Needless to say, modern technology can be extremely helpful in our daily life. Computers and especially smartphones, are offering a variety of amazing features which can make our lives more productive allowing us to learn and work on the go. A smartphone is powerful tool opening access to all of the world knowledge. At the same time it is a fantastic mean of communication making it possible to reach people from another part of the world within a second.
Unfortunately, even though this is the truth, it doesn’t work like this in the reality. Despite of all the advantages of smartphones, it somehow turned out these benefits are not working properly with average people. The majority of us are not able to use the great functions of smartphone sin an effective way. Instead of this, we become hacked by these gadgets which turns out into an addiction. It is rather difficult not to get addicted to this technology since an aver4age person spends at least 8 hours a day in front of the computer or smartphone screen. How does it affect our life?
Feeling of stress
People who are addicted to their smartphones are certainly stressed once they do not have an opportunity to use their gadgets. Yet, people are getting stressed while constantly using their smartphones as well.
One of the reasons of this paradox is the fact that smartphones are making us available to other people 24 hours a day 7 days a week. Not only can we get calls and messages sent with our mobile operator but we are also opened to countless communication apps as well as all of our e-mail accounts. Apart from a possibility of getting involved into a chat with our friends and acquaintances at any moment of the day, we can also receive emails from work even though we are not at work anymore. Although we are aware of the fact we do not have to respond to an email at night or during a weekend, getting a notification from work immediately takes us into the alert condition and we feel obligated to read it and react to it if it is needed. Can you imagine how detrimental it is for our well-being?
Insomnia
Needless to say, being bombarded by notifications and messages can seriously damage our sleep. In addition to that, our sleep is ruined by the smartphones and computers themselves.
It is well-known that the blue light present in the screens of smartphones and computers is detrimental to sleep as it stimulates the brain activity rather than helping to reduce it. While some people are surfing their phones aimlessly reading news articles or scrolling the news feed of their social networks, they literally waste time on it which could have been used on sleeping. At the same time , the blue light coming from the screen makes it difficult to fall asleep.
Once you are asleep, in all likelihood, you will check any message you get. Many people will also wake up and respond to it.
Isolation and communication difficulties
Certainly, smartphones help us to keep in touch with other people which would have been rather difficult without all of the functions available in such gadgets. Still, smartphones are reducing the quality of these contacts.
For example, people who tend to text with others a lot are gradually losing their empathy and understanding of other people’s emotions. That is so since people cannot see real emotions and mimic of another person while texting. This form of communication is also not suitable for getting into a deep conversation. Unfortunately, these things can be spread into a real life making us less sensitive to the feeling and emotions of others and less capable of maintaining a deep conversation.
Of course, the feeling of having a gigantic list of friends or followers on a social network gives many people an illusion of popularity which actually does not have anything in common with real relationships. Undeniably, this plays a huge role in isolation of many people living in the Western world.
Being constantly destructed
The mere issue with notifications is enough for the majority of people to become constantly destructed by their phones. Actually, this is just one of the factors which reduces our productivity despite the fact smartphones could have been very helpful for our work and studies.
The situation can be come even worse if you are feeling a constant need to check your social network or play a game. Unfortunately, getting distracted like this on a regular basis can impair our ability to focus rather seriously. Even when we are keeping our smartphones at bay during work, for many of us it is already impossible to get a sufficient level concentration since the brain has already adapted to the new reality.
Not being present
Finally, it is obvious that people stop being present in their real life if they are using their phones constantly. This is pretty apparent when you look at all of the people who are literally hypnotised by the screen of their smartphones no matter where they are and who is surrounding them,