Addiction
- The fact or condition of being addicted to a particular substance, thing, or activity.
When was the last time your fingers itched to pick up your phone and check those notifications? I bet it was pretty recent. Cell phones have become such a big part of every teenager’s life.
We take them everywhere we go, just to feel connected.
“The time I spend on my phone [a day] is probably about six or seven hours,” said sophomore Karina Benavidez.
San Luis Obispo High School is full of cell phone addicts. If you look around, you are bound to see a handful of people with their eyes hooked on that little screen.
Constantly feeling the need to reply to that text, scroll through Instagram or even Snapchat that one friend who you’re going to see next period anyway is only adding to the obsession.
“The only thing my phone possibly has an effect on is social media because it interrupts my day periodically, with notifications from Facebook, Instagram, or Ask.fm, whether it being friendly or non-friendly feed,” said sophomore Ylliana Keller.
This is happening at the expense of real relationships and success in other areas of life. People are drifting further away from real life communication and becoming hooked to the idea that they can contact someone by pressing a few buttons.
“If I didn’t have my phone then I wouldn’t be able to contact other people who I want to be able to make plans with,” said Benavidez.
According to a recent study, 60 percent of teens feel anxious if they don’t have their phone and would rather live without Facebook, chocolate, and TV than without their phone. It is clear that there is a cell phone addiction in this generation, and with phones only getting bigger and better, the addictions are only getting worse.
So try to do something constructive next time you feel the urge to use your phone. Get out there and have a real face-to-face conversation with someone.
Remember, technology works for us, not the other way around.
