Nabiha Tahsin Nuha

SMARTPHONE: A distraction in healthy life Nabiha Tahsin Nuha It’s been 2 hours and still I am looking at the screen of my phone. Even if it’s 2:30 am at night, my determination to maintain a healthy life couldn’t win over the overflow of dopamine hormone in my body. That is how our life is mostly controlled by an object which is just as small as the palm of our hand. Earlier we used to wake up with the sound of chirping birds and nowadays we wake up by listening to a notification sound from our phone. Our mind, imagination, thinking process, concentration and almost everything is now being dominated by a single smartphone and it’s now on the way to create a hazardous future for people all around the world. “Smartphone”, a name of an object which itself compliments its own capabilities. It was invented by a tech company, named -IBM, in 1992 and came in market in 1994. It was designed in such a way that; it could help us in our any needs and it actually did justice to its invention. In our dayto-day life, it has become so important to have a smartphone with us and usefulness of it cannot be described in words. To contact someone in need, to do mobile banking, to listen music in boredom, to play games in leisure, to study using different apps and lots more can be achieved through one device. Moreover, the number of smartphone device is increasing day by day. According to a survey by Statista (2021), around 3.8 billion people around the world are using smartphones and the number will further increase. However, it’s excessive usefulness has given rise to a question: Is smartphone a “Necessary evil “or just a “Necessity”? Dependency on smartphone has made people too much involved in all activities related to this device. Recently, addiction towards smartphone has reached to such an extent that a word “Nomophobia” had been introduced by UK post office in 2008 who had commissioned UK based research agency YouGov to study anxiety disorders in mobile phone users. This is a clear proof of the fact that, our psychology is mostly depended only on the presence of a device. Late night engrossment in texting, scrolling news feed every time, giving attention to all other activities other than actual work etc. are some of the facts that severely is affecting psychology of all users. Recent studies showed that around 89% of people in this world are affected with “Phantom vibration Syndrome”, a disorder in which a person feels that phone is vibrating when it’s not. Moreover, nowadays children get access to mobile phone very easily and they often are seen playing inappropriate games, i.e.- Games where you get life by killing others, and by playing these sorts of games, changes their psychology and they can turn the imagination into reality. This is also a threat in the path of mental development of a kid. Therefore, shortlisting some of the psychological issues above are enough to understand the depth of overuse of smartphone and how it is handling our irrational behaviors. Apart from maintaining our psychological behaviors, smartphone does also have a tight grip on our concentration power. For example: Having a smart phone beside our working place, encourages us enough to look at it in the middle of our work. Thus, even if there is nothing to look at, we spend hours looking at the screen which disrupts our capability of focusing on our duty. According to an article published on AARP bulletin, “In one experiment, 94 percent of Chicago pedestrians using cellphones didn’t see cash hanging from a tree.” (Budd,2017). Hence, it shows the capability of a single smart phone that can make us overlook many incidents. Also, people using smart phone excessively, have a tendency to be more stressed and anxious in daily life than others. Moreover, because of a smart phone, people are often found distracted while doing multitasking as our brain doesn't support that. According to an article published in Business insider, “Psychologist David Meyer who's studied this effect estimates that shifting between tasks can use up as much as 40% of our otherwise productive brain time.”( Brueck, 2019). Therefore, it is evident that the way smartphone is messing with our concentration ability, we are on the way towards a distracted worldly future. The importance of technology in our life is unimaginable. However, it’s also necessary to work on our priorities and not to be involved too much on a single device. Otherwise, it's usefulness won't come in handy; rather will destroy our inner capabilities. Now, we should understand this fact and work towards a better future using technology carefully before it's too late.