Four Stocks for Cell-Phone Mania

Editor's Note: Jon D. Markman writes a weekly column for CNBC on MSN Money that is republished here on TheStreet.com.

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When you get in your car, you reach for it. When you're at work, you take a break to have a moment alone with it. When you get into an elevator, you fondle it.

Cigarettes? Cup of coffee? Nope, it's the third most addictive substance in modern life: the cell phone. And experts say it is becoming more difficult for many people to curb their longing to hug it more tightly than most of their personal relationships.

With its shiny surfaces, its sleek and satisfying touch, its mysteries and air of sophistication, the cell phone connects us to the world even as it disconnects us from people three feet away. In just the past couple of years, the cell phone has challenged individuals, employers, manufacturers and therapists in ways its inventors in the late 1940s never imagined.

The costs are becoming ever more evident, and I don't mean just the monthly bill. Dr. Chris Knippers, a counselor at the Betty Ford Center in Southern California, reports that the overuse of cell phones has become a social problem for tens of thousands of Americans not much different from other harmful addictions: an obstacle to one-on-one personal contact, and an escape from reality.

Sounds extreme, but we've all witnessed the evidence: The guy at a restaurant who talks on the phone through an entire meal, ignoring his kids around the table. The woman who yaks on the phone in the car, ignoring her husband. The teen who text-messages all the way home from school, avoiding contact with kids all around him.