13% of Americans Pretend to Use Cell Phones to Avoid Interaction

Honestly, how many of us have pretended to be using our mobile phones just to avoid talking to the person sitting or standing next to us?

In the U.S., about 13 percent of cell phone users fake being busy on their phones to avoid interacting with the people around them, according to a report published earlier this week by the Pew Research Center's Internet and American Life Project.

In a nationally representative telephone survey, the Pew Research team found that 83 percent of American adults own some kind of cell phone, which has become an integral part of everyday life.

The study found cell phones are used at least once by 51 percent of adults to get information they need right away. Twenty-seven percent of the respondents noted that they experienced a situation in the previous month in which they had trouble doing something because they didn't have their phone at hand.

Forty percent of cell phone owners said they found themselves in an emergency situation in which having their phone with them helped, while 42 percent said cell phones saved them from boredom.

About 29 percent of the respondents weren't too keen about being tied to their cell phones; those respondents said they turned their phone off for a period of time just to get a break from using it.

Twenty percent of the cell phone owners said they experienced frustration because their phone was taking too long to download something; about 16 percent had difficulty reading something on their phone because the screen was too small; and 10 percent had difficulty entering a lot of text on their phone.

Americans use the cell phone primarily for texting and clicking photographs, and 73 percent of respondents use their phones for both of these purposes. Other relatively common activities include sending photos or videos to others (54 percent of cell phone owners do this) as well as accessing the Internet (44 percent).

The survey says 35 percent of American adults own a smartphone of some kind, and these users take advantage of the wide ranging capabilities of their phones. Nine in 10 smartphone owners use text messaging or take pictures with their phones, while 8 in 10 use their phones to go online or send photos or videos to others.

Activities, such as downloading apps, watching videos, accessing social networking sites or posting multimedia content online, are almost entirely confined to the smartphone population.