Be smarter than your smartphone

By Peri Sualp ….

Last week I talked about how much impact smartphones have in our lives and how inevitable they are, especially for my generation.  This week I would like to continue with some of the disadvantages that they bring into our lives and some alternative activities.

First of all smartphones are really harmful to your budget! They are more expensive to purchase than a normal mobile phone and you have to pay extra bills for internet connection. They have fragile screens so no matter how careful you are they keep breaking and you need to pay lots of money to renew them.  Besides as it is carried around with you, there’s always a risk of losing it or forgetting where you left it.  You can go crazy trying to remember where your phone is! How many times a day do you look for your lost phone? What a waste of time!

Most important of all, using smartphones for long hours is an addiction and lack of your phone or being away from it for some reason may cause distress, anxiety and depression. Using hours and hours of smartphone devices will eventually cause health issues such as neck and back problems. They may also cause incurable nerve issues plus cramped fingers, wrist and muscle pain thanks to continuous texting and scrolling on the touch-screen of a smartphone. Another reason for such health issues is, we are spending less and less time exercising in our everyday lives – once we have had our daily dose of phone use, there’s no time! That also means putting on extra weight for addictive smartphone users therefore they may have to face many more serious health issues such as heart problems, high blood pressure, and other disorders in the coming years.

Direct exposure to blue light, like the one that comes from smartphone screens can seriously damage the retina of your eye. Talking on the phone may not damage your hearing but if you are listening to music with headphones, you might suffer from hearing loss due to the sound being at high volume. The list goes on and on…..

Besides health issues, using a smartphone too much can lead you to miss the actual life outside. Instead of making us more connected, our smartphones could be making us more isolated. Wouldn’t you rather meet a friend that you haven’t seen for years instead of texting? Who doesn’t like to be out with friends talking and laughing or who doesn’t prefer to be outside on a beautiful day – even maybe at the seaside? Having a nature excursion or travelling somewhere you have never seen is worth millions. Doing your favourite hobby or activity will definitely give you more satisfaction than staring at your smartphone. We should give a chance to enjoy normal everyday activities instead of sitting down lazily and staring at a screen. This will definitely broaden our perspective.

We shouldn’t let smartphones to be smarter than us.

We can’t deny the convenience and benefits that smartphones have brought us today but if we can limit the usage to only our needs then we can have time for other nice things in our lives.

Please don’t forget that less is always more!