Smartphone addiction is real. Just ask Ashton Kutcher.
The TV star-turned-startup investor has teamed up with Motorola on a set of new commercials that spotlight just how dependent we are on our phones.
“I think the phone has almost become the new refrigerator,” Kutcher says. “We’ve all had that experience where we go to our refrigerator and open up the door and we stand there and look inside and then we close the door without ever taking anything out.”
Other videos in the ad campaign tested people’s smartphone addiction or love, by asking questions like, “Would you rather go a day without your phone or text your ex that you’re thinking about them?”
The actor, who portrayed Steve Jobs in a movie about the Apple cofounder’s life, has been a Motorola fan ever since the company made pagers back in the ’90s. His current deal with the company is an extension of his longtime partnership with Lenovo, where he had the role of “product engineer,” working on projects like the company’s Yoga tablets. Lenovo went on to acquire Motorola last year.
“People are trying to turn their phones into almost like a Swiss army knife, that this one device can do everything. But that the problem with that is that it compromises the user experience in a lot of ways,” he says, noting battery life can often suffer at the expense of features. “What we’re doing a lot of thinking about in the future is how do we uncouple some of these things that we want our phones to do in a really smart way and make it a more efficient device.”
