Are smartphones really making us smarter?
Our lifestyles can make us sick. Bad habits such as alcohol consumption, smoking, bad diet and lack of exercise are putting our health at high risk of serious diseases, such as heart disease, sugar diabetes, obesity, stroke ect. How about smartphones? Are smartphones really making us smarter? We use them constantly, being integrated into most aspects of our daily lives. Technology suppose to make our life easier but more and more people are claiming that they spend too much time “play” on their smartphones, which is causing mental and physical health issues. The average time people spend on smartphones to play and stay updated with the rest of the world is getting longer and longer. What are the long term risks?
Smartphones help us to facilitate our daily tasks. So many, that we lose track of how much time we actually spend on them which can be up to 4 hours per day , that is a quarter of our waking time. Smartphones become the last thing we look at before going to bed and the first thing we ‘must” see when we wake up. Does interacting with smartphone hurt our health? The answer is Yes. Research shows that over time of using smartphones is having a detrimental effect on our general health and mental health. No doubt using smartphones makes our lives easier, but if you’re using them too often and too long, it will increasing the unhappy mood and isolated in the long term.
The time people spend on social media sites, watching videos on Youtube or even playing games before bed could be contributing to poor quality of sleep. Good quality of sleep is extremely important for humans which requires 6–7 hours per adult per day. If you haven’t had a good sleep in 24 hours that you will start feeling tired, headache and your reaction will slow down. Three days in a roll your physical health starts to feel the negative impacts. Now is the time your health begins at high risk of high blood pressure even cardiovascular disease. There also a high risk doing any sports activities at this stage, such as running, driving and your emotions can be all over the place because your hormones are affected.
When the good quality of sleep becomes an issue, you will start with more irritating that leads to clinical depression which leaves you feeling sad and empty. At this stage, it seriously affect your social life, relationships, and family dynamics. That is why people who addicted to smartphones often feel they’ve been left out from society, family and friends. A simple example of that: when people see someone posting photos or videos from a weekend party they weren’t there makes them feel anxious lonely. Furthermore, when you use your smartphone for a long time without rest, it will cause your brain to stay on high alert, stop you from falling asleep. Especially at night time when people turn off the light and lying in the dark watching/using smartphone, the screen from the device is too close to your face that can suppress the release melatonin hormone.
For our general health, on one hand smartphones have a lot of activity apps in store such as Apple health, Samsung Health and Huawei health that can track your daily activities. Then there are many Pacer Pedometer & Step Trackers, Seven minutes work out apps that can help you to be fit. On the other hand, if we can’t control our time of using smartphone such as sitting down sending messages, checking social media, or lying down watch films/TV and playing games leads to general health issues such as eye discomfort, eyesight problems, heart disease, obesity, and diabetes. Research shows that too much sitting means we are more likely to become overweight. If we thinking that doing exercise afterwards to get rid of the negative effects, unfortunately, research suggests that exercise can’t necessarily do that. Furthermore, a study also demonstrated that people who spend more than four hours a day on smartphone are more likely to die than others.
Smartphone is a useful technology tool that we “must” have to living and stay connecting with the rest of the world. But we need to know the limit of using it too much too often that effects our daily lives and health. The solution for getting better health is to get less screen time and to be able to manage your relationship with your smartphone that you can have a smarter healthier way of life.
