Wesley D'Souza
April 14, 2020
In the world as we know it today, technology plats a very significant role.
It has enabled us to scale great heights, achieve our goals, make advances
in medical science. Truly, the pros of modern technology are innumerable.
Technology has made itself so indispensable to us, that it has permeated
very sphere of our lives.
While this is not entirely bad, the dependence we have on technology can be
crippling in its absence. The problem of cell phone overuse, attracted the
attention of various agencies who sought to study the matter more minutely.
They decided that this smartphone dependence is a form of psychological or
behavioural dependence associated with the smartphone.
It is an addiction,that has gone right to the heart of our society. This addiction has had an adverse
effect on human communication which is odd,
because the phone made the world a smaller place and made it easier to reach people in the first place!
It is a constant complaint of
parents that their children donโt look up from their phones and do not participate in dinner table
conversations
We now have the world at our fingertips. Information from all over pouring in at lightning speed that
leaves us reeling. There is a barrage of knowledge that assaults our
senses and very often, this information can be overwhelming. Many psychologists have reported cases of
cell phone induced anxiety, stress, and depression.
One of the things that is often overlooked while talking about cell phone addiction is the bad effect that
it can have on our productivity levels.
Humans have a tendency to put off for later many things that need their immediate attention. This
behaviour is called procrastination and all of
us have been guilty of it at least once in our lives. This adversely affects our ability to be more
enthusiastic about our professional lives.
When work is assigned, employees should get to it more readily, with due diligence,
But instead, managers complain of the fact that their employees are jumping to their phones every time it
beeps.
People are so attached to their phones that they check their phones when they feel the slightest
vibration.
Sometimes they are alerted by phantom or ghost vibrations which occur when they are waiting for a call or
text, or just generally waiting for some kind of feedback.
Where youngsters are supposed to do their schoolwork and build good communication skills, we see their
eyes
glued to their phone screens. When they need to make social relationships, they would prefer to stay at
home or
within the bounds of a Wi-Fi connection. Ignoring their work, throwing tantrums when they are denied a
phone,
has far reaching effects that may manifest itself as a bleak future. But technology as we have said, has
helped
us a great deal. For example, it is because of the internet that you are reading this article, probably on
your
cell phone.
Disconnected from our present reality, we have become over connected to a virtual reality. We care
about what strangers on the internet think about our lifestyles, and tailor our social media handles
to configure to their expectations. We seem to be losing sight of what is truly important in our lives.
As a people, we need to seriously reconsider our lifestyles. But more than that, we need to relearn how
to prioritise our lives. Critical things need to be dealt with before we can spend our leisure time on
other things. The ability to organise and prioritise, which seems to be in shortage today, needs to be
cultivated once more among us in order to have better, richer lives.