The Weekly Round-Up: Smartphone addiction, iPhone vs coffee and department wars

Smartphones in the loo, iPhones in the office and why marketing must make peace with IT...

Hi, my name is the Round-Up and I am an addict.

Yes, like one in three UK adults, I'm addicted to my iPhone.

Admittedly, as far as addictions go, it's a pretty modest one. So far the Round-Up hasn't felt the need to turn to crime to feed its mounting app addiction. But who knows? First it was one free app a day, but now I'm buying three 99p ones a day. Soon I'll be onto the really hard stuff like the £50 sat-nav apps...

According to research by telecoms watchdog Ofcom, one in three adults and two in three teens are now "highly addicted" to their smartphones.

Now if you're not quite sure what a smartphone looks like, why not check out our photo gallery of BlackBerrys through the ages while you're here, or find out why people will swap donuts, coffee and their precious holiday for the right to use an iPhone at work.

The Ofcom research also found that teens are ditching traditional activities in favour of their smartphone - a quarter watch less TV and 15 per cent read fewer books, although it's unclear if smartphone use has had any impact on levels of other teen habits such as moping, surliness and backchat.

Two-thirds of teens and over half of adults admit to using their smartphone while out with friends. Top tip: the Round-Up finds checking Twitter is an excellent way of avoiding buying a round when it's your turn.

A quarter of adults and a third of teenagers have used them during mealtimes and one in five adults and nearly half of teenage smartphone users admitted using or answering the phone in the bathroom or toilet.

Which means next time you call someone and it sounds suspiciously echoey, and they claim they're standing near to errr, a waterfall, well you'll know exactly what's going on.

Just be grateful you didn't make it a video call.

Teenagers are also more likely to use their smartphone in places they've been asked to switch their phone off such as the cinema or library - with 27 per cent admitting doing so, compared with 18 per cent of adults. This is, of course, the stuff that drives adults absolutely insane, which is exactly why the kids do it.

Predictably, mainstream response to this research has been divided pretty much evenly into two, mostly either jealous a) "How can kids afford an iPhone? In my day I had to make do with a hoop and a stick" or the standard technophobic b) "This just proves smartphones are the end of family life/ civilisation in general', with the odd c) "Lolz, tru dat. Sent from my iPhone", thrown in by one of the few teens who haven't given up reading entirely.

Attached at the hip

But it's not just the kids. A separate piece of research out this week shows office workers are happily abandoning all social graces in order to worship their shiny, shiny gadgets.

During face-to-face meetings, four out of 10 workers admit to...