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Tiffany Blackmon
Professor Salgat
ENG 111-02
October 6, 2014
Your iPhones love addiction affliction
You ever feel like you are attached to your iPhone? Like it is more than a daily essential
to have with you? Well, most people might feel that way since we all use our phones for more
than just communicating by making the phone call. Your iPhone is basically the key to keeping
touch with anyone at any time. It must surely be important. Having all that power in your control
right? Have you ever thought that you might actually be in love with your iPhone? You might
laugh and say that is insane because it is just an addiction. Well according to Martin Lindstrom
and his article You Love Your iPhone. Literally. You probably do. It is a strange concept to
grasp, but what Lindstrom said was A recent experiment that I carried out using neuroimaging
technology suggests that drug-related terms like addiction and fix arent as scientifically
accurate as a weird we use to describe our most cherished personal relationships. That word is
love. Feeling convinced yet? If not, we are going to take a look at the article and thoroughly go
through to break down Martin Lindstroms article to find if there were flaws in the article that
could make us disagree and point out why.
To summarize Lindstroms article, in the beginning he states that was a branding
consultant (Lindstrom, par. 2) and the fact that he has followed Apple from its early days as a
cult brand to its position today (Lindstrom, par. 2). Lindstrom has been basically following
todays big name trends and how most consumers react to all these new things being thrown out

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by the big guys. What Martin Lindstrom did was use fMRI or functional magnetic resonance
imaging tests to see how brain activity looked while viewing the people were viewing the
images. He says that We found that the brain activity was uncannily similar (Lindstrom par. 3)
when they showed pictures of the pope and rosary beads along with big named brand labels.
Also, around the summer time, he gathered a bunch of babies and did tests on them giving each
baby a Blackberry. He claims that they started to swipe their fingers across the screen like you
would to an iPhone. It appears that a whole new generation is being primed to navigate the
world of electronics in a ritualized, Apple-approved way. Lindstrom says. He also said people
he knew who left home without their iPhones felt stressed, or cut off. He then took time and
effort to find the 10 most powerful, affecting sounds in the world. The vibration of the cell
phones was the third in that list. We constantly check our phones no matter what to see if
anything new has appeared. He says that some psychologists suggest that using the Blackberry
and iPhone may go into the same associated learning pathways of the brain that make something
like gambling so addictive. Martin Lindstrom then decided to test again of the iPhones were
really actually addictive and tested again using the fMRI method. He says In each instance, the
results showed activation in both the audio and visual cortices of the subjects brain.
(Lindstrom, par. 8). What he means by that is people getting the sensation of hearing their phone
when they see a picture of it vibrating, or they get the sensation of seeing the phone vibrate when
they only heard the vibration sound. Lindstrom said that they didnt just show the addiction to
their iPhones, but the feeling of actual love. In Lindstroms article he mentions towards the end
that, we should just shut off our phones and find love the good old-fashioned way.
That article Martin Lindstrom wrote was very persuasive in his ideas of people being in
love with their phones. His ideas were pretty good, especially in the fact that we, as people use

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technology almost every day. The little handheld devices that we have are crucial to our day to
day activities and our way to shoot a message to someone we are not face to face with. Everyone
with a phone should know how recognizable the sound and feel of a vibration is, it isnt
uncommon to think that we can still just feel our phones without it being there physically with
us. Im sure we all used our phones too to just send a text message and communicate that way
instead of calling and having an actual voice chat. Even we have accepted game requests sent by
friends and family over a social media website just so we can co-op together. The social
interaction we have with the phone is far greater than what we would normally have with other
people. This article points that out. Everyone is connected somehow by technology.
Although we can relate to Lindstroms article in such a way, there were some points he
made that didnt seem to make much sense or seem to give us the feeling that makes us go so
what? Lindstroms article seemed to be credible with him as a person putting his own testing
results on there. In reality though, those results may be skewed and picked only favorably to
make his article deem worthy enough to catch peoples attention. In his experiment mentioning
how the babies just grasped the phones than they swiped their little fingers across the screen
(Lindstrom, par. 4), did he make sure to go deeper into researching about knowing what age
babies are able to grasp things? Babies can more than likely grasp at an early age. It shouldnt be
no surprise that a baby just grabs a phone just like a baby would grab their mothers finger.
Another thing that Lindstroms article seemed pretty off about was the fact that he was only
talking about iPhones then mentioned that everyone with a phone was addicted and in love with
it. Didnt he just say it was about iPhones? His consistency with writing his own article about
iPhones seem to drift into the broader spectrum of just smartphones. In Lindstroms article
towards the beginning, he brings up the fact the new iPhone 5 was coming out. He then says

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something about the consumers devotion to the iPhone product. Wouldnt that make people just
go for the next big thing? In todays world, fads are just about everywhere. Its all about the next
big thing and how the appeal of it just being new will capture the attention of many people. Not
everyone has a devotion to a certain product. It could just be about the next big thing. Another
thing about Lindstrom and his article was his testing and terms he used. Is he a credible man to
be taking information like this and using this in a paper? Does he know what an insular cortex of
the brain actually is? Not many people do. He could be using misinformation to make himself
sound much better. The insula is activated when you experience various social emotions, such
as lust, pride, and disgust (Psychology: Tenth in Modules, par.3 pg. 480). According to the
book definition, there is no love. Lust is a completely different thing. Does Lindstrom know what
he is doing? He doesnt seem very credible now. He should have other researchers do the same
project to make sure it is correct too. Love was a term that Lindstrom used and it does not seem
fitting from where he got it from. Maybe he heard it being used and took it into a wrong context.
Nonetheless, Lindstrom still believes that people love their phones.
We have gone through and thoroughly broken down Martin Lindstroms article, You
Love Your Iphone. Literally. We found that there was some major disagreement and empty
thoughts he seemed to leave out to only make his article look good. As he tried to convince
everyone with his terms and testing, everything seemed to be off from his skewed result
answers to his misuse of terms. There is disagreement stated here that no, we really do not love
out iPhones. We are just addicted and always looking out for the next big thing.

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Works cited
Myers, G. David. Psychology: Tenth Addition in Modules Holland:
Worth, 2013. Print
Lindstrom, Martin. You Love your iPhone. Literally
(2011): Print

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