August 8, 2019
Aoi Kojima
How many hours do you use the smartphone in a day? Can you live without a smartphone? Smartphones are very useful and italways help us. However, they can be dangerous if you use them inappropriately
Currently, smartphone addiction is a serious problem in Japan. It means the situation of a person who is mentally dependent on a smartphone and cannot stop using it even if various problems occur, and get frustrated and uncomfortable without smartphone. Smartphones are easy to carry and can be used at a variety of locations.
For this reason, smartphone-addicted people bring their smartphones all day in school or in bed. This symptom is often noticed by the family and people around the patients. Symptom examples are that patients cannot calm down if they are away from a smartphone, they think about smartphones all day long and check it very frequently to be ready to react to it immediately. They always surf the internet and watch videos for long time and end up with being charged a huge amount of money.The MMD institute recently conducted a survey on smartphone dependence to 553 men and women aged 15 to 59 who own smartphones. Figure 1 shows the ratio of awareness of11 smartphone dependence.
Sources: MMD institute
When the institute asked awareness of smartphone dependence, 18.8% of respondents replied they themselves were “considerably dependent” and 52.6% said they were “dependent.” In total, 71.4% of respondents were aware of smartphone dependence. In particular, the younger generation aware that they were in the situation of smartphone addiction.
Harm of Smartphone Addiction
Too much use of a smartphone can cause many symptoms. Symptoms appear mainly in two aspects; physical and mental. Physical symptoms include loss of vision, dizziness, stiff neck, nausea, malaise, drowsiness due to lack of sleep, malnutrition, osteoporosis, economy-class syndrome, and muscle weakness. Surprisingly, nutritional disorders and osteoporosis can also be found. The reason why these are occurred is they are too enthusiastic in smartphone games to eat foods properly and tend to have only sweets and carbohydrates.
Economy-class syndrome can also occur. If people keep using smart phone in the same posture for a long time, they will have blood clots which make them difficult to breathe and interfere with blood circulation throughout the body. There is also a research report that smartphone-dependent children’s score is below average in muscle strength, instantaneous power, flexibility, grip strength and endurance.
As for mental symptoms, they include out of emotional control, frustrated and aggressive feelings, emotionless, panic without a smartphone, lower motivation. They even become selfish, decrease in thinking power, face with communication failure, poor thinking ability, loss of memory and sleeplessness. The cause of these symptoms is that the blood flow in the prefrontal cortex of the brain has decreased and it becomes dull. Overuse of smartphones is damaging to the brain in an invisible form. Also, symptoms of panic without a smartphone is similar to the symptoms caused by drug addicts and alcohol addicts. This symptom cannot be solved even if the smartphone is taken from the children. You should solve the problem. (related problems, bullying).And overuse of smartphones will damage the mind and body and affect social life through decrease in grades, lateness, absences, a reversal of everyday life from day and night, withdrawal, deterioration of human relations, discord within family, and excessive billing. Like this, smartphone addiction leads to the lot of damages.
Do You Know Digital Detox?
To remedy this, digital detox can be a solution for smartphone addiction. Digital detox is an effort to reduce stress by keeping a distance from digital devices such as smartphones and personal computers for a certain period of time. Digital detox is not an effort to live completely away from digital. This is an effort to engage with digital devices more soundly. There are many effects of digital detox. For example, refreshing, eliminating eyestrain and brain fatigue, improving sleep quality, reducing stress, increasing imagination and creativity and making you feel happy.
Conclusion
Smartphone are really useful and it help us. But If you depend on your smartphone, it will hurt you. Taking a lot of time to use your smartphone will damage you both mentally and physically. And you lose the valued time. If you realize that you are addicted to the smartphone, you should keep a little distance from the smartphone immediately.
Reference