Mark Hill
·
We promise that we're not going to lecture you about how smartphones are evil and society used to be better off in the good old days, when if you got a flat tire in the middle of nowhere, you just laid down and died, as God intended. Hell, this entire article was typed on a phone in between Pokemon encounters. But because we use our phones so much, there are a few issues we should try to look out for. Such as ...
Any parent could tell you that toddlers are full of whiny demands like "I need food" or "I need love" or "I need you to rescue me from this rabid dog." Smartphones offer parents a reprieve from the stresses of child-rearing, but study after study suggests those reprieves need to be taken in moderation, unless you want to raise a child who's more attached to Fortnite than you.
For starters, infants and toddlers were found to be more emotionally distressed and less likely to explore their environments when their mothers were on their phones. In fact, excessive phone use was considered a form of "maternal withdrawal and unresponsiveness."
That problem continues into tweenhood, where 32 percent of children aged eight to 13 reported feeling unimportant when their parents used their phones during dinner, conversations, and other family occasions, and over half the children in the study felt that their parents used their phones too much in general. Another study suggested that kids were more likely to act out to get the attention of a phone-using parent, while the parents were more likely to be irritable in their responses, feeding a negative cycle.
Psychology TodayOne with a frankly unsurprising end.
The long-term consequences of this are still up in the air. But the fact that phones are changing how our brains work is one thing that app developers need to keep in mind going forward, assuming they haven't programmed their phones to remind them. One proposed compromise has been to develop map apps that teach the user about the location they're in, instead of merely guiding them. Either way, it's good to have a backup plan in case of a forgotten phone / dead battery / bad internet connection / EMP attack, so maybe try to pay a little more attention to the road sometimes.
Related: 7 Ways Your Cellphone Is Screwing With Your Body And Mind
Increased use of social media has been associated with increased feelings of envy and anxiety, as well as a decrease in physical health, mental health, and life satisfaction. Yet we seem to keep using the apps that we know make us unhappy. The average person spends 27 minutes a day on each social networking app, while only nine minutes are devoted to apps focused on reading, health, relaxation, and other tasks that make us feel good.
Passive use (as in, mindless scrolling) seems to be the problem here. If you're hopping on Facebook to post a status update or message a friend, that's active use, and it fulfills a specific purpose. But if you're just zoning out in front of an endless parade of vacation pics and stories about suicide bombings, you're making yourself feel worse, even if you're not aware of it.
Carl Court/Getty ImagesAnd good luck if you decide to let this monster into your home.
91 Comments