interviews was just how identified people were with their iPhone."

"It was not so much with the object itself, but it had so much personal information that it became a kind of extension of the mind and a means to have a social life. It just kind of captured part of their identity."