Smart phones are sucking into our private time. Picture: ThinkStock Source: Supplied
AS our phones are getting smarter, Australians are becoming the dummies as they lose the battle of work and life balance.
Social analyst Mark McCrindle yesterday said research which he would publish next month showed the reliance on smart phones in our daily lives meant work was increasingly taking over private time.
The Australian research reflects a new British study which found smart phones were adding up to two hours to people's working day, or a whopping 460 hours a year.
The study by UK technology retailer Pixmania found people spent up to two hours a day of their own time making work calls or sending work emails.
Nearly two-thirds of people said they checked work emails just before going to bed and as soon as they woke up.
Another study by TripAdvisor found half of people checked their work emails while on holiday.
The Australian Work and Life Index 2012, published by the University of South Australia's Centre for Work+Life, found 40 per cent of workers take home work on a regular basis.
The Australian Institute, which promotes the annual Go Home On Time Day on November 21, recently released a study into the "polluted time" that blurred the work and home lie boundaries
It found a quarter of Australians say their boss has given them a technology device, such as a smart phone, which resulted in them working more outside of work hours.
The biggest complaint Australian workers had about their take-home technology was the constant intrusion of office email.
"The morphing of the categories of life is a phenomenon that the smart phones have brought about," Mr McCrindle said.
His research into the impact of smart phones on our daily lives has found:
*As many people use their smart phone as their daily time piece (43 per cent) as there are who still use a watch (43 per cent).
*More people (45 per cent) use their smart phone to wake them up in the morning than those who use an alarm clock (41 per cent).
*As many people use their smart phone to check the weather as those who watch TV weather reports.
"It surely has become this appendage of our life, so it has those impacts on our social time," Mr McCrindle said.
"We truly are always on, we're always connected, we're always contactable.
"This idea of work-life balance implies that is separated from life and that is not the case now, particularly in this era of bring your own device."
0 comments:
Post a Comment