Today we live in the world of sticky phones, the smartphones. The smartphone is almost stuck like glue in our hands, it never leaves. In most cases, the only time we set it down is when it is time to juice up the battery, shower or sleep. I mostly travel to my different destinations using public transportation and when I look around me I notice that almost everyone is on their phone, including myself.
The days when the cellular phone was only in the hands of a few are long gone. Phones got cheaper, and you what happens to demand with a drop in price. Almost everyone possesses a phone, and most of these are smartphones. The really cool devices of this era. They can seamlessly text, email, play games, use social media and a bounteous of other included features in this rather compact device.
The fun smartphones bring to the users comes bundled with addiction. You can’t know you are addicted until you reflect on how much time you spend on your phone. On my case, I sometimes feel like its becoming too much. The first thing I, and many other millennials do when they wake up is check through Facebook News feed, Instagram feed and Snapchat stories. These apps are also the last things we see before we go to sleep. Most times we spend hours mindlessly scrolling through Facebook news feed and Snapchat stories, while there are tons of things we could be doing. Pathetic, right?
These apps are psychologically engineered for the sole purpose of getting users addicted to them. The makers of these applications want you to spend as much time on their apps as you possibly can, whole 24 hours each day if possible. Actually, the more you spend on them, the better it is for them. So from app design and feature set, they have an ultimate goal of ‘getting you addicted’ at the back of their mind. Their formulas are really fetching huge returns, they probably have psychologists working with their teams. People keep returning to their apps or websites.
The Addiction
Social media is like alcohol, use it in moderation. Social media platforms are all fun and games until you spend too much time on them, or like me, become addicted. The sinister side-effect that comes with spending too much time on your phone is that you’re not living in the here and now. I went to visit one of my friends at hostel a few weeks back. After the greeting and a little catching up, everyone turned to their phone.
While we were physically in one room, mentally we were somewhere completely else. We spent about two contact hours in each others presence before I finally left. However, we were not talking to each other at all because we were both too busy being on our phones. This didn’t only happen with this buddy, it also happens when I’m hanging out with my family.
The reality check
I have realized that am addicted to social media, but am not alone. Most of you are addicted too. We need to bring ourselves back to the here and now, and not live through our phones. We should try and do stuff that doesn’t involve the phones and these addictive apps. We should enjoy the world around us. You only live once, right?
The detox
I want to spend less time on my phone and one way to do that is to limit what I use my phone for. Because I mostly use social media apps on my phone, social media cleansing is the only option. Call it what you will. My logic is that if you threw all the social media apps away, you wouldn’t spend so much time on the phone. So, that’s exactly what I did. I threw away the two apps I use the most, which are WhatsApp and Facebook. I don’t spend a lot of time on other social media platforms, but for good measure, I decided to throw away all social media apps and completely cleanse my phone.
Go big or go home, right? So I also threw away Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter and Pinterest, and its working. I don’t spend as much time as I used to waste away. You can try this too, take the high road and throw away those social media apps, at least for sometime. It will help you get your head out of your smartphone and become more productive and focused.
