There is a new epidemic spreading through schools, work, and home. This is not the flu or the black plague. Rather it’s Snapchat, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. It’s been having a huge, negative impact on the minds of adolescents and adults all over the world.

With a world amuck with technology, phones have become a daily want and addiction for citizens, young and old alike. Parents and teachers may claim it’s just kids these days but I think adults would be surprised to see how much they’re constantly checking their phones too!

Phones have become so much of a distraction that teachers have to set rules and even confiscate phones in order to get students’ attention to learn. With this crazed addiction to the little devices in our hands, has technology actually become a poison to humanity rather than a helpful tool it was meant to be?

It’s a poison we want more of, and the biggest poison of technology youths are ingesting is social media. This digital world of the phone sucks the mind of teens and adults into a “doom vortex.”  When the human brain is given a virtual hit, it becomes an addiction like nicotine. That addiction is what glues people to their phones, waiting for another notification hit. “Technology fulfills our natural human need for stimulation, interaction, and changes in environment with great efficiency.” According to the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation “when teenagers experience stress, technology can become a quick and easy way to fill basic needs, and as such, can become addictive.”

Another reason people can’t give up phones is because we have an impulse to be ”in the know” with everything on the internet. This impulse gets in the way of our daily lives and activities, and even damages our personal relationships with family and friends.

Rather than discussing the day with family, families may be sitting at the dinner tables on their phones. Instead of talking to the person next to them, people are looking down at their phones. Rather than engaging in class discussions, students are looking at their phones. This behavior is further explained by Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation as “Technology impacts the pleasure systems of the brain in ways similar to substances. It provides some of the same reward that alcohol and other drugs might: it can be a boredom buster, a social lubricant, and an escape from reality.”

When we spend too much time on our phones we lose personal communication skills, which could make our family and friends not want to be around us. With more individuals using phones and losing touch with those and the real world around them, technology may be headed towards becoming the downfall of mankind, rather than the positive technical advancement of a better world that it was intended for.

How much are you on your phone? Is it inferring in your life and do you need a technology break? Encourage yourself and your family and friends to put the phone down and engage with one another rather than our phones.

Source: “Technology Addiction.”  Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation. FCD Prevention Works. 16 March 2017. Web. 16 October 2018.