Modern addiction - Smartphone addiction

It's been a long time now that smartphones have become a part of our everyday life. Smartphones opened gates for information, content, connectivity, and creativity for all. Easy access to affordable internet via smartphones proved to be the biggest decentralizing tool in the modern world. Advent of social media changed the way masses were spending their times across the globe and suddenly the best brains in the world were working to attract more and more eyeballs for as long as possible.

But as every other technological progress, this modern bundle of technology started to show notable negative impacts on or society. People remain glued to their smartphone screens for hours which affected their personal relationships, professional efficiency, creativity, and even their physical health. Overusing smartphones and especially social media apps results into anxiety, depression, loneliness, and insomnia. Most of the people are also aware about this but like other addictions, there is not much societal stigma attached to this and very less support is available to identify and treat it as an addiction.

In India, on an average a person is spending nearly 4.9 hrs a day on his/her smartphone. If you see the division of this screen time, most of it is being spent on multiple social media apps amounting to doom scrolling - an incessant mindless scrolling and consuming content passively. The most alarming thing is, this problem is so common that almost everyone can relate to it but still hardly anyone is able to get out of that trap. It doesn't shock people now if they get to know that you use your smartphone even in the middle of your disturbed sleep, you know why, because most likely they have also done it if not doing it now.

The screen addiction has already begun to have large impacts on the society and in future there seems to be grim chances of this reducing if we don't act on it. What to do, how to do are questions of substance which will only be asked once we collectively acknowledge the problem and decide to make our life better by deciding to solve the problem.