Our handsets have changed the way we live our lives in just a couple of years. Now, we can’t live without our smartphones. It’s a hugely convenient and productive tool that helps us in all aspects of our daily lives: work, socialization, family, personal, household, travel, health and nutrition, fitness, and news to name a few.
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However, there’s a catch. People also have a tendency to rely too much on their smartphones, resulting to what is so-called smartphone addiction. Smartphone addiction is when you use your smartphone so compulsively that it starts to interfere with your personal life, work life, health, and relationships.
You probably have a smartphone addiction when you spend more time huddled and fiddling on your phone’s screen than interacting with your family or with people around you. You also have to repeatedly and constantly check your phone even if there are no notifications sounding off, If you exhibit these preliminary symptoms, you have to reassess your smartphone use.
Smartphone Addiction Problems
Smartphone addiction is often fueled by another addiction: the internet or social media. Afterwards, it’s the compulsion to look at the screen that pulls you to your phone.
Still, as with any addiction, many problems arise. Here are a few of them:
1. Superficial relationships. Addiction to your smartphone is most probably triggered and fed by social networks, games, apps, and texting to the point that it replaces or becomes more important than your real relationships. Take for example people who gather together in a restaurant or a coffee shop, but they ignore each other for most of the time as they’re engaged in smartphones instead.
2. Problems arising from compulsion. Many people resort to smartphones to accomplish many things, and this includes their own vices. Gambling, pornography, online shopping, and many other activities, when left unchecked, can lead to financial, social, career damages.
3. Lowered productivity. Spending too much time on your smartphone, even intermittently during the day, can lead to hours wasted over trivialities, checking newsfeeds or searching on Google. This can cause you to turn your attention away from other, more important or even more immediate, aspects of your life.
Smartphone Addiction Effects
- Increased loneliness and isolation leading to depression
- Increased anxiety
- Attention deficit disorder
- Distraction from more important tasks
- Diminished ability to focus
- Diminished ability to think critically and creatively
- Sleep disturbances
- Encouraged vanity and self-absorption (narcissism)
Red flags of smartphone addiction
Here are the warning signs that that you have a smartphone addiction:
- finding yourself catching up on work because you spent all your time on your smartphone
- trouble completing tasks or chores at home
- coming in late for work because you spent a lot of your time on your smartphone
- isolation and alienation from family and friends
- sneaking off to use your smartphone
- fear of missing out on things that are on the newsfeeds
- feeling dread or panic when you left your smartphone at home or when your battery runs out
While smartphone addiction doesn’t really require treatment into a rehab facility, it is best to talk to a professional if your smartphone use has led to damaging many aspects in your life.
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