Almost everyone has a phone and uses it every day. I enjoy having a phone to use, but are we using phones too much?

For example, the school has a rule, the phone rule, everyone knows. How many people actually follow this rule, though? 

This is a good example of people not having discipline around their phones. Granted, I don’t think the rule is really magnificent. It has its ups and downs, but that’s a whole different story.  

The typical story I always hear at a family event is, “Gosh, everyone is on their phone,” typically from an older member of the family. Then, the ghastly story about how they never had a phone when they were younger follows. While it seems like nagging to us but is it really? Our family members are speaking the truth as we are on phones nearly every second of every hour. Sometimes we forget to connect back with our family and ignore the phone for at least an hour. Phones are temporary, and we’re risking quality time with our family to get connected online. 

That sounds like a typical scolding from family members to get off the phone, but what about phones making us detach from everyone and everything else? I’ve noticed the more online someone is, the more they stray away from people and reality. People have started to become chronically online to the point it skews their sense of reality and makes their ability to effectively communicate about life, politics or any topic altered. Being chronically online is when someone relies on the internet and being online more than anything else. This is beyond horrendous because we are made to communicate and survive with each other. When someone gets to the point where they’ve lost all normalcy and replaced it with being online, that’s abnormal to our whole existence. 

But how do we stop being chronically online? Simply delete social media and other apps. Stop relying on a phone to get us through life. Googling a question is not detrimental to us at all, but when we live purely off of phones, that’s the issue. While technology has given humans so many advantages and helped us, it’s creating a lot more issues now as generations age and grow. 

Obsessing over phones has also made some get extremely bad mental health. According to healthline.com, adults who watched TV or used a computer for more than six hours per day were more likely to experience moderate to severe depression. While it doesn’t include phones, I can safely assume that phones would be on the list as well. Along with depression, being online too much can induce anxiety and low self-esteem. But, with mental health deteriorating from being online too much, we also have the fact there are apps to help with mental health. It seems counterintuitive, but I feel as though these apps can also help, even though they are still online.