All Addictions Are Bad
Addictions are never good. They are compulsive actions in human behavior which reduce people’s control on themselves to finally make them do nasty things to their own selves. Today people get addicted to almost everything they come in contact with. The major addictions are related to alcohol, smoking, sex, food, talking and even people. All these addictions reduce the quality of our lives in some way. Human lives become meaningful and beautiful only if we can create it for ourselves. We go after things we like doing and want in our lives. We feel free while doing everything and in the company of everything and everyone. But addictions take away this freedom from us to make us feel like slaves. The worst part is that we know that these addictions are bad for us but we can’t help doing them over and over again. When we are doing them, we feel happy in the moment but when we are done with them, we feel guilty. Addictions and compulsive behaviors lead some of us to even commit crimes & suicides.
It is nobody’s mistake really once we become addictive to something but it should be our responsibility not to fall prey to any addiction. But this cannot and will not happen overnight. There is a process in our individual and social existence to remove addictions forever. This process takes us from serious addictions which could take lives to increasingly milder ones which are less severe on human lives. The addiction to smart phones is one such stage in this process.
Smartphone Addiction is Better Than Other Addictions
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| Smartphone Addiction is Better Than Other Addictions |
Today, people are shifting from alcohol, drugs and smoking to being addicted to their smartphones. Of course there are cases where smartphones have been a supplementary addiction to alcohol but largely the former is replacing the latter pretty fast in our lifestyle. This is both good as well as bad news. The fact that we are still addicted to something is bad but the fact that at least this addiction is not taking or threatening lives is something to be happy about. It’s a strange kind of happiness but we will take it as long as our safety & survival chances get increased.
But again, even smartphones and selfie addictions are getting people killed on the road but these are accidents which can be reduced. Alcohol addictions don’t warn you before killing you. You think that your body has ‘coped up’ really well with daily alcohol intakes but suddenly your doctor tells you that your lever has been damaged by alcohol. So, we can say that getting addicted to smartphones from being addicted to alcohol & smoking is a step in the right direction but still far away from our goal of no-addiction at all.
The Negative Effects of Smartphone Addiction
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| The Negative Effects of Smartphone Addiction |
Smartphone addiction may be better when compared to other deadly addictions but it still reduces the quality of our lives. Today everyone is glued to their smartphones. The real world has completely been forgotten for the virtual screen fantasies.
Children are stuck to the screens almost the whole day watching cartoons, playing games, for entertainment purposes and for a minuscule time to complete their home-works. At an age when they should be running all over the place they get stuck to their smartphones and tablets which severely affects their mental and physical growth. Their ability to think, interact and act in the real world is getting impeded in a big way. This way they may become able to earn a living when they grow up as everything might become completely digitized and online but their potential as a human-being will remain largely untapped & hence unused. Children are the tomorrow of our societies, our nations and our planet. If their abilities remain untapped, we will be less than what we are today in the coming times.
Similarly, the young people are constantly on the phone texting, chatting or video-calling among many more possibilities their smartphones provide. A serious threat is the pornographic material that is all over the place on the internet. It is taking the youth in the wrong direction which ultimately ruins their careers & their lives and forces them to commit suicide.
Overuse of smartphones has reduced the bond among family members. Everyone is with everyone online but still more lonely than ever before. We know everything about the universe but nothing about the people living in our own homes & our own body. Smartphone addiction is putting a lot of pressure on our eyes, immunity and our overall physical and mental health. The number of people catching life-style diseases like cancer, diabetes and depression is increasing day by day for which smartphone addiction is responsible in a big way.
All this shows that smartphone addictions might be saving us from dying but it has reduced our quality of life & values drastically and has emerged as one of the biggest challenges to the modern generations. This makes it pertinent for us to reduce the overuse of our smartphones.
Reducing Smartphone Addiction Needs Self-Control & Balance
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| Reducing Smartphone Addiction Needs Self-Control & Balance |
Our smartphones are a great invention and we cannot deny this fact. It has made our lives so much simpler in every area. We can have everything we want at one click of our cell phone button. So, its clear that we cannot afford to make under-use of such a magical invention for the mankind.
We need to utilize it to its optimal capacity. But the problem is that in doing this we forget that we have to keep our lives at the optimal level too. We need to reach a level that our smartphone use doesn’t start hampering our lives in any way. Not under-utilizing doesn’t mean that we overuse it and threaten our own existence. So, we need to strike a healthy balance in using it to a point where it serves us and not enslaves us.
But becoming addictive to something is far more easy than reducing their use and becoming balanced. This is because we need to control our compulsive behaviors and get hold of our consciousness which is not an easy task. So, how do we do this? How do we reduce the overuse of our smartphones so that they serve us to make our lives better?
Reducing Smartphone Addiction : Nullify The Causes
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| Reducing Smartphone Addiction : Nullify The Causes |
The first way to do this is to target the causes of the addiction to smartphone. This is because if the causes can be successfully handled, phone addiction can be easily and naturally removed. So, the major causes of smartphone addiction are money, entertainment/stress, power or simply laziness.
Causes & Solutions of Smartphone Addiction : Money
If you happen to be on the weaker side economically, then it’s not an addiction but a need. We have to take care of our economic well-being for survival in this physical world and there is no alternative to that. So, we might need to work for longer hours on our phones or laptops. But the one thing we can do here is that to take regular rests in between so as to give rest to our eyes, mind and body. Take frequent breaks, take a nap, take a stroll in the house or office premises to cool down yourself. The other thing that we can do here is to work consistently overtime instead of working for long hours in the same day. This way we will also be able to balance work with personal life and other responsibilities.
If you are already economically well-off but remain glued to your phone for earning money, then you just need to realize that life & family are far more important than money. But just this realization is not enough as addictions are more than just a mental thing. They make a rigid place in our consciousness and in our actions. So, how to actually disconnect yourself from your phone will be explained in a greater detail in the subsequent paragraphs.
Causes & Solutions of Smartphone Addiction : Stress/Entertainment
The second cause for phone addiction is too much stress in the real world. People prefer remaining in their virtual digital world instead of facing the tough real life situations and issues. Smartphones not only make people forget their stress for sometime but also provide entertainment in the form of movies, songs, web-series, small videos and many more things. So, people allow their mood to get uplifted for sometime by getting glued to their phone screens and before they know it they find themselves addicted to their smartphones. Stress is not a natural part of our lives but the pressure to perform in today’s times has been trying to break the skies apart. Everyone wants to be better than others. And in this race, stress starts to feel not like a part of their lifestyle but their lifestyle itself. One thing that we can do to keep stress away is to enter a profession that we really like. When this happens, we will work for longer hours of time without getting stressed or glued to the phone.
Entertainment is also an important part of life. Life has to be entertaining so as keep us interested, up & going. But some entertainment here and there won’t do any good. Entertainment from external sources won’t last long. Your phone will entertain you only for sometime without making you addicted to it. When we, our activities and everything we go through in our lives is not entertaining, we in the need to get entertained get addicted to something like our smartphones. Well, don’t let your smartphone fool you like that. Make your life so entertaining, interesting and exciting that you don’t need anything else to entertain you. When this happens, your entertainment will be permanent and free of any addictions.
Causes & Solutions of Smartphone Addiction : Power
The next reason why we get addicted to our smartphones is that it is a kind of power. When the common man feels weak in the real world which is really competitive, where they are pushed back and brushed aside in every single thing they try to do, their smartphones give them a kind of power. We can switch things on/off at will. We make people speak when we want them to and shut them up when we don’t like to see them. This sense of power is one of the most important things why people cannot give up their addiction for their smartphones.
But we should not get satisfied with this fake & hollow source of power. We should be strong enough to go out in the real world and use our skills to make a place of our own. The second thing here is that we should not have a lust for power but should feel it as a responsibility. Making people speak and shutting them up will be a part of your powers when you reach a high position in the society but you should not be bothered, motivated or attracted by it. You should always be concerned about doing what is good for your people, society, nation and the planet. The greatest power on the planet is to influence lives positively. Hiding behind our smartphones can never give us this power in the true sense. So, work on yourself, develop your abilities and receive power naturally in life.
Causes & Solutions of Smartphone Addiction : Laziness
The last cause of phone addiction may be laziness. Laziness can happen either when we don’t have anything significant to do in our life or when we are physically or mentally ill.
In the first case, you have to find just one thing that you like doing out of so many things in your life. Everyone has at least that one thing that excites them and makes them jump up of their beds every morning or any moment of the day for that matter. Start doing that thing in your life and your laziness will turn into enthusiasm and an energetic exploration of life.
In the case of mental illness, if it is not related to some specific event or accident in your life and is purely a lack of mental energy, it is most probably connected to your food, sleep schedule and your lifestyle. Fix your diet and this problem will be easily removed. Replace unhealthy and junk food in your diet like burgers, pizzas and other processed food items with healthy and nutritious food like green-leafy vegetables, nuts and fresh fruits among other things and your whole lifestyle will turn on its head for the best. Once your energy systems rejuvenate, your laziness will be gone which will make you mentally & physically active helping you remove your smartphone addiction.
Minor physical illness due to wounds or cuts can’t keep you in bed forever, so that is not a major issue and once you get physically fit your laziness will be gone. But remember to keep doing your best during this time of physical illness. Try your best to do some kind of physical activity like walking. Never let your physical disabilities to affect your mental strength at any cost. This will strengthen your mind further and would help you get healed quickly, preventing you from getting addicted to your smartphone.
This was how we can handle the causes of smartphone addictions in the best possible ways to remove it from our lives. But this was only the theoretical part of it. We also need to know how to reduce overuse of our phone in that moment of truth.
Causes & Solutions of Smartphone Addiction : The Application Part
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| Causes & Solutions of Smartphone Addiction |
This is the application part of the problem where we would learn how to actually come out of the phone-addiction problem in the actual moments that matter. This is also the explanation to the part where a rich man knows that his life is more important than money but he can’t help remaining glued to his smartphone screen in order to earn money. So, the questions we are addressing here are how to know that we have surpassed optimal usage time of our smartphone? And how to stop using our smartphones and keep it aside upon reaching this optimal usage time?
Knowing The Optimal Usage Time
Let’s address the first question first. There are many ways to know that we have surpassed the optimal usage time of our smartphones. First of all, we need to see what is the average number of hours that we really need to stay on our phones. Official or other important purposes can be there which need us to work on our phones for a certain period of time everyday. This time cannot be more than 5-6 hours a day. Add one extra hour to this for a miscellaneous purpose usage of your phone like entertainment or texting or watching or reading news. So, 6-7 hours is the upper time limit that we can spend with our phones in a day.
But there are also ways to get indications of this optimal time in a customized way. You yourself might start feeling bored on your phone. You may start feeling light headaches or eye strain. You may start feeling pain in your fingers due to too much texting & chatting. You may start gaining weight due to reduced physical activity. Your family members also may start telling you to keep that phone away and come and sit with them. You may start leaving important works unfinished. This is because too much phone usage has become a major reason of procrastination. You may also feel to be in a sort of suppressed depressive state throughout the day which is a result of any active mental or physical activity.
Letting The Phone Go : Using Self-Realization
But even after getting all these indications from all the possible ways, the main problem is how to shut the phone and keep it aside? Once you start getting these indications, just close your eyes and reflect on the thought where your life is going. Is this addiction what you really want from life? Do you want to make your real life good or you are fine just with feeling good now and feeling bad for the rest of your life? I know these are tough questions to ask but we need to see the reality to create our own positive reality in life.
Conclusion
Making a rule that you would not use your phone beyond a certain time puts pressure on us and takes away our freedom. So, it’s better to become aware on our own and take responsibility of our life in our own hands. Whenever you feel you have been on your smartphone for too long just close your eyes and remember the things important to you in life. Your family, your dreams, passions and all the good memories that you lived and the memories you want to create in the future. The pictures of these thoughts will be more than enough to put the phone aside and dive into things that really matter to you in the real world!
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| No More Smartphone Addiction |