Your phone is… ring-ing (Photo: Ringly)

Do you feel like you’ve been spending too much time glued to your phone? If the answer is “yes,” comeand step into the world of Ringly.

We live in a world where checking our phones every couple of minutes is something completely normal. We’re scared that we’ll miss out on something, so we are stuck to the small screens. We await a text, an important phone call, or e-mail and as a result, our smart phones are always at arms length. They have grown way too close to us, we regard them as limbs that connect us to the rest of the world. Put simply: we grew completely and utterly addicted to them. This, however, is about to change.

If you’re one of those people who can’t go without their phones for an hour, Ringly was made for you. If, however, you’re still floating in a dream world where you think you’re not addicted to your phone, think again. When did you last check it? When did you last play on a gambling app with it? See? The findings of Gallup Polls further support this generalization that almost everyone is a phone addict: they found that among all phone owners in the US, 81% said that they kept their phones near at all times. What’s more, 41% of the Americans asked claimed that they usually check their phones a couple of times an hour. 11% of people said they did this every few minutes.

How would you like a phone for a leg?

Oh, it gets better. There is no explaining these survey results, that’s for sure. The University of Missouri conducted a test to see just how hooked student were to their “significant others.”

Russel Clayton (Photo: School of Journalism, Univesity Missouri)

Russell Clayton’s experiment turned out to be very revealing: 40 students’ phones started ringing across the room and they were unable to answer them. Clayton noticed that real, physiological changes went down in each student: “Their blood pressure and heart rate increased. Their self-report of anxiety and unpleasantness also increased,” he said to Time. The students worsened at solving word puzzles and reported a “physical lessening of themselves when they did not have their phones,” according to Time.

Larry Rosen, a psychology professor, has been studying phone-related behaviour for some years now. His findings show that the ultimate problem here is not that people are hooked on mobile gambling apps and other games. Phones affect us even if it’s not our own phone. As Time puts it, a phone’s “presence tends to make people anxious and perform more poorly on tasks.” No matter whose phone it is. Rosen said that these negative effects worsen when we’re talking about “heavy users”; they can get very anxious when their phones are not near them. “The heavy users, 10 minutes in they’re already anxious and their anxiety kept going up and up,” he said.

Enter Ringly, a viable solution for phone addiction

Good news: you don’t have to swear off your phone completely. The only thing you need to do is simple and sane: prioritize. Ringly will help you with the rest. This clever little invention (or shall I say accessory) will provide you with a perfect way to shake your addiction. It does just what is says on the website: they are a “line of connected rings that let you put your phone away and your mind at ease.” What does this mean? You download the app onto your iPhone and set what you want to receive notifications about. A birthday? A meeting? A text from your lover, or an e-mail from your employer?

Connect to your ring and it will keep you posted (Photo: Ringly)

Once you have given your list of priorities, all you have to do is put your phone very far away. And of course, put your Ringly ring on your finger. Don’t worry, once you receive that important e-mail or text message, the ring will vibrate to let you know. Unfortunately, this fashion-conscious design is made for women (at least for the time being,) but they have a wide array of colours to choose from, which is wonderful. The rings can be pre-ordered for USD 195, and will be shipped towards the end of the summer according to their website. If you hate waiting for your Ringly, look at it this way: it’s just as if you were waiting for a new gambling app: the wait is full of suspense and excitement, and in the end, you get what you want.