Smartphones Kill Sex Lives, Can’t Replace Home Internet Service — So Why Are We So Dependent On Them?

Smartphones may be blamed for harming many couples in Britain. Some are reporting that they’re having sex only three times a month. It’s because most couples are checking their emails, text messages, or social media notifications “all the time,” according to a Daily Mail report.

Professor David Spiegelhalter, a statistician at Cambridge University, revealed in his new book that heterosexual couples only have sex three times a month. This research was compared to couples who had sex four times a month in 2000 and sex five times a month in 1990, according to Spiegelhalter’s book Sex By Numbers.

The researcher spoke with BBB Radio 4’s Woman Hour program about his findings. He hinted that smartphones are to blame, since most people are constantly checking their emails and notifications.

“We used to have a very big separation between our public lives and our private lives — now they are so mixed up and integrated. People are checking their emails all the time, you do not have the same sort of quiet empty time that there used to be.”

Professor Spiegelhalter doesn’t think smartphones are entirely to blame. He also hinted to other factors to the decline in sex, with one reason explaining that more people are living on their own. Spiegelhalter quickly added that the increase of technologically has made people too busy to spend time with each other.

“A more realistic explanation is that as we’ve become better connected technologically, our lives have become busier with the boundaries eroded between home, work and the outside world. This has squeezed out time we would have spent with our other halves.”

“The statistician quotes Catherine Mercer, a researcher on the British National Survey, as saying: ‘With an increasing number of competing demands on our time, sex just falls down our list of priorities.'”

Meanwhile, Americans are being blamed for being too dependent on their smartphones. The Pew Research Center released their findings from a series a surveys that addressed how smartphone dependent Americans are. The survey shows that only two-thirds of Americans own a smartphone, and only 19 percent use a smartphone for an internet connection.

The study also shows that smartphone owners who access the internet only use it to search for a new job or access other important services. These owners are also more likely to have their smartphone service cut off due to financial difficulties, according to the Pittsburg Post-Gazette.

The study also focused on the “smartphone-dependent” country. Only 7 percent of Americans who own a smartphone rely on it for internet service, as they don’t have any other alternatives. That means some consumers have to make a choice in choosing home internet service or mobile internet access. Young adults (ages 18-29) are also dependent on mobile internet access, according to Android Headlines.

This smartphone-dependency also applies to income, as the survey revealed that Americans with a household income of $30,000 per year are more likely to use their smartphones for internet access, while 1 percent of households earning more than $75,000 rely on their smartphones for internet access. Only 80 percent that their smartphone is worth the cost while only 19 percent says it causes a financial burden.

As you can see, some people are dependent on their smartphones as it’s their only way to access information, connect on social media, and surf the world wide web.

What are your thoughts on these two studies? Do you rely on your smartphone for internet access? Do you think it interferes with your sex life?

[Image: Michael Dodge/Getty Images]