Smartphone Addiction

-Suman Shrestha 

The smartphone is nothing less than a miracle machine as it has almost brought the world to our fingertip. So much so that these days we are very much dependent on our phones but what we don’t realize is this dependency has slowly turned into a sort of our weakness and more as the addiction.
But how do we get addicted to smartphones? The answer is simple overuse. Most of us find it challenging to function properly without the phones by our side. According to the survey conducted by the Kaspersky Lab between 1007 adults in India approximately 72% of people said they are rarely more than five feet away from their handset at any time. This is what is known as nomophobia, the fear that being away from your phone somehow disconnects us from the world.

Emotional and psychological issues like aside effect of depression or obsessive-compulsive disorder can also lead to the addiction. Overuse of a handset can be a crutch that people with post-traumatic stress, attention deficit and social anxiety lean on too.

Smartphone addiction has various negative effects on our daily life, some of them are ahigh risk of depression and loneliness, increased stress, diminished concentration and insomnia. Keeping busy with the smartphones for a long period of time can make us feel lonely and depressed but the situation can get evenworse if we don’t stop using smartphones extensively. The need of checking official emails and responding to them continuously even in a home will definitely increase the level of stress. 
Notification sound from the phone keeps us distracted from the work and this distraction can seriously hamper our creativity. Staying longer on the smartphones can trigger insomnia as it prevents the brain from releasing melatonin, our natural sleep chemical. As a result, our bodies don't register that we are tired. Thus leading to interrupted sleeping patterns which seriously affects our abilities to work.

Beating smartphone addiction is quite challenging but anything is possible with the strong will. The first step to getting over this addiction is to stop using thephone in a bed as the blue light mess up our sleep hormones. Turning notification off can also be a great help, most of the smartphones have the option of        “Do not disturb” feature to get important work done without distractions. Apps such as Offtime,Moment, BreakFree can help to get over the addiction. Some app helps users by blocking distracting apps while other tracks user device usage and allows them to set daily limits to get over the addiction. Once in a while it is better to leave our phone at home for an entire day or may use normal mobile phones.The goal is to control the smartphone addiction, not go completely Stone Ageso we must take things slow to overcome the addiction.

The writer is student of  Management at White House College of Management And Technology (Fourth Semester).