Dependence on Mobile Phones

PRISONERS OF PHONES (748 words)

Technology has become an integral part of our lives now more than ever, people are continuously trying to add technology to our daily lives, since we need to adjust to this fast paced life, where every six months there is a new device coming up and the old one gets outdated. Everyone ‘needs’ a social media account to be ‘social’ or socially accepted, and just have an account is not enough, you need to be active which means your life is all up there. You want to eat something - order it, you want to shop – do it online, you want to read a book – download a pdf or app. We have forgotten what sitting down in a restaurant peacefully with ourselves and eating is, what going to the mall seeing and feeling everything before buying is, we’ve forgotten what paper books and large bookshelves feel like. What’s more – we’ve forgotten to think and imagine, you have a question - then google it, but tell me what about thinking about the answer first.

Many a times we’re on our phone doing anything and then we notice that our phone’s battery is running low. And then, we start panicking, and start running about like ‘where is my charger, I gotta charge my phone, it’s gonna die!’. What I’m trying to make you notice is that, once your phone it going to ‘turn off’ we become so agitated and once the phone turns off, we get bored and become irksome. So we are not only dependent or our phones and technology physically and socially but also emotionally. We so attached emotionally to our tech that we often literally say that ‘I can’t live without my phone’, when the truth is we all have already lived.

Have you ever been in a situation when all your family members are on their phone – either talking to someone, chatting, watching youtube videos or listening to music – when you come back home or just sit down to relax for a moment? I’m sure each one of us has, and during that period you feel a little lonely or left out, thinking that everybody is busy with their lives. And this is why I believe even if it is essential to be connected with latest technology, we need to remove time for ourselves and our loved ones. Stop being so stressed and addicted to your mobile phones, if you stay away from it for a while, your phones not going to vanish and you’re not going to miss out on the latest trend, because I’m not asking you to give up on your phone entirely just take some time out of your busy and hectic lives with mobile phones and spend on other things instead. Don’t be too dependent on your phones and computers to help you in everything and also keep you entertained.

So you can start of by taking a few steps like – setting particular time periods to check your phone; switch off your phones when possible, like while driving, jogging, gyming or when with your family; delete your phone games and instead go out and breath the fresh air while you play games or atleast move your body; delete social media apps so when you want to use them you will have to use their websites which will decrease the temptation; curb your fear of missing out; when you get bored don’t grab your phone instead pursuit your hobbies and other activities; and most importantly don’t bring your mobile phones to bed, they are not only harmful due to the radiations but also hinder our sleep schedules and mess up our brains, also when at a party or sitting around your family members, talk to them, because you need to remember what joy and satisfaction real human interaction brings.

At the end I’d like to say – I know it’s easy for me to preach while it’s exceedingly difficult for us to implement and actually stay away from our phones, after all we are so dependent on them, but we all need to realize that there are a lot of different things to do in this world, other than our mobile phones. Else, in the words of the smartest person born ie. Albert Einstein – “I fear the day that technology will surpass our human interaction. The world will have a generation of idiots.”

And yes, I realized that we humans our prisoners of our phones, that’s why we call them cell phones.!