So please stop publishing garbage studies that claim otherwise.
There's a new unsourced, unlinked report of a study that claims "teenagers prefer smartphones over sex" making the rounds today. How many times must this bullshit be published before people lose interest? My colleague Rachel Sugar rounded up a bunch of these fake studies at The Date Report, and here at Hooksexup we covered a study that said people need a phone and a TV more than sex. All of these studies are simply untrue.
This current mysterious study, which I encountered at the Times of India, claims that 26 percent of American teenagers surveyed said they couldn't live without their phone, while 20 percent said they couldn't live without sex. What does that even mean?
First of all, "I can't live without my phone" is hyperbole. Of course you can live without your phone. Life would be less convenient, sure, but you wouldn't die. A 17-year-old in the year 2014 was alive for a decade before the iPhone hit the market, so even teenagers have lived without a smartphone. So what does this study actually mean when it says "26 percent of teenagers can't live without their phone?" If a teenager was lost in the desert with no water, and all they had was their Samsung Galaxy S5, then yes, they would die without it. The phone to call someone to save them, the GPS to be located, Vine so they don't die of boredom. But that's not what this is about.
Second of all, people would die without sex. And by "people," I mean human beings as a race. Individuals don't die from not having sex, which is what this survey is confined to. But taking a larger, literal view, it makes no sense to say "I can't live without sex" when reproduction is one of the primary biological purposes of a human body. Reproduction isn't mandatory for sex, but that's why sex is so great. Sex is an incentive to make babies.
This is simple stuff that everyone knows, and you're probably reading this saying "duh," but these universal truths are what this study and studies like it are contradicting. "People prefer their phones to sex." Okay, putting aside the fact that this is a false dichotomy and a choice that no one will ever have to make, if forced to choose, most people would choose sex. "Would you rather never again experience physical intimacy with another person and deprive yourself of one of life's most fundamental pleasures, or never play Candy Crush?" Tinder is great, but the point of Tinder is to find someone to connect with. Tinder can't go down on you.
So no more of these studies, please. There's enough misinformation already.
Image via Veer.