We call it an addiction, but what exactly does that mean? For you to be “addicted” to something, you have experience physical dependency during withdrawal. Like chronic users of coffee, you with begin to get headaches and stress when you’re going without it. I'm sure I'm not the only one that gets anxious when I can’t physically feel or see my phone. Baylor University researcher, James Roberts, did a study that supported the fact that 60 percent of college students get agitated when their phone is out of sight. Just a month ago, my photography teacher bursted out in disbelief hoping that he’d misread that a recent study concluded that “teenagers check their phones 100 times a day”. To his dismay, we actually corrected him and said that we actually do it more than 100 times. The study at Baylor University shows that students spend the most time texting opposed to “surfing the Internet” and “checking Facebook”. Personally, I believe that any research that considers Facebook as a major contributor to technology addiction should not be trusted to that far of an extent. Besides, the average of students only spending 26.9 minutes definitely demonstrates skewed results because a train ride alone can exceed that limit.
“both freeing and enslaving at the same time”
- James Roberts Ph.D.
Technology is the leading culprit in many health issues, including sleep deprivation and diminishing eye sight. As if Thomas Edison’s light bulb wasn’t enough, the light from our screens imitates daylight, therefore suppressing our melatonin production and interrupting our circadian rhythms. The constant arousal forces us to be productive, so as a result, we skip out on sleep in order to find out what our classmates had for dinner. After all, keeping up with your Internet friends is such a necessity...right?
by Yonglin Chen