The site contains a set of reports on mobile usage by country, but also makes the entire dataset of the research available as both a file and also via an interactive charting tool.

Being from the UK I was particularly interested in the report for here which has the following observations in its Executive Summary:

• Smartphones have become an indispensable part of our daily lives
• Smartphones have transformed consumer behaviour
• Smartphones help users navigate the world
• Smartphones have changed the way consumers shop
• Smartphones help advertisers connect with consumers

There are a number of really interesting statistics too:

• Smartphone penetration has grown from 30% in 2011 to 51% in 2012
• 78% of smartphone owners don’t leave home without their device
• 72% of smartphone owners use them at work
• 64% of smartphone owners access the Internet at least once a day and emailing is still the most popular usage
• 21% would rather give up the TV than their smartphone
• 80% of people use their smartphone while doing other things, 55% of them while watching the TV
• and many more…

This would ring true from what I am seeing out-and-about, and the observations are similar across the globe.

Here’s one of the charts for men of my age group and the importance of the smartphone, 74% won’t leave home without their phone and 20% would rather give up their computer than give up their smartphone:

There are 10 stages and 130km for you to explore, recorded in HD by hikers travelling from Thusis (Switzerland) to Tirano (Italy). With an interactive map to show you were you are and links to places of interest it’s really well done.

The soundtrack is pretty amazing too, because the hikers have managed to stay silent throughout so all you experience are the crunch of boots and the ambient noises of the area.

A group of scientists at the Department of Psychosocial Science, University of Bergen, Norway have been developing a scale to measure levels of addiction:

The Bergen Facebook Addiction Scale (BFAS).—This scale comprised 18
items, three for each of the six core features of addiction: salience, mood
modification, tolerance, withdrawal, conflict, and relapse. Each item is
scored on a 5-point scale using anchors of 1: Very rarely and 5: Very often.
Higher scores indicate greater Facebook addiction.

The full report is here.

This scale is specifically aimed at measuring Facebook addiction as a special case inside the broader class of Internet addiction that others are also studying. They’re not using Facebook as a metaphor for all forms of social networking, they are directly looking at people who are addicted to Facebook. That’s a scary thought.

The Independent reported it this way:

It gets into your blood, consuming your thoughts and inducing panic attacks if the next fix is not in sight.

On a good day, it might offer a harmless escape from the troubles of the world.

But on a bad, it can turn into a monstrous distraction, rendering you unable to concentrate on work or studies.

The drug is Facebook, and if you fear you may be an addict, now is the time to find out.

Researchers tested a scientific scale on 423 students which measures how hooked users are.

They found women are more at risk of addiction because of the social nature of the site.

The Norwegian team found ambitious types are less likely to become addicted as they take advantage of the site for their own purposes, such as work and networking.

My favourite line from the study report is this one:

People scoring high on narcissism tend to be more active on social network sites, as social network sites provide an opportunity to present oneself in a favorable way in line with one’s ideal self.

Does this remind you of someone you know?

For centuries we’ve known that productivity is heavily influenced by the number of hours we work. We know that we have to put in the hours if we are going to produce anything, but we also know that if we work too many hours our productivity decreases. Put simply – there’s a limit to how much you can produce in a week.

Inc. returned to this subject this week – Stop Working More Than 40 Hours a Week:

The workaholics (and their profoundly misguided management) may think they’re accomplishing more than the less fanatical worker, but in every case that I’ve personally observed, the long hours result in work that must be scrapped or redone.

This article was written on the back of the announcement that Sheryl Sandberg the Chief Operating Officer at Facebook leaves work at 17:30 every day to be with her family. That this is newsworthy is itself a testament to the state of the modern working environment.

The Inc. article is a good summary of the issue, but there’s one part that I’d quite like to comment on:

Proponents of long work weeks often point to the even longer average work weeks in countries like Thailand, Korea, and Pakistan–with the implication that the longer work weeks are creating a competitive advantage.

However, the facts don’t bear this out.  In six of the top 10 most competitive countries in the world (Sweden, Finland, Germany, Netherlands, Denmark, and the United Kingdom), it’s illegal to demand more than a 48-hour work week.  You simply don’t see the 50-, 60-, and 70-hour work weeks that have become de rigeur in some parts of the U.S. business world.

As a worker in the United Kingdom I can tell you that while these details are technically correct, they aren’t practically correct, as least not from my perspective. I know many people in Britain who regularly put in 50, 60, 70 hour working weeks and have done so for an extended periods of time. For them these kind of working hours have become de rigeur. We have traditionally had quite a lax implementation of the working time directive so it’s not really appropriate to assume that people work less than 48 hours because that’s what the law says.

It’s personally very interesting that five countries (50%) who, I understand, implement the working time directive in a more stringent way are ahead of the UK in the Global Competitive Report. So in that respect the article still makes a very valid point, we still have a lot of lessons to learn.