Substitute Phone: For those who cannot give up their smartphones

Designer Klemens Schillinger has developed therapeutic phone-like objects to help smartphone addicts.

Addicted to your mobile phone? Try a Substitute Phone. (KLEMENS SCHILLINGER)

"Hey, can you look at me when I am talking to you?" Does it sound familiar?

As smartphones become an integral part of our lives, it's getting increasing difficult for people to actually pay attention to what is happening around them.

Smartphone addiction is fast becoming a problem, for children and adults alike. According to a recent study, smartphones are causing attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)-like symptoms among humans.

An Australian designer Klemens Schillinger has come up with an innovative idea to help people who cannot give up on their phones. His idea is to create a device that looks like a phone and features stone beads embedded on the surface.

Users can replicate smartphone-like gestures such as swipe up and down, or scrolling right or left or pinch to zoom on the device. Schillinger calls this concept a "Substitute Phone."

The idea is to help people who cannot resist reaching for their phone when they receive a notification. The Substitute Phone itself does not have any digital function, instead it focuses on helping "smartphone addicts to cope with withdrawal symptoms. The object as a therapeutic approach."

"You are sitting in the metro and are grabbing your smartphone at the first sign of boredom or because the person next to you just received a message. The shape of the Substitute Phone replicates an average smartphone, however, its functions are reduced to the movements we make hundreds of times on a daily basis," Schillinger explains on his website.

"The stone beads which are incorporated in the body let you scroll, zoom and swipe. there are no digital functions. The object, which some of us describe as a prosthesis, is reduced to nothing but the motions."

Schillinger told website Dezeen.com that he was inspired by a documentary that was based around a person who overcame smoking addiction by replacing his pipe with a wooden stick.

"It was the same thing, but without the nicotine, just the physical stimulation I remembered this and thought to make phones that would provide the physical stimulation but not the connectivity," he said.

Substitute Phone, however, Schillinger's second project aimed at helping users get rid of mobile phone addiction. He has conceptualised "Offline Lamps" that will only switch on when a user is willing to give up his smartphone.