Essay Sample: The Hidden Horrors Caused by Phone Addictions

Teens, mesmerized by blue lights projected from a phone screen, spend hours of their lives moving mindlessly through life as they stare at the latest social media post. Society does not need another statistic to show the increasing desire amongst young Generation Z to have phones. However, this increase in phone addictions among young people causes many damaging sociological and psychological effects like lack of empathy, soaring anxiety, and staggering depression rates in the United States youth.

Lack of Humanity

Unquestionably, in many adolescent lives, a majority of day-to-day conversations rely on a digital format. Due to this, many teens and adults are feeling the sociological impacts. According to leading psychologists, 70% of communication is non-verbal (exploringyourmind.com). The statistic signifies, the majority of the United States youth lack an emotional attachment to conversations. A present-day interview by Lauren Cassani Davis for The Atlantic interviewed a Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T) psychologist and sociologist Sherry Turkle. In this interview, Turkle pointed out that 80% of teens exerted their phones during their last face-to-face conversation. During the dialogue between Turkle and Davis, she cited this information from a study by the Pew Research Center. Next, the vast majority (80%) of teens are not only affecting their self-benefit but damaging the others around them. Also, the same study concluded that 82% of teens admitted that the phones utilized in conversation destroyed the entire interaction. Young generations possess a hard time communicating with their peers without consistent media buffers. The inability of the youth to follow a conversation without a media presence will undoubtedly harm the emotional aspect of modern society.

It is No Longer a Simple Correlation

Furthermore, a 2012 study conducted by the University of California at Los Angles turns these facts from phone correlation to the lack of empathy and now proving their direct causation to teens enlarging decline in emotional attachments. The study was initiated with a grouping of 51 preteens to stay at an outdoor education camp for five days without electronics consisting of phones, tablets, computers, and other media devices. On the contrary, the second group of preteens with similar groupings at a school-based setting spent five days continuing their habitual media patterns. Next, both groups of teens took pre and post-non-verbal communication tests. In this test, the scientist commissioned the students to read and comprehend basic emotional cues without the general construct of verbal communication. After the five days, the first grouping, the 51 preteens deprived of media influences drastically, increased their score on non-verbal communication. Unlike the first grouping, the group of preteens that stayed within the means of their habitual media habits had virtually the same score (sciencedirect.com). If the future generation cannot read simple non-verbal communication, then how can one sympathize with another? If their addictions to mobile devices have a ceaseless role throughout their lives and continue to follow the same trend our society will not be able to withstand.

The Mental Toll 

 Next, with teens mesmerized in their phones for hours at a time, scrolling through social media consuming unrealistic standards of beauty and intelligence should bring no shock in the rise of anxiety and depression rates throughout 14 and 17-year-olds. A recent survey conducted by the Pew Research Center unearthed seven out of ten teens have a detrimental problem with either anxiety or depression. A similar study supported by the Nation Institute of Mental Health concluded, in the year 2009, only 20% of teens showed signs of depression. To prove my theory of phone addictions correlating the increase of anxiety and depression the 2009 study had come to light only two years after the first iPhone hit the market (history.com). Moreover, the study concluded only one year before the release of Instagram (investopedia.com), a popular social media outlet amongst teenagers. With this information, we can no longer pretend that iPhones and depression do not go hand in hand. 

The Rising Unintended Killer

Since the recent advancements in phones and social media, the professor of ethical leadership, Johnathan Hadit at New York University Stern School of Business (N.Y.U), pointed out a hidden and grueling conclusion (the sun.co.uk). This discovery by Jonathan Haidt entails, “There had been a gigantic increase in depression and anxiety for American teenagers which began right around between 2011 and 2013." This increase harshly takes a toll on the young teen population in the United States of America. The rise in phone popularity aligns with self-harm rates and depression rates. The self-harm rates among young teens are off the charts, having read a 189% increase since 2009. A statement from Professor Jonathan Haidt to show the dramatic situation at hand mentioned, “It’s nearly tripled.” Also, for the same age group of young teens, suicide rates are increased by 151% within the same timeframe (thesun.co.uk). These are girls between the grades of fourth and ninth. This shocking evidence proves that phone addiction not only causes anxiety and depression rates to skyrocket but take it to a whole other level; phone addictions kill. 

In conclusion, the decline in the lack of empathy and a significant increase in anxiety and depression rates among Zoomers (Generation Z) due to phone addictions causes, without a shadow of a doubt, the improbability of a safe society. Finally, the path of phone addictions is forming a calamitous road for the withstanding of our generation, civilization, and the overall modern world.