Smartphones Addiction

“I fear the day that technology will surpass our human interaction. The world will have a generation of idiots.” Albert Einstein 

The fear of Albert Einsten has already come to a reality. The term ‘lepaking’ is no longer relevance in this day when the term ‘phubbing’ takes over the Gen-Y’s lifestyle. Todays’ youth definition of hanging out together are more to just checking on their smartphones, updating this and that in the social network sites.

Phubbing is a term to describe the habit of snubbing someone in favour of a mobile phone. In May 2012, the advertising agency behind the campaign - McCann Melbourne - invited a number of lexicographers, authors, and poets to coin a neologism to describe the behaviour. The term has appeared in media around the world, and was popularized by the Stop Phubbing campaign created by McCann.

"Research reveals that 44 per cent of us spend more than half an hour a day looking at our phones, eight per cent admit to checking it for three hours a day and three per cent say they spend five or more hours on their mobiles." (Ellicoot, 2013) .

However, if Albert Einstein is still alive, I’m sure he would not only worries about human interaction but also about the ‘evil’ side of technology. The smartphone addiction has brought into worst condition that can bring to fatality. Not only the addiction can caused marital break, it can also cause people killing each other.

In Miri, a mother was killed by her own sons when she refused to give in to his demand for having a new smart phone. Few cases have also been reported on mother being careless too busy checking on the smartphone that caused incidents to the children. Some even become the C.O.D of the children.

Apart from that, smartphone addiction can also be associated to the ‘selfie’ trend. In London, a teenage Danny Bowman, 19 too obsessed of taking ‘selfie’ shot using his smartphone. He didn’t attend the school, didn’t socialized for almost 6 months and his weight inclined for almost 12 KGs just to be seen as perfect in the ‘selfie’ portraiture.

The technology has been taking over the normal life and makes people become its slave. We can’t live a day without a smartphone and the internet as it has becoming as part of our daily routine to update even one status in our Facebook account, posting a picture or maybe a ‘selfie’ in our Instagram and tweeting “going here, going there”, checking in here and there using Foursquare and even couldn’t drive without a GPS from the smartphone in our car.

A survey by Cisco

The addiction startss when we are using too much of the smartphone’s high-technology functions until our dependency towards smartphone has becoming worst. The result is that we can’t afford a minute not to stare at the smartphone. The video below illustrated how's the life without smartphones. Somehow I wonder how does our ancestors survived the technology by not having any smartphones during their era. 

Reference

Ellicoot, C. (2013, August 4). Mail Online. Retrieved April Monday, 2014, from dailymail: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2384397/Are-phubber-Campaign-launched-stop-smartphone-addicts-snubbing-checking-mobiles.html