The Smartphone: A Step Back For Mankind

Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat are the most popular social media networks where the teens of this generation spend most of their days via smartphones. Hours upon hours are spent laying on the couch or in bed, glued to their smartphones instead of experiencing the world around them. Adults are guilty of this as well. Smartphones seems to bring more harm than good. People tend to spend more time on their mobile phones than they do talking to their families. They damage people’s eyes, ears, relationships, interpersonal communication skills, sleep ability, and much more. Even so, people continue to use their smartphones for the majority of their time. People have become dependent, many addicted, to their smartphones which have proven to cause depression, anxiety, and an increase in suicides across the country. Although they add entertainment to our days, smartphones damage the quality of life.

People seem to have difficulty talking to each other in person nowadays. So much communication is done via e-mail, text, social media, and other forms of instant messaging; people forgot how to have a proper conversations in real life. There are so many acronyms and emojis that people use in daily conversations via smartphones that when they are faced with in-person confrontation it is a struggle for them. The minimal face-to-face conversations have led to the lack of an individual’s interpersonal communication skills. A study conducted by Andrew K. Przybylski and Netta Weinstein of the University of Essex showed that simply having a phone nearby, without even checking it, can be detrimental to our attempts at interpersonal connection. Their research suggests that “cell phones may serve as a reminder of the wider network to which we could connect, inhibiting our ability to connect with the people right next to us.” It is truly upsetting to see people ignoring the world around them and the people around them all because they have lost the ability to communicate; they are too far out of touch with the real world. The concepts of friendship and networking both depend on an individual to have interpersonal skills to communicate. People cannot form strong relationships, intimately or friendly, without being able to hold a meaningful and/or intelligent conversation with others.

It is common for people to spend more time on their phones rather than building stronger relationships with their family, friends and significant others. Young people in relationships are falling victim to the desire of the smartphones. It is extremely common to be out at a restaurant and see young people on dates who are attached to their phones rather than their romantic partner sitting right across from them. This would be considered “phubbing”; a combination of the words “phone” and “snubbing”. Meredith David and James Roberts, professors from Baylor University, conducted a study that surveyed 175 adults in romantic relationships from across the United States and had them fill out our questionnaire and complete a nine-item Partner Phubbing Scale that measured how often some felt “phubbed” by his or her partner’s smartphone use. 70 percent of participants said that phubbing hurt their ability to interact with their romantic partners. These truly mindboggling results prove that smartphones have the ability to destroy relationships. People value their smartphones over conversations with their romantic partner’s. Instead of hearing about their loved one’s goals, dreams, how their day went, and whatever else they want to share, they would rather be deep into their smartphone surfing the web or scrolling through social media. Phubbing is definitely a relationship killer.

Smartphones endanger the lives of every driver. It is against the law to be on your phone while driving, yet people commit this crime daily.  According to a study conducted by Cambridge Mobile Telematics, “52% of all wrecks, drivers have been on their phones. These aren’t just fender benders—29% of drivers were doing over 65mph.” It also concluded that browsing social media, texting and email on a smartphone are the most common distractions; “the average duration of distractions was 135 seconds.” People try to argue that having a hands-free device is an easy solution to the problem; it is not. USA Today published the article “Cellphone use causes over 1 in 4 car accidents” provided the evidence that only 5% of cellphone-related crashes occur because the driver is texting. Most of the accidents involved drivers who were distracted while talking on handheld or hands-free cellphones. Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University found that drivers who are listening to someone talk on their phone have 37% reduced brain activity. They say that making devices hands-free or voice-activated is not sufficient to eliminate distractions while driving. The use of smartphones in any way while driving is a huge risk; one that is not worth taking. A text, email or social media post on a smartphone is not more valuable than a person’s life. Is sending a short text consisting of only a few characters worth risking your life? All it takes is one glance down at the phone and a fatal accident can occur.

Smartphones have become a huge distraction in our daily lives. Being present is an essential part of accomplishing goals or completing tasks. If a person is at school, their mind should be focused on the lecture or their assignment for the day, not on their cellphone or about their favorite celebrity’s social media posts. Even worse, people have developed an emotional attachment to their smartphones. Their whole world, socially, is in their phone. This results in many people becoming addicted to their phones. Engagement with smartphones releases a chemical called dopamine; this is why people get happy when they receive multiple texts and/or get a lot of likes on social media posts. As Simon Sinek pointed out during a YouTube interview for Inside Quest, “when you get a hit of dopamine it feels good. That’s why we like it, that’s why we keep going back to it. Dopamine is the exact same chemical that makes us feel good when we smoke, drink and gamble.” It is highly addictive. Because dopamine is released frequently when people are spending hours on their phones texting, tweeting, liking, and sharing on social media, they feel content in wasting their days on smartphones and do not realize their addiction. This is why children and teens get so angry and throw a fit when a parent tries to take their phone away. It is as if the parent is ripping their best friend away from them. Children should be hanging out with their friends at the park or playing board games with their siblings not wasting their days attached to their phone; times certainly have changed. Another example of smartphone addiction is the emotional distress a person feels when they lose or drop their smartphone. People’s emotive reactions vary from sad to anger to hopelessness to depression. Most people will spend any amount of money to replace their smartphone as soon as possible for fear that they will miss something. To think that a material object can hold so much power over a person’s emotional state is sad yet pathetic. There was a time before smartphones where people actually made an effort to hang out with others in the real world and their emotional worries or concerns came from interaction with other people not a silly little phone.

Late at night is when people use the excuse to go on their smartphones to decompress from their busy day. However, this is the worst time to use your smartphone; in your dark room before you go to bed. In a study conducted by Dr. Gregory Marcus, associate Professor of Medicine at the University of California San Francisco, 635 participants downloaded an app that would monitor their smartphone activity. The app would allow Marcus and his associates to collect the participants on-screen time data throughout the day. Dr. Marcus concluded, “when we looked at smartphone use around the time when participants reported they went to bed, more smartphone use around that time in particular was associated with a longer time to fall asleep and worse sleep quality during the night.” Another study published by Science Translational Medicine found that the amount of caffeine in a double espresso has less of an effect on sleep schedule than bright light exposure from a smartphone at night. The light exposure can actually suppress melatonin to push back sleep time twice as long as coffee does; melatonin is the hormone that helps with sleep timing. People who do not sleep enough are also prone to depression and anxiety. Checking posts on social media or texting are not worth losing sleep over; especially not such a substantial amount that smartphones take away.

Not only does smartphone activity at night cause one to develop sleeping problems, it can cause eye damage. The list of vision problems caused by smartphones includes muscle strain, sore eyes, headaches, blurred vision, headaches, and dry eye. According to the American Macular Degeneration Foundation, the most extreme damage that smartphones can cause to the eyes is macular degeneration. The foundation warns that retinal damage caused by blue light may lead to macular degeneration, which causes the loss of central vision; in simpler terms, the ability to see what is in front of you. Mary Meeker’s “Internet Trends 2014 Report” found that the average American spends 444 minutes staring at screens every day. 151 of those minutes are spent staring at the screen of a smartphone. Spending this much time staring at a screen causes myopia, also known as nearsightedness. The National Eye Institute reports that by 2030, 40 million Americans will suffer from myopia; it is currently at 34 million. The dangers of smartphone usage to the eyes needs to be taken seriously. A phone is nowhere near as important as a person’s vision. Think of it this way, people will not even be able to use a smartphone if they cannot see it because of all the eye damage they have accumulated.

The numerous health problems already stated: stress, depression, anxiety, blindness, and sleep deprivation, are just the beginning of the long list of health conditions caused by smartphones. Germs are a big factor in many of the illnesses. Research from the University of Arizona has proved that the average phone has 10 times the amount of bacteria that is found on a toilet seat. Smartphones collect germs everywhere a person goes: school, work, public restrooms, restaurants, cars, amusement parks, concerts, etc. People do not think to clean their phone screens frequently even though that object touches their faces every day and they sleep with it next to their heads. The health conditions developed by smartphones only gets worse from this point. The American Macular Degeneration Foundation’s study also found that sleep disturbance and “light at night” have been linked to higher risk for cancer. There are many other factors that also contribute to the possibility of getting cancer from a smartphone; the amount of time the person is on the phone, the model of phone being used, whether or not the person is using the speaker mode on the phone or a hands-free device, etc.

Another serious health problems caused by smartphones is hearing damage. According to WebMD, “Long-time mobile phone users who talk more than an hour a day on the devices may be may be more likely to have high-frequency hearing loss, researchers say.” High-frequency hearing loss can cause speech to seem muffled, especially when using the telephone or in noisy situations. It also causes difficulty understanding female voices, hearing birds sing or any high-pitched beeping. These phone calls have an irreversible effect on a person’s hearing and life.

A very disheartening effect that smartphones have on people is the want to commit suicide. This is very common in teenagers. Teens have begun to isolate themselves from others because they have become fixated on their smartphones. This begins the first stages of depression. As the loneliness continues, the depression continues to propagate. A horrifying statistic provided by an article in The Atlantic, written by Jean Twenge, displayed that teens “who are heavy users of social media increase their risk of depression by 27 percent, while those who play sports, go to religious services, or even do homework more than the average teen cut their risk significantly.” That’s a pretty substantial amount! Twenge later states “teens who spend three hours a day or more on electronic devices are 35 percent more likely to have a risk factor for suicide.” Parents seem to be missing the signs of their child’s depression because they are constantly on their phones so they are horrified and shocked when their child commits suicide. To think that a piece of technology could hold so much power over an individual to take their own life is frightening.

However, many still argue that smartphones better the quality of life by adding entertainment to our daily lives. Smartphones have thousands of apps for social networking, photo and video, magazines, books, music, games, travel, health and fitness, etc. There is practically an app for everything a person could ever need. People can instantly see, hear, or know about anything going on in the world by unlocking their phone and opening an app; this is dangerous. It is very hard to put the phone down once one has engaged with it. This relates back to the smartphone addiction but it also falls under boredom. Because people are bored, they spend way too much time on their smartphones. Researchers from CNN found that “fiddling with our phones addresses a basic human need to cure boredom by any means necessary. This is similar to biting nails, tapping feet, fidgety fingers, playing with hair, and other anxious behaviors that are associated with boredom. Instead of finding something productive to do, people turn to their smartphones to pass the time. This is exactly why people feel like life passes by faster than it used to.  People are looking to their smartphones to provide them entertainment instead of seeking it somewhere else. This is taking away from actual life experience so when looking back at life, one may feel as if it went by so fast because they did not have the life experience they hoped to achieve. They spent more time with their phone than they did building relationships, adventuring, or chasing their dreams.

Interpersonal communication skills becoming non-existent, failing relationships, fatal car crashes, technology addiction, hearing loss, eye damage, sleeping problems, depression, anxiety, cancer, and suicide: what else does a person need to hear before they understand that smartphones are hurting their quality of life? Many people were content and lived full and happy lives before smartphones; where in-person conversations and hand-written letters had value. People do not truly experience life anymore because of smartphones. When people go to concerts, they sit on their phone and record the whole show instead of watch and experience the event. When people go away on vacation, instead of relaxing and enjoying the beautiful and historical landscape around them, they sit and post on social media for most of their day. When people buy new clothes or accessories, instead of enjoying their new belongings, they must pull out their smartphones and take pictures to brag about their new items instead of enjoying them. When people get a meal brought to their table at a restaurant they instantly feel the need to pull out their phones and take a picture of the food because peoples brains are now practically wired to function this way due to their dependency on social acceptance via smartphones. If people spent less time on their smartphones, they would build strong connections with others and get to experience life’s most precious gifts. People would be better off without smartphones.