The smartphone. Everyone has one these days. Most can’t live without these devices. Too bad that we all seem to love them a little bit too much. A minute without our smart phone looks like fever to us. If it will be possible, most people don't mind getting married to their smart phone -- am very sure that one day, this might happen. Lol!
When’s The Last Time You Had A Good Night’s Sleep?
How many times have you gone to bed, only to grab your phone and start checking the news, emails, or social media? Or maybe you want to take one last hit of that addictive game you found the other day?
All those apps are stealing sleep from us. When we go to bed, our phones should as well. But that never happens. As we lie there, we hear the sweet siren call of that little unassuming device. Before we know it, our smartphones are back in control and entertaining us with information.
That’s not all a smartphone does, though. No, it needs more than just information. It needs a way to influence us and push back the tiredness and the night. By shining just a little blue light from its screen, it can suppress melatonin and stimulate our brains. Now we don’t feel tired anymore and can pay more attention to our phones.
With all that additional focus, we can really get into that game and get some adrenaline flowing through our systems. Or we can read through those emails and feel the stress from our colleagues telling us just what new nightmares are headed our way at work tomorrow.
Even when we’re done with our phones, all that adrenaline or stress makes our minds too busy to think about sleep. So we lie in bed bored. Eventually, the boredom is too much so we go back to our smartphones. Before long, it’s time to get up and start another day.
Loved Ones Don’t Want To Compete For Our Attention
It’s known as phubbing. Focusing on our smartphones instead of engaging romantically with our loved ones is a big problem. Our smartphones were supposed to bring people together and make the world more connected.
But sometimes, it may bring the wrong people together at the wrong time. While we are busy connecting to coworkers, friends on the other side of the world, or that unknown opponent we are currently crushing, we are distant from the people in the same room with us.
When our loved ones want to connect with us but can’t pull us away from our phones, they’re not happy. If we cannot give the people in our relationships the time and attention they deserve, they are rightfully discontented. Everyone’s relationship satisfaction suffers, and our loved ones will often feel jealous of our smartphones.
If so, our relationships will not be strong. Furthermore, if we can’t pry ourselves away from our phones long enough to notice and fix these problems, how can our human relationships survive? Before we know it, our relationships with our smartphones will be the only meaningful ones we have left.
We Can’t Actually Talk To Someone These Days
Long ago, people would interact with each other through face-to-face communication. With the intimacy and bonds produced by that type of social contact, people were able to connect with each other and build strong relationships.
Over time, technology has become a middleman in our conversations, whether through emails, text messages, self-checkout machines, or social media. In so many situations, people don’t directly communicate with each other anymore.
The use of smartphones has been linked to loneliness and shyness in individuals. It’s tough when you are lonely and crave interactions with others, yet you are too shy to actually go out and make those contacts. A study of 414 university students in China showed that the more lonely and shy a person was, the more likely he was to be addicted to his smartphone.
We Just Don’t Have Time To Get Anything Done Anymore
Do you ever feel like you just don’t have time anymore? Like the world has become so busy that it’s hard to keep up? How much do you use your smartphone?
We are all fairly attached to our smartphones. Those little devices are good at snatching our attention, making sure they are never far from us, and keeping us coming back often for any updates they might offer.
Perhaps our struggles with and management of time all start with our smartphones. Constantly getting all those little updates from our phones and then waiting and hoping for the next update releases a bit of dopamine in our brains. This makes us happy and excited and also keeps us coming back for more.
Looking for those hits of dopamine, we end up spending more time than we realize on our phones when we could be taking care of all those other things we never seem to have time for.
