Smartphone Addiction

“The arrival of the smartphone has radically changed every aspect of teenagers’ lives, from the nature of their social interactions to their mental health” (Twenge). In her article, “Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?”, Jean Twenge discusses how the new generation of teenagers is becoming highly dependent on their smartphones. Twenge calls this new generation born between the late 1990s and early teens “iGen” after a recent survey found that the majority of teenagers owned an iPhone. She argues that with every new generation, new habits form, both good and bad. The technological developments that have occurred throughout the last ten years, Twenge argues, is not a bad thing; it is how the “iGen” teenagers are becoming reliant on their phones and use them to avoid social interactions. According to her article, teenagers choose to stay home alone in their rooms and talk to their friends virtually on social media versus actually leaving the house and doing something face-to-face with their friends. Twenge argues that if teenagers decide to leave the house, phones still have a strong presence, often not leaving the hands of its owner for longer than a couple minutes with social media like Snapchat and Instagram tagging along. Twenge worries that the strong dependency on smartphones and increasing rates of obsession with social media are a couple of the largest contributors to the rise of depression and suicide among the teenagers of “iGen”.

“Half of Teens Think They’re Addicted to Their Smartphones”, written by Kelly Wallace is an article displaying statistics and personal experiences that prove a large number of today’s teenagers and parents are attached to their handheld devices. The article, by Wallace from CNN, was submitted on May 3, 2016, only a few short months ago.

Ever since smartphones were created, they have changed teenagers’ lives entirely. The article Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation? by Jean Twenge, shows the ways the invention of the smartphone has changed recent generations. The article mentions the rise in teen depression and suicide, cyberbullying, and teen safety. It also mentions the decline in our social abilities, dating, and sleep. Smartphones have had both negative and positive affects on teenagers, but the negatives significantly outweigh the positives, which points to the need to put down the smartphones, as the article suggests.

Not long ago, people never would’ve thought that they could have a touchscreen phone that you could carry around in your pocket with you everywhere you go. In fact, it’s only been 10 years since the first iPhone came out. Since then, mobile phones have evolved rapidly. Over the years, people of all ages have become addicted to their smartphones which can damage your health in multiple ways. Phone addiction is a serious problem that needs to be solved. Using just a few simple techniques you could identify and solve your phone addiction. The basic steps to solving your phone addiction are, identifying your addiction, challenging yourself, and working with friends.

Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?, by Jean M. Twenge, was published in the September 2017 Issue of The Atlantic. Twenge discusses the impacts of smartphones in teens (also referred to as “iGen’s”) today and attempts to determine if smartphones have caused a generation to falter in their mental and physical health. The author interviews a 13 year old girl about issues teens are developing due to these devices. She examines the spike in teen suicide rates since the invention of the smartphone, how teens no longer go out and socialize with others, and the lack of sleep teens may be getting due to smartphone activity.

We all carry a smartphone. We have what some might call an addiction for them. They are convenient in certain classes and easy to use. They are also our own escape. We can easily talk to

Around six billion people in the world own a cell phone, which is more than how many people have access to a bathroom. Of the six billion, more than 50% of teens feel like they are addicted to their phone, according to a 2016 survey. Ramsay Brown, co-founder, of Dopamine Labs, explains how app developers want people to get addicted. “These apps and games seem like they’re just here to help you connect with your friends or show you funny memes and cute kittens. But what’s going on is creepier:

Technology is a fun way to stay entertained, and can also be useful in completing many everyday tasks. It is most certainly something that has revolutionized the way we do many things, but has also taken over our everyday lives. Could this form of entertainment qualify as an addiction? If so, how similar is the addiction of technology to the addiction of drugs?

When people think of addictions, usually, drugs and chemical substances come to mind. A frequent trend observed in today’s age is not being able to go anywhere without one’s digital device and being addicted to that device, especially one’s cell phone. Adopting a cell phone separation anxiety, is a type of behavioral addiction that is seen more and more today. On average, people are spending about three hours on their phones each day. Alter states, “‘Behavioral addictions are really widespread now...risen with the adoption of newer more addictive social networking platforms, tablets and smartphones’” (Dreifus). As new technologies that cater to people’s wants increase, addiction to these technologies will increase as well. People become so attached to their phones that they will perhaps get distracted from their current situation. In the article “Hooked On Our Smartphones”, the author Jane E. Brody talked about how sometimes commuters or drivers put themselves in a dangerous position when they pay more attention to their phone instead of what surrounds them. The almost

Are we addicted to our cell phones? This is a common question that has arisen in the past several years as our phone technology and capabilities continue to increase. According to recent statistics, 85% of the U.S. population are cell phone users (Chen).We Americans use our cell phones to do just about everything. We talk, text, check our E-mail, surf the Internet, and interact in social networking, all on our phones. Because our phones have become so resourceful to us in our everyday lives, many say that cell phones have become addicting. Cell phones in today 's life have become very addicting to many people, and there are many ways in which to show how they are addicting.

In “Jessie Brown: Who Says Smartphone Addiction is bad thing? The case for constant connectivity” (Brown, 2012), Brown claims that the cellphone is not the problem, in fact, it is the person and how they choose to value their time while using smartphones.

Luigi Gallimberti, et. al discusses in their article “Problematic Cell Phone Use for Text Messaging and Substance Abuse in Early Adolescence (11- to 13-year-olds),” that problematic cell phone use (PCPU), is associated with psychological distress, low self-esteem, depression, drug abuse, insomnia, and thoughts of suicide (356). The overuse of cellphones can really detriment a person mentally and could cause them to arrive at one of these issues stated. An issue also arises when a person with a cell phone addiction is in school. They tend to remain unfocused while on their phones and they don’t participate during class. In a sample, the students who had better test grades were less likely to have a problematic cell phone addiction (Gallimberti, et. al 360). This finding confirms the positive association between cell phone addiction and poor performance in school. In schools, it was concluded that this overuse of cellphones was positively connected with deficient school performance in teens with an average age of 15.7 years old (Gallimberti, et. al 360). Aviad Hadar studies in his article “Answering the Missed Call: Initial Exploration of Cognitive and Electrophysiological Changes Associated With Smartphone Use and Abuse” that cell phone addiction was studied to be linked with reduced attention, changes in how someone processes, stores, and applies information about other people and social

In today’s modern society whenever you see a teenager or any aged human in the streets, at the train station, on a bus, what is something they all have in common? Most would be staring at a smartphone. This may seem like an un-significant issue as on the surface it is depicted harmless. But I have accumulated 4 articles that thoroughly reveal the dangers of frequent smartphone use and the way it negatively impacts an individual’s social skills. The 2 articles I have chosen to discuss provide an excellent insight on the topic which will provide enough support to commence an academic discussion. In these 2 articles they release studies that were performed to test the emotional and social skills of individuals who used smartphones frequently and how this impacted certain abilities such as reading emotions, communication skills and even reading and writing abilities.

A study by Yen, Tang, Yen, Lin, Huang, Liu, & Ko, (2009) looked at addictive behavior associated with technology in a sample group of 10,191 adolescents. The sample group responded to a questionnaire with questions that pertained to whether or not their cell phone use was problematic and the impairments it caused. The category’s they fell into were tolerance, withdrawal, loss of control, conflict, and relapse (Yen et al., 2009). Tolerance is the increased gradual use of a device to achieve the same level of satisfaction. Withdrawal is when the use of the device stops and is by accompanied by troublesome behaviors and emotions. Loss of control is when the person uses the device excessively and doesn’t seem to

Symptoms of this dependence include anxiety when away from the device, social media addiction due to ease of access, and sedentary behaviors (Lepp et al., 2014). This excessive use is extremely prevalent in the college scene due to how much hinges on their devices. Social media, school, communicating and entertainment all hinge on the smartphone which in turn promotes its use creating a cycle that leads to the addiction that most students are oblivious about. This device has a plethora of effects that range from a decrease in quality academic performance to a complete disatisfaction with life (Lepp et al., 2015). Can this behavior be able to be controlled or stopped using the right interventions? The following text will explore the symptoms and effects of high smartphone usage amongst college students, and see what intervention proves to be the most effective in solving this social issue.