Addiction to Electronics

You never leave home without it. Every five minutes, you feel the need to take it out and check it. “Has someone texted me?, What’s the latest news?, Am I being left out?” you might say. You might order food or look at comedic videos, perhaps call or text a friend.

It’s funny to think that technology has come so far because of addiction. Let’s lay some facts down, shall we? Yes, cell phone addiction is a real thing. Social media developers have designed their apps to be addictive and manipulative of your mind. The intermittent rewards you receive from your phone, in the forms of important texts or updates, are extremely similar to the rewards you get from gambling, and the addiction to your phone follows suit to how gambling addiction is described. Your attention span is slowly getting smaller from mindlessly using your phone.

At Granite Hills, students spend an average of 3.55 hours on their phones alone, and that’s only about 50% of how much time they spend on all their devices in total, which is an average of 7 hours. This is an alarming number considering that , according to TechAdvisor UK, pediatricians generally recommend a total of two hours per day on devices in total.

A 2017 study by Dscout, a market researcher company, found that on average, adult smartphone users spend 145 minutes on their phones per day. An additional study by BusinessInsider found that adults who use their phones in excess can damage their sleep schedules, eye function, and last but not least, their short term memory. Keep in mind that this excess is of 120 minutes, just two hours!

If you exhibit an increased tolerance or need for your phone, withdrawal or anxiety when you are away from your phone, or a dependence on your phone to alter your good or bad moods, then congratulations, you’re another statistic. But there are also steps you can take to begin to break free of your addiction.

For starters, get your phone out of your room, especially when you sleep. Every time you wake up and check your phone in the middle of the night or before you get out of bed, you are reinforcing your bad habit. You can also use your phone to limit the amount of time you spend on certain apps, such as the BreakFree app.

If you hate hearing your parents or grandparents say “Back in my day, we didn’t have those fancy smartphones,” then you’re not alone. But by breaking free of your dependency and addiction, you can become a healthier person, and prove them wrong, all in one foul swoop.