Reflective Essay about Phone Addiction

Did you know 44% of Americans say they cannot go a day without using their phones? As being among the 44%, I can agree that I cannot go a day without my phone. I am always using my phone and I realize that I can barely go 1 hour without my phone. Everywhere I go I have my phone and even when I eat. Having a phone addiction can make teens focus less on things like school causing them to have bad grades or spending less time with friends and family. It can also stop people from doing hobbies that they used to enjoy. Although having a phone can help you with learning how to do new things, and homework. Most teens do not use it for that. Some main reasons they are addicted are because they use it so disconnect from the world to feel less lonely, or because of social media, playing video games, etc.  

A phone addiction can make teens feel less lonely and disconnected from the real world. It makes them feel less lonely because when they are online, they feel more confident then when they are with people in the real world. Teens can express themselves better online and they do not feel judged about their real personality. 

Teens are addicted to their phone is because of social media. People who post on social media try and create a visual that their life is perfect. This may make others who participate in social media feel that their life has to be like that too and they may feel pressure to have a life like the people online. Teens also may think that they need a bunch of likes and followers like their favorite influencer. Doing this can cause them to be stressed. Teens can get addicted to apps like TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, Discord, or YouTube. If you do not know what these apps are, they are apps where influencers try and connect with their supporters or other people. They can post about their daily life, cooking videos, and makeup videos, etc. People can also connect with friends on these apps and meet new people. As a person who uses these popular apps, they can be quite addicting, and I sometimes find myself scrolling on them for hours. I lose track of time, and this sometimes causes me to get off track of my daily schedule like doing my homework. 

Being on social media can make me feel like I have real friends because online I meet people from various places around the world and I get to know their personalities that are similar to mine, and this makes me feel good to finally meet people that are similar to me. This can also be dangerous because sometimes I do not really know who I could be talking to. When I come back to reality, I have friends, but we are not similar, so I feel like we cannot relate to most things. Although I sometimes feel like social media does not have harmful effects, I must face the fact that it is harmful, and I need to put my phone down sometimes. Phone addictions can affect your sleep. If you sleep by your phone like 71% of people do. You might have trouble sleeping at night because you most likely check your phone constantly before going to sleep. 

If you want to know if you have a phone addiction, you may have symptoms like losing track of time while on your phone, feeling anxious when you do not have your phone, or having your phone when you go to eat or doing regular activities. Having a phone addiction can cause good and harmful effects. Some of the beneficial effects are having communication throughout the world. For example, if your mom and dad live in one state and you live in a different state, you can call or text them anytime. And you can contact people from different time zones. You can also get information or learn different things on your phone. If you do not know how to do something you can easily look it up. A phone addiction is more harmful than helpful. If you sleep by your phone like 71% of people do. It's most likely that you will check your phone constantly before going to sleep which causes sleep disruption. 

Teens can overcome being addicted to their phone by turning off notifications off for apps. This is good for the people who get distracted while doing homework or in class. Seeing a notification go off or a buzz from your phone can make you want to check your phone so doing this will hopefully help you not get distracted while doing homework. Deleting distracting apps can also help with the addictions of self-phones, if you see yourself on apps that you are always on delete them. If deleting them is not enough and you find yourself redownloading the app you can start with setting time limits on your phone and set goals for you to reach every day or every week. For example, you can set the app limit timer to distracting apps for 20 minutes a day then the next week you can set it to 15 minutes and keep doing this until you feel like you are not distracted by the apps. 

I personally get tired of social media most of the time because I keep seeing the same thing over and over and it gets boring. This causes me to get up and try to find something to do but then I find myself not enjoying the activity I am doing then I go back onto my phone which I should get out of the habits. I think that forcing myself to do something and stick with it like learning a new skill or getting a job. I found that getting a job helps. I got a summer job because I did not like sitting around at home all day and it would not hurt to get a little money and some work experience. Getting a job helped me because it made me get up and psychically go somewhere and at work phones are usually not allowed so it would force me to talk to people which was kind of hard because it hard for me to talk to people but it was better than being glued to my phone. 

Overall, A phone addiction can cause bad long term affects and if you find yourself having a phone addiction and you do not like being so addicted to your phone you can take steps to stop the phone addiction you have. I can also see myself finding a way to stop my phone addiction, so I can stop sitting around on my phone learning nothing and finding something that will be beneficial to me in the future.