Mobile Phone usage has become ubiquitous these times. Your mobile phone can be a great ally for you. Whether you are trying to purchase goods online or trying to book your tickets online or even trying to catch up with the news and updates, smartphones have indispensable part of our lives. For gamers, the smartphone has been a boon. Gone are the days, where they would need a PC or a gaming console and a television inorder to access the games.
These days, games across all genres are available in Mobile apps giving you access in less than a minute. The proliferation of smartphone and the widespread availability of the internet with the reduced package have brought lots of people into the sphere of the internet. However, this has a flip side too that many people aren’t aware of or rather dismiss it as a minor threat.
Let’s face the fact, smartphones can be harmful too – especially to your health. All-day, we are inundated with information overflow via smartphones. Whether it’s buzzing emails and messages and WhatsApp chats or notifications from Social media or assistants chiming in their voices, they constantly jolt us.
In colloquial terms, smartphone addiction is referred to as nomophobia. Consider the following scenarios
- Do you feel compelled to look at the notifications?
- Are you dissatisfied by activities that don’t involve smartphones?
- Can’t put the phone down without playing the game you like the most?
- Are you constantly checking your social media accounts?
- Do you experience anxiety when you don’t get access to smartphones?
If your answer is yes for more than 2 questions posted above, you are in grave danger of smartphone addiction. Despite it being a crucial role in our functioning part of the day, over usage can cause irreversible damage, to your brain and emotional wellbeing. A lot of youngsters suffer from problems such as insomnia, high blood pressure, stress, obesity, and disorders like OCD. The ubiquity of smartphones means that we cannot ignore it completely. However, it’s also important to keep the health issues that could be triggered by excessive smartphone usage and seek ways to mitigate them.
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Be choosy in your usage
As mentioned above, complete disowning of smartphones aren’t really possible these days. However, we can choose to be intentional on what we decide to consume. If you are someone who scrolls the smartphone with your morning coffee instead of reading a newspaper, then switch to the latter. Draft a schedule and restrict Check the notifications only twice
Rather than going to bed with smartphones, leave it in your tables and go with a book.
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Turn the notifications off
One of the main triggers of smartphone abuse is keeping the notifications on. In case of emergency, wouldn’t your friend or acquaintance rather make a call? Isn’t being interactive the best way in communication? Turn the notifications off and switch back to the old-school way of communication. You can see the difference in the time that you’ve saved.
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Take an off day
Don’t we all take a day off at times to recharge ourselves? How good we feel once we return after a break? Apply the same logic here. Take a day off from smartphones completely. No matter whether you are in a winning stage of the online game that you love the most, it’s important to make a few sacrifices for a few personal gains. A lot of professional gamers do take a few days from their busy schedule so as to recharge themselves.
Conclusion
For most people, getting control over their smartphone and the Internet isn’t as easy as it appears. It’s important to deal with it as if we are going into a diet. Just as you are not going to avoid diet completely, and are trying to switch to a more healthy