Addiction and mental health.
The newest generation of smartphones enables people to communicate, connect, and network everywhere. Smartphones are so exciting that they make humans tend to depend on smartphones a lot. Even worse, we can say that smartphones have become addicting. Research said that the wrong usage of smartphones is not as fantastic as their feature, just like Griffiths (2003) stated that everything that gives excitement causes addiction. Smartphone addiction will cause harm to people, especially mental issues. How does this addiction affect your life? When you always stick with your smartphone, there will be a high chance of emotional difficulties, such as social networking addiction, low self-esteem, insomnia, relationship conflict, poor academic and work performance, and any other anxious feeling that grows as you scroll your phone screen. Smartphone addiction is sadly a real thing. A study showed that the distraction from the phone causes most poor job performance. The report from Pew Research Centre stated that 81% of Americans owned a smartphone in 2019 (a considerable inclination from 35% in 2011). Five years later, Google Trends indicates that cell phone addiction has risen. The addiction has various behavior, from having a fear of going without a phone, fear of being unable to send messages, and constantly feeling alerted by the phone when it is not.
Who is at the greater risk of smartphone addiction?
Studies stated that most users of smartphones are teenagers. The finding is that 33% of teenagers never turn off their phones all day and night. The studies also show that teenagers are at a high risk of smartphone usage with a problematic use pattern. With this finding, we understand that the greater risk of smartphone addiction is for teenagers. It is unfortunate to know because teenagers' age is the age where they should develop themselves and do a lot of physical activities. Teenagers age are also at the age when they want to be the best and tend to compare themselves with their friends. It is perilous if teenagers have a phone addiction, as this addiction will ruin their adult life and mental health sooner or later.
Does smartphone addiction only affect your mental health?
Smartphone addiction has more side effects than just mental health. It starts to ruin your mental health, and the other problem will follow. Let's take the example of texting while driving. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report stated that texting while driving risks the chance of an accident three times as you will keep your eyes away from the road, then your hand off the wheel, and your mind off the way. What causes this texting while driving habit? Of course, the smartphone addiction. Texting and driving have killed nine people every day. It even has more numbers with significant injury accidents. The risk of texting and driving has been widely known and spread, yet addiction makes people ignore this issue.
So, are you a smartphone addict? To answer that question, there is an excellent insight from Dr. Julie Smith's video, a psychiatrist who published the book "Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before?" In her video, she talked about the five signs of being a phone addict. These five signs are related to your behaviors and feelings as a phone addict. Do you feel that you always scroll your phone in every possible moment every day without even realizing it? Do you feel very comfortable scrolling your phone and feel unable to stop? That's the earliest sign of being a phone addict, and the good news is you still can get out of that zone and quit your addiction. The next question is how? We recommend that you stay away from your phone by changing the device but still work as a smartphone does because the most excuse when people want to get away from the phone is 'how can I communicate?'.
If there is a perfect device to replace a phone without the addiction effect, the device would be a smartwatch.
The trend of digital devices is not stopped with smartphones. There is much new digital stuff to help human life, for example, smartwatches. Smartwatch has a long journey to become famous in the device market. It started with just a time marker and, little by little, featured other functions until the watch became a smartwatch, a phone-like device that always sticks to your hand. Smartwatches can help the smartphone addict by giving a barrier between you and your phone with their features.
These are why the smartwatch is a perfect device to help you cope with smartphone addiction.
● No time-consuming apps. Applications in smartwatches are limited, so you will have no access to use the time-consuming apps. Smartwatches are designed to help people have easier and more efficient communication. Like the primary purpose, you will be guided to focus only on communication without any distractions with the smartwatch. They also feature a lot of timing settings that can track the usage, both the phone usage and the smartwatch usage.
● Less radiation to help you have a better sleep. One of the side effects of phone addiction is the lack of sleep or insomnia. This issue is crucial as sleep is a basic human need and is essential for health and life quality, especially at young ages. Research published in the Pakistan Journal of Medical Science under the title 'Evaluation of Mobile Phone Addiction Level and Sleep Quality in University Students' stated that sleep quality worsens with mobile phone addiction level. Insomnia happens because of the desire to scroll on the phone and the radiation from smartphones that keeps you awake and decreases your sleep quality. Smartwatch has less radiation than a phone, so you can say goodbye to scrolling and insufficient sleep with a smartwatch, then start to welcome high-quality deep sleep.
● Work without a phone. Some smartwatches, like Wonlex, feature nano-SIM Card and 4G connections that enable them to activate without a phone near them. This is a good idea to help your smartphone addiction as you can keep your phone away and off. You can leave your phone anywhere and then be productive and communicative. We recommend you always leave your phone in your working room and never bring it out. You can always set your mind that 'your phone is only for work,' so it wouldn't distract your daily life.
● Support your physical hobbies. Unlike smartphones, smartwatches are also designed to help your healthy lifestyle. They have sensors to measure your health condition and physical activities like your heart rate, footsteps, blood pressure, oxygen level, etc. With these features, you can be more motivated to do the sport and exercise without phone distraction.
● Better offline connection. Not having a smartphone around you can bring you more to an offline relationship. You will be more aware of your surrounding areas. Having a smartphone is really helpful but mostly entertaining. Smartwatches do not have entertainment features as much as smartphones do. So, when you feel you need entertainment, you will talk to people and have fun with nature or everything around you. This will build more social connections that have decreased since the smartphone was invented. In this way, you will not be staring at your phone while waiting for the bus at the bus stop or when you are waiting for the food in a cafe.
● Sometimes, technology will provide us with a lot of help and features without giving us a chance to think and reflect.
Instead, you will communicate with other people next to you. Even for an extrovert, being away from phones is also a good idea as they will start to think about something, train their brain to be conscious, and be in the present or mindful rather than scrolling on the phone screen. Having more moments to think will give you a new perspective that maybe you never realized since you are always on your phone.
● No distraction. Smartphones are the biggest distraction in life. They can make you stop and pause your activity just by a single 'ding.' You can never focus on something that you do cause you always have something keeping up with your phone and always have a lot of things switching on your thought.
We always thought that smartphones are the essential thing that we need in this era without considering the side effect of the addiction that they created. Having a smartwatch to cope and prevent smartphone addiction from a very young age is very recommended for you to try this method.
There is nothing too early to introduce a smartwatch. We, Wonlex Smartwatch, produce smartwatches specially designed for children with a GPS tracker named Kids GPS Watch. Wonlex is also open for OEM and ODM service for retail shops and smartwatch brands with requested design and inquiry in wholesale price. Send us an email for the inquiry, and we will get back to you immediately.
