When you get in your car, you reach for it. When you're at work, you take a break to have a moment alone with it. When you get into a lift, you play with it. Cigarette? Cup of coffee? No, it's the third most addictive thing in modem life, the cell phone. And experts say it is becoming more difficult for many people to _ their longing to hug it more tightly than most of their personal relationships. The costs are becoming more and more evident, and I don't mean just the monthly bill. Dr. Chris Knippers, a counselor at the Betty ford Center in Southern California, reports that the overuse of cell phones has become a social problem not much different from other harmful addictions: a barrier to one-on-one personal contact, and an escape from reality. Sounds extreme, but we' ve all witnessed the evidence: The person at a restaurant who talks on the phone through an entire meal, ignoring his kids around the table; the woman who talks on the phone in the car, ignoring her husband; the teen who texts messages all the way home from school, avoiding contact with kids all around him. Jim Williams, an industrial sociologist based in Massachusetts, notes that cell - phone addiction is part of a set of symptoms in a widening gulf of personal separation. He points to a study by Duke University researchers that found one-quarter of Americans say they have no one to discuss their most important personal business with. Despite the growing use of phones, e - mail and instant messaging, in other words, Williams says studies show that we don't have as many friends as our parents.  " Just as more information has led to less wisdom, more acquaintances via the Internet and cell phones have produced fewer friends," he says. If the cell phone has truly had these effects, it's because it has become very widespread. Consider that in 1987, there were only l million cell phones in use.  Today, something like 300 million Americans carry them. They far outnumber wired phones in the United States. The example of a woman talking on the phone in the car supports the idea that  _    .
women Use cell phones more often than men talking on the phone while driving is dangerous cell phones do not necessarily bring people together cell phones make one - on - one personal contact easy