What some call phone addiction, is just modern day communication.

My most used apps on my phone within the last 7 days are Snapchat (9 hours 38mins) and messages (7hours 24mins). On both apps, I communicate with my friends and family. It is hard to consider these apps social media.

I personally view these apps as more of a communication tool rather than a device to post and follow. However, the tracking system on the iPhone says that messages and Snapchat are social networking apps. I also found that my time spent on these apps go down on the weekend. I go from spending an average (according to the app) 8hours on my phone per day, to on the weekends only spending 5 hours. This data has some clear correlation because on the weekends I spend my time with the people I was communicating on the apps. I also am always doing more on the weekend, than I do during the week. This poses the question of are we addicted to our phones or are we just communicating more efficiently with those who aren’t close to us during the week? I would have to argue that what some consider “social media addiction” is just modern-day communication. I was not alive during the time of phones connected to wires, but I can imagine people spent hours on the phone. The reason they were on the wire-phone was to talk to the people who were not around, not because they were addicted. This same concept, based on my findings, could be applied today.