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Dependency on Smartphones
12-13-2017
It’s hard to believe the iPhone is a mere 10 years old. In one short decade iPhones and their Android cousins have become a fixture of modern life. We use smartphones for so much more than just calling to talk - they are our cameras, clocks, calculators, calendars, fact checkers, fitness trackers, payment methods, gaming systems, home security monitors, and, especially through social media, they are fast becoming our primary way of keeping connected.
Smartphones border on being essential. For most of us, when we realize we’ve left home without our phone turn around to get it. Mild panic sets in when battery life dwindles to 2%. “My battery died,” is a lament that elicits immediate sympathy and understanding. It’s common practice to keep our phones on the nightstand or under our pillow. It’s the last thing we check before falling asleep and the first thing we reach for in the morning. We have conditioned ourselves to “just check” our texts, emails, and social media accounts from morning till night.
This dependency on smartphones is not limited to adults, teenagers are well-known to be obsessed, maybe even addicted to their phones. Researcher Jean Twenge found that these ever-present smartphones have radically changed how teenagers interact with each other and what they think of themselves. She found that overall teens are going out less and have lower rates of alcohol consumption, sexual encounters, physical fights and even car accidents. Because their social life is lived on their phones, they don't need to leave home to hang out. When they actually get together, they blowup their Snapchat and Instagram timelines documenting every detail. Those not invited are keenly aware of what they are missing.
Not only is there FOMO - fear of missing out, teens who document their lives online open themselves up to intense judgment. Comments are painstakingly analyzed and can lead to emotional highs and lows. The number of “likes” a post gets becomes convoluted with personal sense of worth. Teens agonize over what to post in the hopes of gaining the largest reaction. Likes, comments, and followers become a barometer for measuring popularity. It’s thrilling to have dozens, hundreds, even thousands of people paying attention to you. This stream of external validation can be intoxicating, the more you have the more you want. Studies have even shown that text alerts signal the brain to release dopamine - there’s a sense of excitement around the unpredictability of who is reaching out to you and why. Many teens, and adults too, get caught up in the sensationalistic larger-than-life 24/7 nature of social media. Inhibitions are lowered, self-censorship is relaxed, and good manners are all too often forgotten.
This relentless texting, posting, commenting, criticizing, liking, questioning, and searching is done by teens with wild abandon in this virtual space hidden for the most part from adult supervision. Parents are often saddened to witness the cruel and vulgar language teens use when communicating with each other through texts and online chats. When inappropriate pictures are shared parents are flabbergasted at their child’s poor judgment. While smartphones are technologically advanced, teenage brains are not. Their prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that controls impulsivity and rational decision making, is not fully developed until around age 25.
Teenagers long for independence. Past generations hung out together in arcades, shopping malls, or skate parks to get away from the watchful eye of their parents. Nowadays, teens stay in their bedrooms, or even sit next to us on the sofa - physically present but with their attention elsewhere. They are chatting, posting, commenting, scrolling, right in front of us. We see their fingers fly, but we don’t overhear the mountain of silent conversations they are engrossed in. In past generations, parents were generally able to budget their teenager’s time - certain hours for school, homework, chores, dinner, sleep, etc. Getting together with friends played a role as did entertainment like watching tv or going to the movies but there was a definite time when friends went home, the tv was shut off, and the movie ended. For teens today, through the magic of smartphones, friends (and strangers) are always within arm’s reach and there’s no end of videos to watch, games to play, or websites to cruise. Smartphones let us carry the world in our hands, but for teens, is it a weight they are mature enough to bear? In our next column, we’ll continue examining how smart we are when it comes to raising a generation of children tied to their phones.
Zainab Dhanani can be reached at z_dhanani@yahoo.ca
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