We know you LOVE your iPhone. But, can someone have an iPhone love addiction, like…literally?

With the up-and-down week for Apple; iPhone 4S and Steve Jobs passing away, SheBytes thought it would be nice to have a more, shall we say; light piece on Apple.

I’ve previously written about how oxytocin will make you do crazy things, like cyber-stalk your ex or get a woman on a motorcycle, but apparently, it will also cause you to have a love affair – or addiction of sorts – with your iPhone… at least that’s what latest research suggests.

In a bizarre article titled “You Love Your iPhone. Literally.”, posted online in the NY Times OP-ED section; this iPhone addiction is exactly what author Martin Lindstrom (@MartinLindstrom) explains.

Here’s a fun fact: Op-ed actually stands for opposite the editorial page, and NOT as often thought, for; “opinion-editorial”! Who knew?

Well anyway, Lindstrom says that after he “carried out an fMRI experiment” where subjects listened to sounds of iPhones vibrating, “most striking of all was the flurry of activation in the insular cortex of the brain, which is associated with feelings of love and compassion”!

Now although I’m not as thoroughly critical of this finding as writer David Dobbs (@David_Dobbs) is in; “MRI Shows My Bullshit Detector Going Ape Shit Over iPhone Lust”; who feels “that the piece is complete crap”, Dobbs’ piece and mode of thinking really impacted me. It’s crucial that we are constantly questioning, and reading with a grain of salt.

This led me to a major criticism of my own.

In the Lindstrom piece, there is no possibility raised that the reasoning behind the activation of brain areas associated with love, from the iPhone sounds (let’s suppose that’s what the fMRI shows), is what the iPhone means to that person. For many (I would say nearly all), of iPhone users, the purpose of that device is to connect them to those whom they love.

Now I’m not saying that people don’t really like their iPhones; hell I really do. But that being said, when using the word love; we must be careful.

In fact, I see the experiment as a mere finding of association. People don’t love objects; but love those individuals the objects connect them to, especially in the case of the iPhone.

Photo Credit [via]

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