Smartphones may help in a lot of ways but vigilance is necessary.

Smartphones may help in a lot of ways but vigilance is necessary.
Photo Credit: cbc.ca

Cellphone use is not all sweetness and honey

A series of recent studies finds that cellphone users in Canada can a pay a pretty hefty price–financially, emotionally and psychologically–for their use.

Start with financial cost.

The telecom research firm, tefficient, has released its 14th analysis of data usage in 32 countries and found that Canadian providers charge the most for data and are raking in more revenue per gigabyte than any country in the world.

The result: Canadian consumers tend to make limited use of their cellphones. So do users in the other most expensive data countries, which tefficient listed as Belgium, Germany, the Czech Republic and the Netherlands.

On the flip side, consumers make way more use of their cellphones in countries such as Finland, where generous data plans are available,

Ok, so some of us Canadians possess the ability to cut down on our use. Others among us do not.

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission released a study last week that found that a “sizable” number of Canadians (21 per cent) suffer from “bill shock,” when their bill is higher than expected due to surprise charges.

The study found that almost half of people surveyed (46 per cent) paid data overage fees in the past year. Seventeen per cent said they got hit with added charges three times or more.

The CRTC study said the results suggest that Canadians are struggling to track how much data they use.

Some really struggle.

Earlier this month, the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto found that nearly one in five young adults aged 18 to 29 in Ontario (19 per cent) showed “moderate to severe problems” in their use of smartphones and other electronic devices, including an uncontrollable need to use them.

That compared with 2.2 per cent of respondents aged 30 or over.

The Centre of Addiction normally examines trends in the use of alcohol, drugs and tobacco, but included a study of use of electronic devices for the first time in 2015.

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