Are We Addicted to Our Smartphones?

Have you ever stopped and considered where your time had gone? You had been awake for 4hours but didn’t manage to do anything significant. Where did all that time go?

Whether you spent the first 45mins of your days scrolling through Instagram and facebook or watch 5 videos on Youtube or binged watch the last three episodes of Riverdale on Netflix. You have successfully accomplished nothing in the first few hours of your day. Can you relate to that??

Most of us don’t even realized we are doing it. I started a little experiment a couple weeks ago to see how much time I spent on my phone and on my computer doing completely unproductive things. I’ll talk about that in a youtube, but let’s just say I uncovered a pretty disturbing addiction.

Today, I want to talk specifically about smartphones but social medias are very closely tied in. Stay tuned for a video fully dedicated to social medias.

Upon doing research, I learned that the average daily use of a smartphone is 3h and people check their phone on average 150 times per day. Alarming statistics I know.

A multitude of research has proven that the use of smartphones can increase myopia, impact memory, concentration, mood, sleep and wellbeing.

It’s becoming increasingly known that electronic devices like smartphones, computers and even TVs emit something called blue light which disrupt the circadian rhythm of your body and lowers your melatonin levels, all of which disrupts your sleep.

And on top of that, you waste some precious time everyday. Algorithms are created everyday to keep you hooked as long as possible and to entertain your addiction to novelty. Novelty creates a variable reward where dopamine is released in your brain. Games keep you hooked on a compulsive loop.

Furthermore, smartphone devices can be especially distracting with their unceasing notification bells, and banners, and badges. Because we use technology so much on a daily basis, most of us suffer from self-created ADD. ADD is a clinical term for attention deficit disorder, and although some people are born with the disorder, most us do experiences a lot of the symptoms due to inability to turn off our devices. The lack of focus we experience can even create long term dysfunction in the brain. It is really serious.

used an app called Moment to track my smartphone activity and to track my internet consumption, I used a Chrome extension called Time Stats.

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