Are You Lucky for not Having A Phone?

Could you be lucky by not having a phone these days? Having a smartphone is pretty common today except many are addicted or fear being addicted to it. I think many would agree that they fear having smartphone addiction. We are connected to smartphones, computers, and more almost every day. A lot of the time it is for work but for teens today we are constantly looking for digital rewards and micro-feedback. This issue is important to me because as a teen living in the U.S. today, I realize how much I am on my phone and with virtual school being a thing, I spend practically my whole day looking at a screen. It might not affect us now because we are young but in the future, the tendency is only to get worse.

These are the results of two surveys conducted in 2014-15 and in 2018 to find out how long most teens are online.

Smartphone Addiction is also known as nomophobia, which is the fear of being without a mobile phone. This usually results from the overuse of the internet. This overuse can lead to many negative effects. According to this article, it can lead to depression, suicide, interference with how productive we are, and even with our sleep. I know many of my friends who always complain about having a messed up sleep schedule. They will usually sleep at 3:00 in the morning and have to wake up at 6-7pm for school with no motivation to do anything. There is even a new term called “tech neck”. According to the same article, “The position of hunching over a smartphone for 8 – 10 hours a day takes a toll on physical health. Sitting with the head down puts stress and pressure on the back and spine, which is bad for posture and increases the risk of neck and back issues.” This is something that many teens have, myself included.

This image shows eventually how our posture is going to be. Having a stiff neck is painful because your neck will start to hurt and there is nothing to stop it.

We still are young, we still have time to correct or prevent ourselves from the negative consequences. Some things we can do are: remove apps that are time-consuming from our phones and start accessing them through a different device that we don’t carry around like our phones. Iphones have a new update that allows us to know how much time we spent on our phones. It even allows us to set limits to certain apps. It is called Screen Time.

https://www.macrumors.com/2019/04/28/apple-statement-parental-control-app-crackdown/

This research has opened my eyes to many things such as dopamine, micro-feedback, and having a tech neck. It has also shown me that part of the reason for teens’ depression or anxiety is because of our excessive use of our phones. Now that you know some ways to prevent or stop yourself from having Smartphone addiction, will you apply these methods?

Annotated Bibliography