Posted by Wesley D’Souza on April 14, 2020

In the world as we know it today, technology plats a very significant role. It has enabled us to scale great heights, achieve our goals, make advances in medical science. Truly, the pros of modern technology are innumerable. Technology has made itself so indispensable to us, that it has permeated very sphere of our lives.

While this is not entirely bad, the dependence we have on technology can be crippling in its absence. The problem of cell phone overuse, attracted the attention of various agencies who sought to study the matter more minutely. They decided that this smartphone dependence is a form of psychological or behavioural dependence associated with the smartphone.

It is an addiction,that has gone right to the heart of our society. This addiction has had an adverse effect on human communication which is odd, because the phone made the world a smaller place and made it easier to reach people in the first place! It is a constant complaint of parents that their children don’t look up from their phones and do not participate in dinner table conversations

We now have the world at our fingertips. Information from all over pouring in at lightning speed that leaves us reeling. There is a barrage of knowledge that assaults our senses and very often, this information can be overwhelming. Many psychologists have reported cases of cell phone induced anxiety, stress, and depression.

One of the things that is often overlooked while talking about cell phone addiction is the bad effect that it can have on our productivity levels. Humans have a tendency to put off for later many things that need their immediate attention. This behaviour is called procrastination and all of us have been guilty of it at least once in our lives. This adversely affects our ability to be more enthusiastic about our professional lives. When work is assigned, employees should get to it more readily, with due diligence,

But instead, managers complain of the fact that their employees are jumping to their phones every time it beeps. People are so attached to their phones that they check their phones when they feel the slightest vibration. Sometimes they are alerted by phantom or ghost vibrations which occur when they are waiting for a call or text, or just generally waiting for some kind of feedback.

Where youngsters are supposed to do their schoolwork and build good communication skills, we see their eyes glued to their phone screens. When they need to make social relationships, they would prefer to stay at home or within the bounds of a Wi-Fi connection. Ignoring their work, throwing tantrums when they are denied a phone, has far reaching effects that may manifest itself as a bleak future. But technology as we have said, has helped us a great deal. For example, it is because of the internet that you are reading this article, probably on your cell phone.

Disconnected from our present reality, we have become over connected to a virtual reality. We care about what strangers on the internet think about our lifestyles, and tailor our social media handles to configure to their expectations. We seem to be losing sight of what is truly important in our lives.

As a people, we need to seriously reconsider our lifestyles. But more than that, we need to relearn how to prioritise our lives. Critical things need to be dealt with before we can spend our leisure time on other things. The ability to organise and prioritise, which seems to be in shortage today, needs to be cultivated once more among us in order to have better, richer lives.