Compliance Management, Privacy, Security Strategy, Plan, Budget

One in 10 millennials would give up a finger for their smartphone

A tenth of millennials would rather sacrifice a finger than give up their smartphone with one anonymous female respondents reporting that her device was so integrated into her life that she couldn't possibly live without it.

For those respondents uninterested in simulating Yubitsume, the Japanese ritual of atoning for offences and or to show remorse by amputating portions of one's own finger, were willing to give up other worldly pleasures for their electronics with 16 percent willing to stop traveling and 15 percent would be willing to give up sex to keep their phones, according to a Tappable study.

The firm surveyed 500 U.K. males and females aged 18-24 and learned that nearly a quarter, 23 percent, would choose their smart phones over their five senses with smell registering as the most common sense to be sacrificed, polling at 64 percent.

“We talk a lot about how millennials are tech dependent,” Director of Research at The Center for Generational Kinetics, Elli Denison, said in the release. “Losing a finger or one of the senses is an extreme way to frame it, but the bottom line is younger generations are completely immersed in technology, particularly mobile devices, and feel extreme dependency.”

Denison went on to say there are no signs of the generation slowing down. Fortunately, not all respondents were willing to choose mutilation over their smartphone as 38 percent would simply be willing to give up drinking. It is unclear what percent if any of the 62 percent who wouldn't give up alcohol were too drunk to realize they were giving up a finger for their phone. 

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