Cell Phone Addiction
Welcome back incredible BookDuck fans. Did you know that 80% of children check their phones every five minutes? That’s crazy. And a schoolboy named Tanner Walton will tell us about cell phone addiction.
Many people are addicted to different things, and Тanner thinks that mobile phone addiction is the most common one.
Take a second to think about how often you use your phone or just check your phone. What happens to you when you lose your phone? Are you calm and settled or do you freak out? Some people have panic attacks. It's called nomophobia or as Tanner personally likes to call it no phone obeah. It is when you panic if you don't have your phone in your pocket or you can't find it.
The big question is why are people so addicted? Well here's Tanner’s answer. Take social media for example. Every single time you post a photo let's say in a matter of 10 seconds you get 4 likes. Well, those 4 likes may be small but it hugely affects your mind. Those 10 seconds of happiness send a message to your brain saying I want more. So then you post another photo and another photo just to see how many likes you get now. You are spending every five minutes of your day checking to see if someone likes your photo even if that someone is from across the world and you've never met them before.
Tanner thinks that’s a pretty big waste of a day. But it isn’t just kids he is talking about, it's adults too. It's like people don't talk to people. Have you ever been to a restaurant where two people are on a date and they don't even look at each other? They are too busy on their devices talking to someone else or shooting their dinner and sending it to someone that isn't even there. Wow, a nice date night, great spending time with you and your
phone. It's like we live in a virtual world where we can't even feel comfortable with the people we love. We are always looking at or thinking about what other people are doing. There is another aspect of this attachment to technology. We don't even talk to each other in the same household. For instance, some families text each other in the same house. Why don't they just talk to each other? Is it too far away to go up and down three floors?
Another aspect is sleep. People even sleep with their devices next to them. They use them for alarm clocks or sleep apps to help them get to sleep. It's a chronic problem everywhere. Did you know that blue light affects the release of melatonin in your brain? That is why some people are so high-energy before bed. The mobile phone has side effects such as digital eye strain, increased morbidity, and car accidents due to lack of sleep. People even drive with their cell phones. They are too busy worrying about what someone has to say on their phone rather than paying attention to the road. And we have reason to worry. As cell phones are responsible for a lot of car accidents here's a quick fact. Did you know that driving 90 kilometers an hour reading a five-second text message is equivalent to traveling a football field?
The only thing Tanner found was that we needed to communicate more with each other.
One of the best moments of his life was a trip to Rock Ridge Canyon summer camp. It was a camp without technology. The kids were told to leave all their devices at home, and Tanner found it hard to give them up for a week, but he's glad he did because he went on an amazing adventure and got the chance to make real human connections with the people he still hangs out with.
To sum up, pay attention to the little things that make you happy. Enjoy the moments that are right in front of you. As Steve Jobs
once said “Your time is limited so don't waste it living someone else's life.
