Impact of Smartphone in Our Society

From the moment we wake up until the moment we go to sleep we are engrossed in technological advances from the basics of Wi-Fi, or the trendiest one currently, Alexa from Amazon to the most influential one, the smartphone. While smartphones vary in features and exterior and popularity, such as the iPhone X or the Galaxy, they all have the common feature of connectivity. Every day the capability of smartphones continue to grow and allow users to establish information without the extra work of using other devices and programs. The purpose will determine how smartphones affect social interactions, social anxiety, how does the amount of time spend on social media limit your face to face interaction?

Summary

Social media plays important role in lives of many youths. Nowadays youth are attached to their smartphones and use them to access the information they need. Social acceptance depends on the ability to socialize with one’s peers at the cool place. According to Boyd ‘’They don’t try to analyze how things are different because of technology; they simply try to relate to a public world in which technology is given’’( 13). Social needs are a very strong force that allows teens and people to be most dependent on smartphones. “Teens are passionate about finding their place in society.

Teens engage with networked publics for the same reasons why they have always relished publics, they want to be part of the broader world by connecting with other people and having the freedom of mobility” (Boyd, 8). There is a significant relationship between social needs and smartphone dependence. The dependence on social network sites, social media could be misleading because there is information that is not always reliable on the websites and it’s hard to distinguish what is real and what is not. Social media and smartphones are associated with them.

Smartphones have provided a great entertaining function to anyone who loves social network because more people are able to connect to their friends through social media, Facebook, and social networks. ‘’When using mobile media, youth tend to emphasize the freedoms to which they feel they have a right, rather than considering the responsibility they might have to protect the rights of others ‘’ ( Clark, 86). Like how everybody chooses the best Facebook profile pictures of themselves to put as their profile picture. Several researchers showed a correlation between emotions and smartphone usage.

Loneliness and social anxiety correlated with smartphone usage. Social anxiety is the fear of being judged and evaluated negatively by other people, leading to feelings of inadequacy, inferiorly, self-consciousness, embarrassment, humiliation, and depression. Further, the study also revealed that loneliness and social anxiety was found to be the weakest factor in online social networking ( Balan, 2018). Youth who is with high levels of social anxiety are the ones making a lot of outgoing calls and don’t receive the callback. Individuals barely received any incoming calls.

In a study of young adults, ‘’20 to 24 years old frequent phone use was associated with higher stress, sleep disturbances, and depression “(Cain,2018). Usage continues to grow even after significant growth over the decades. Another study of adolescents, ‘’12 to 17 years old showed that higher levels of smartphone use at night before bed is also related to shorter sleep patterns and more symptoms of depression”( Cain, 2018). Many of us spend hours every day staring at screens. This is because our devices emit low levels of harmful blue light. It can change the way our pupils react to light causing light sensitivity and strain around and behind the eyes.

Overuse can certainly cause your eyes to fatigue. Sleep helps to focus and sustains our ability to concentrate. One of the long term health problems caused by poor sleep and also lack of sleep in youth can lead to increased behavioral problems and shifts in mood. Addiction showed a positive relationship between smartphone overuse and level of stress.” several studies have shown the fear of missing out is associated with problematic smartphone use”( Cain, 2018).

According to the author, One of the major concerns of psychologists and digital media experts is the propensity toward addiction in today’s attention economy(Cain, 2018). This scholarly article mention that pushing back against smartphone( social media) use can become very controversial as the overreliance on them is still considered socially acceptable. It also said to be these “technologies are largely unquestioned as essential in today’s educational and professional environments, It would be difficult to dismiss all the conveniences that these technologies offer and for their roles in numerous advances in health care delivery and health care education” (Cain,2018). This scholarly article mention that pushing back against smartphone( social media) use can become very controversial as the overreliance on them is still considered socially acceptable.

Discussion and Evaluation

When compared with that author’s idea of smartphone usage was associated with higher stress, sleep disturbances, and depression, we can see that the problem starts with the fact that people sleep holding their smartphone or have it with them in bed. People use their smartphones as their alarm clocks, it makes sense that many would want their phones within arm’s reach. When your phone is that close to you, the temptation to check social media sites, Facebook, work email is too strong to resist. That’s why people who consume electronic media in bed are at higher risk for insomnia and more.

Individuals who are affected the most in their social interaction due to smartphone use were in lower age. This suggests that when a smartphone is in your room even simply hearing vibrations or the flashing lights from alerts would wake you up in the middle of the night could be true, but it could also be no screen time within an hour before bed, switching off phone, or keeping your phone in different room overnight. Even though this simple step seems to be a solution of the smartphone, the researchers” didn’t come to valid conclusions because the digital technologies with mental health will not be a simple problem to overcome, technological advances are considered ‘’progress’’, it becomes more challenging to admit.

Conclusion

When it comes to a smartphone, it causes to be lazy when it comes to communication with others and the brain doesn’t work as much as it should be. According to Nijssen SR, ‘’ the assumption is that because of these qualities, our devices and through them the internet is becoming the primary form of external memory, taking over this task from the brain’’. Youth feel the full impact in their current and future private and professional lives and education. Youth growing up in this generation are called digital natives.

The subject of smartphone or technology has yet to research in depth. Researchers study that it would be difficult to dismiss all the conveniences that these technologies offer. ‘’ Such methods are currently not sufficiently available, we consider our smartphone an extension of ourselves and separation from it heightens state anxiety and impairs executive functioning’’ ( Nijssen SR, 2018).

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