Five Signs of Smartphone Addiction

Now it’s time to give you a rundown of the five signs you’re addicted to your smartphone.

Number One, you feel genuinely anxious when you are without your smartphone. Accidentally leaving your phone at home or misplacing it fills you with dread and significant discomfort to the point of panic. If your smartphone feels more like a fifth limb you can’t live without, then you have an unhealthy dependence on it.

Number Two, during a face-to-face conversation with someone, you find it hard to maintain focus and concentration of what you’re talking about. You lose eye contact all too easily with them as you zone out, and start thinking about checking your emails, Facebook notifications, or seeing if somebody has left your message. Your smartphone seems to leave your mind in a hyperactive and constantly distracted state, and you find yourself reaching for your phone without even thinking about it.

Number Three, you’re in a public place with friends or family, but you spend more time playing around on your phone than conversing with them. Perhaps you’re at the dinner table and you regularly feel the compulsion to check your phone. Worse still, your friends and family start complaining about how antisocial your behavior has become.

Number Four, you notice that your smartphone is starting to get in the way of your life. You spend an exorbitant amount of time with your head buried in your smartphone screen, and find hours passing by. Your timekeeping suffers and you start showing up late for things when you were once highly punctual. You begin to realize how unreliable you’ve become.

Technology is wonderful when used in the right ways and to the right degrees, but when it ends up making us busier to the point where we lose touch with what’s actually important, then we need to make a change.

Finally Number Five, you feel the need to document everything in your life. With social media and a smartphone camera, it’s possible to document almost everything you do in your day-to-day life. But is it really necessary? Maybe you’re at a rock concert or some other event, and you find yourself not really watching the event, but merely watching it through your smartphone screen. People seem to do these kinds of things to show off to their friends or work colleagues.

If you find yourself less engaged in your life and more like an observer instead of a participant, then it’s time to put the smartphone down. So guys, those were just some of the signs of smartphone addiction. These amazing devices should probably come with a health warning in my view — a kind of caution about the potential dangers of overuse. So let me know your thoughts on this issue.

I have 422 friends, yet I’m lonely. I speak to all of them every day, yet none of them really know me. 

    The problem I have sits in the space between looking into their eyes or at a name on a screen. I took a step back and opened my eyes. I looked around to realize that this media we call social is anything but. When we open our computers, and it’s our doors we shut. All this technology we have, it’s just an illusion. Community, companionship, a sense of inclusion, yet, when you step away from this device of delusion, you’re awakened to see a world of confusion. 

    A world where we’re slaves to the technology we mastered, where information get sold by some rich greedy bastard. A world of self-interest, self-image, self-promotion, where we all share our best bits, but leave out the emotion. 

    We’re at our most happy with an experience we share, but is it the same if no one is there? Be there with your friends and they’ll be there too, but no one will be if a group message will do. We edit and exaggerate, crave adulation (奉承). We pretend not to notice the social isolation. We put our words into order until our lives are glistening. We don’t even know if anyone is listening. Being alone isn’t a problem, let me just emphasize. If you read a book, paint a picture or do some exercise, you’re being productive and present, not reserved and recluse. You are being awake and attentive and putting you time to good use. So, when you’re in public and you start to feel alone, put your hands behind your heads, step away from the phone. You don’t need to stare at your menu or at your contact list, just talk to one another, learn to coexist. 

    I can’t stand to hear the silence of a busy commuter train where no one wants to talk for the fear of looking insane. We are becoming unsocial. It no longer satisfies to engage one another and look into someone’s eyes. We are surrounded by children, who since they were born have watched us living like robots and think it’s a norm. It’s not very likely you’ll make world’s greatest dad if you can’t entertain a child without using an iPad.     

    When I was a child, I’d never be home. Be out with my friends on our bikes we’d roam. I’d wear holes in my trainers and graze up my knees. We’ll build our own club house high up in the trees. Now the park is so quiet, it gives me a chill. See no children outside, and the swing’s hanging still. There’s no skipping, not hopscotch, no churching and no steeple. We’re a generation of idiots, smart phones and dumb people. 

    So look up from your phone. Shut down display. Take in your surroundings. Make the most of today. Just one real connection, it’s all it can take to show you the difference that being there can make. 

    Be there in the moment that she gives you the look that you’ll remember forever as when love overtook. The time she first holds your hand, or first kisses your lips. The time you first disagree, but still love her to bits. The time you don’t have to tell hundreds of what you’ve just done, because you want to share this moment with just this one. The time you sell your computer so you can buy a ring for the girl of your dreams who is now the real thing.  The time you want to start a family, and the moment when you first hold your little girl and get to fall in love again. The time she keeps you up at night and all you want is rest. The time you wipe away the tears as your baby flees the nest. The time your baby girl returns for a boy for you to hold. And the time he calls you granddad and makes you feel real old. The time you’ve taken all you’ve made just by giving life attention and how you’re glad you didn’t waste it by looking down at some invention. The time you hold your wife’s hand, sit down beside her bed. You tell her that you love her, place a kiss upon her head. She then whispers to you quietly as her heart gives a final beat that she’s lucky she got stopped by that lost boy in the street.  

    But none of these times ever happened. You never had any of this. When you are too busy looking down, you don’t see the chances you miss. 

    So look up from your phone. Shut down those displays. We have a finite of existence, a set number of days. Don’t waste your life getting caught in the net. As when the end comes, nothing’s worse than regret. I’m guilty too of being part of this machine, this digital world, we are heard but not seen, where we type as we talk, and we read as we chat, where we spend hours together without making eye contact. Just don’t give in to a life where you follow the hype. Give people your love. Don’t give them your like. Disconnect from the need to be heard and defined. Go out into the world. Leave distractions behind. 

    Look up from your phone. Shut down that display. Stop watching this video. Live life the real way.