I grab my smartphone first thing in the morning for two reasons 1) my phone has replaced my bulky alarm clock and 2) I don't have a regular cellphone to grab like our esteemed colleague, Jonathan Lutton.
I'll start by saying that I have many problems with this article—and the seemingly endless permutations of it that are all just trying to get advertising revenue from your click (seriously, haven't we all seen a million "you're addicted to your laptop/cellphone" articles), but my biggest problem with it, and the problem that I'm going to focus on, taking you all on a wild tangent with me for a moment, is that the author of the article has no idea what the word "addiction" means.
An addiction is not just a habitual, reflexive action, it is a habitual, reflexive, obsessive action that brings negative consequences into one's life. I'm afraid I only have this wiki article to back me up (httpCOLON//enDOTwikipediaDOTorg/wiki/Addiction), so you're going to have to trust me when I say that checking a smartphone app first thing in the morning is not an addiction, it is a habit and it can be resolved without a trip to a rehab clinic. The word "addiction" has become so sensationalized in articles and magazines that it has almost completely lost its meaning to a lot of people.
Now I know that some of you are pulling away from my argument, so let me bring things back by saying that yes, there are people in the world with legitimate addictions to certain aspects of technology (internet, phone, gaming, etc) that do need help. For example, there was a Korean couple that allowed their baby to die while they were playing World of Warcraft (httpCOLONwwwDOTeurogamerDOTnet/articles/news200605wowbaby). But there is a problem with overusing the term because it can become either an overlooked issue or something that becomes over-examined. In China, for example, internet addiction is perceived as a major national problem and camps very similar to "fat camps" have formed to combat this addiction. A few years ago, one such camp managed to kill a kid during its program (httpCOLONarticlesDOTlatimesDOTcom/2009/aug/22/world/fg-china-beatings22).
To sum up: yes, there are legitimate addictions, but most of us have simple incorporated the internet and technology into our daily lives and the line between use and addiction is not nearly so thin as some people would like to paint it.