What is phone addiction and it’s effects?
If you are not aware of the term already, high chances this is you. Not necessary we are only referring to your phone, it could be any gadget you are absorbing the highest screen time in maybe without even realizing, probably to an extent that it is affecting your personal relationships. Phone addition refers to when you are so engrossed in your gadget, maybe while playing video games or watching a movie, swiping on the screen that you tend to forget the real-world agenda. Maybe you constantly fiddle with
your phone, check for messages or calls without even releasing, even if it’s not a compulsion, bad news for you- you have already an addiction to your phone.
And if you don’t change your behavior towards your gadgets now it may worsen the problem. Research says that such addiction may lead to more virtual relationships than real-world bonding. Today, with the advent of social networking platforms, everyone’s psych to build online relationships. But with everything comes the weightage of losing something. Constantly surfing through the web, playing video games and exposure to the screen may lead to overexposure to information. You may begin to forget things you’d have remembered otherwise. In worse circumstances, overuse of internet pornography, sexting, and adult messaging services may start to create a negative effect on your real-world relationships and lead to cybersex addiction. It may even lead to a feeling of loneliness and depression if not taken seriously.
How to find out if you are an addict?
The latest Goggle trends show that “cell phone addiction” has been one of the highest Goggle searches for the past five years. This unadulterated and extraordinary phone addiction has given rise to many scientific terms such as nomophobia (the fear of going out without taking your phone), phantom vibrations (the fear of your phone vibrating or ringing when in reality it really isn’t), and textaphrenia (the fear of being unable to send or receive messages to people). If you are really wondering if you are an addict or not, try doing the following things:
- When you don’t really need your phone, keep it away and try and keep a track of how much time you have been without it.
- You are facing difficulty in sleeping. You wake up multiple times in between your sleep cycle to check your phone.
- Check if you’re losing your control over your behavior. As soon as see someone is ‘typing..’ on the screen or when you are not being able to reply to anyone because of network issues, do you feel hyped up or you panic?
- Your phone use interfering with your schoolwork and even other things. You are not being able to focus on your studies as feel the urge to go through your gadget
- You are you having trouble limiting your phone use. Maybe you are feeling you don’t have anything else to do so shuffle through your phone again even if there’s no notification.
- Do you have a feeling of irritability as you are not being able to touch your gadgets even though you really want to? Most probably, you are looking for a reason so that you get to use your phone.
- Even if you have managed to avoid your gadgets for quite some time, maybe a day or a week, you are back to your previous behavior.
If you’ve been through any one or multiple of the above-mentioned situations, it is actually a high time you work towards some stifling changes. Most of the phone apps are designed in a way that makes you go back to it time and time again, like by the use of features like “Likes” and “Comments”. Thus, you get into a habit of overusing it without even realizing it.
Phone addiction: a negative impact
This phone addiction doesn’t live as easily as it adjoins. Small issues like difficulty in sleep or not being able to do your homework can be overridden by worse situations where you feel you are in a situation of an increased burden of stress and anxiety. The constant exposure to the screen light and texting and replying can overwhelm your brain in a way that you may develop attention deficiency disorder (ADD). Sometimes, the trauma even
leads to health concerns like heart attacks and loss of consciousness.
Spending a lot of time on the phone means you are neglecting your face-to-face relationships and you’re more concerned about the virtual reality. This concern may turn to a behavioral change of narcissism that people use to forecast a false yet likely image in social media. It is impossible to stop the use of gadgets wholly, but it is important to limits its use so that it doesn’t indicate adverse effects.
