ABSTRACT
The astounding popularity of the smartphone is evident in our daily lives. A smartphone is defined as follows: a cellular telephone with built-in applications and Internet access. In addition to digital voice service, modern smartphones provide text messaging, e-mail, Web browsing, still and video cameras, MP3 player and video playback and calling. Smartphones run myriad free and paid applications, turning the once single-minded cellphone into a mobile personal computer. For many people it would seem that these phones are often used to assuage a kind of loneliness they feel, and using them can be seen as an attempt to deal with a feeling of alienation and a sense of isolation, a consequence, some would say, of the modern world and technology that both empower us and, at the same time, alienate us. Erik Erikson, a psychoanalyst, has a theory about human development that can be used to help us understand the role that smartphones play in our lives.
