Smartphone Addiction
Last week on Friday, I looked at my smartphone so much that I wore out the battery. I decided that I am completely addicted to checking it when I have absolutely no reason to do so. I observe also that I tend to do this when I am feeling tired, as I was on that particular day. Why is this the case? I think it must be because tiredness weakens one’s resolve and diminishes one’s will-power. There might be something else there too: the phone holds out a certain emotional promise that there might be something interesting or gratifying to read. And so I check it over and over again in the hope of that satisfaction. And when I am tired, I feel emotionally low and seek that shallow dopamine hit all the more. And there is something compounding about it too: when you check it once you feel that you want to check it more, even if the last time you checked it was two seconds ago and there were no new emails or messages and no reason to think there might be any.
It has to stop. So I have invented a new rule for myself: no more checking emails or messages on apps or anything else (such as this blog) on my smart phone. I can check all of these things when I am on my laptop which is still a lot of the time. But it means I won’t be checking my phone around the house (in front of the children say) or when I am in church or anywhere else that isn’t my home. The smartphone tells lies and says you have to check it because you might miss out on something important. This is nonsense. It is giving everyone and anyone the permission to interrupt your life whenever they feel like it and that is incredibly stressful.
Just checking things on my laptop has been going very well so far and I certainly feel less stressed out and hurried. I have tried to limit myself before but never in such a drastic way and I think that is the key: it’s all or nothing, out and out war on the smart phone. Addiction to it must die for, as it says in 2 Peter 2:19, ‘Whatever overcomes a man, to that he is enslaved’.
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