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4/20/2017 8 Comments smartphone addiction (blog #12)Mostly everyone owns a smartphone and it is useful for looking for an address, surfing the web, managing your bank account, and playing games. It does feel good owning a smartphone and it seems that we cannot leave our home without it. Everywhere we go and most locations such as fast food restaurants, retail stores, and maybe even small businesses offer promotions that you can scan QR codes with your smartphone to get a discount of a certain item or a food discount. Every day you see a lot of people walking around starring at their smartphones or just holding them in their hands. It seems that we have to have the necessity to own a smartphone and that we cannot live without one. There are some concerns that experts have that if people are spending too much time on their phone. According to an article from techaddinction.ca, approximately 72% of people said they are rarely more than five feet away from their handset at any time. This is what is known as nomophobia (an abbreviation of no mobile phobia); the fear that being away from your phone somehow disconnects you from the world. As with many forms of addiction, smartphone addiction is also something that often stems from other underlying emotional and psychological issues. Overuse of a handset can be a crutch that people with post-traumatic stress, attention deficit and social anxiety lean on too. The reason that it can cause stress and depression is basically logging on social media, which a user can be exposed with graphic content of violence, sees the achievements that a user shares with the world that can cause them to lose their self-esteem, and reading other users opinions that they don’t agree with. There are also consequences regarding to smartphone addiction when in regards to our bodies physically and mentally. Staring at a screen, for instance, prevents the brain from releasing something that is called melatonin, our natural sleep chemical. As a result, our bodies don't register that we are tired. Overuse of smartphones leads to interrupted sleeping patterns and means that we do not function as well throughout the day, affecting our abilities to work. Children are also being affected with smartphone addiction. Children that has possession of a smartphone tend to use it to play games and spend hours on a smartphone, which they lose interest of playing outside and interacting with everyone around them. It can be the other way around when an adult is distracted on their smartphone and a child wants to get their attention by poking them or yelling at them if the adult does not reply. It is proven that most of the time the adults reply in an angry tone towards the child because they feel annoyed and bothered. Smartphones are a useful and a good device that we can own, but we have to limit ourselves into using them and avoid having our lives sucked in our smartphones 24/7. As studies has shown that we are a generation that have an addiction to technology and slowly we are allowing smartphones to control our personal life’s.
Link for more information about smartphone addiction
8 Comments
4/24/2017 04:30:43 pm
I completely agree that cell phones can be somewhat of a necessary evil - especially considering all of the problems they cause. Even setting aside the fact that an estimated 1.6 million car crashes are caused every year by people's inability to set aside their phone while driving, they still have the potential - when combined with social media sites, as you mentioned - to cause heaps of addiction issues. This addiction, in fact, can partly be caused by the ethical issue that I am examining in my paper - the use of gamification to drive engagement in social media sites. By using game elements in a non-game context, social media engineers can ensure higher rates of repeat users and higher amounts of interaction - think about how good you feel when you see a post of yours on Facebook has a lot of likes or comments. That's gamification in action, and though it does have its positives, its ability to captivate people to the point of unhealthy behaviors is concerning, and I agree that we are facing the beginning of an addiction crisis.
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Sean O'Fallon
5/9/2017 09:03:21 am
I can't remember where I heard about this, but a man who was in prison for 15 years or so got released into society and commented on how weird people have become. It must have been shocking to see a group of friends getting lunch together and barely looking at one another because they were so busy 'socializing'.
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Sotheng Uch
5/13/2017 11:11:27 pm
I agree with you that nowadays children are effecting by smart phone or Ipad. I can't even get my niece and nephew to go some where without bringging their IPad. Sometimes, we always telling them to go outside, stop spending time on those tiny screen, but somehow I feel like we are the bad role model to them. Er always forget that we are also on our phone all the time.
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Laura Chavez
5/16/2017 08:20:17 pm
I agree that everyone can get attached to their phones. I looked at my phone at least 3 times, before I finished reading your blog. It was a distraction, but I saw my phone light up and for some reason just checked it right away. It's kind of sad that we can't step outside of our house without our phones. Or using our phones for every and any occasion to Snapchat it.
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Shaikh Sultani
5/18/2017 11:01:20 pm
I am ashamed to say that I am one of those who is always 5 feet from their phone. My phone is my life, so i cannot imagine being without it or losing it. I protect it because its my life. And I do not wish to be like this. Sometimes I miss having the old flip phones where we only used it to text and call. Nothing like we have now. having those old phone back would probably help with the addictions.
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5/20/2017 03:55:37 pm
I did not know that looking at a screen prevented our brains from releasing melatonin. This makes sense as to why it takes me so long to fall asleep when i use my phone at night. The iPhone has a setting called "nightshift" where it tints the screen yellowish after a certain time at night to trick the brain into being tired.
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Lesly Garcia
5/20/2017 11:05:03 pm
I think this is a very interesting topic. I think technology, smartphones in particular have deeply affected the way we think for ourselves and how creative we are. I remember enjoying my time outside instead of just sitting around staring at a screen all day.
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Fernando MadrigalHello, my name is Fernando Madrigal and I am a Junior at CSUMB. My major is Computer Science with my concentration in Network and Security. I recently transferred from Hartnell Community College last fall. Archives
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