Position Paper 1

         Imagine being so addicted to something that you must use it as soon as you wake up, as well as right before you go to sleep, if it was not a factor in keeping you awake. Not to mention, you have to use it so often throughout the day, that if you do not, you feel like you might go crazy. Well, that is how most of us are with our phones, me included. That is not an easy thing to admit that I am so dependent on a rectangle, but with how technology has evolved, it is hard not to be. Having the ability to get answers to practically any question, issue, or need within seconds just at your fingertips makes the addictive usage of phones seem justified. Not only the ability to access information makes phones to useful. Phones can connect people who are states, countries, and even continents apart, almost instantaneously. Justifying an addiction seems like a way to seemingly deny the fact that it exists, but technology controls practically everything nowadays.

        According to the “Screen Time” option in the Settings page of my iPhone 8, the average daily time I spend on my phone is 9 hours and 16 minutes. It must be that high due to the fact that this past week has been a true burden on my mental health which has led to me laying in bed on my phone for most of the day. This past summer when I was working an average of 65 hours a week, my average phone time was usually under 3 hours. 3 hours is still high for how much time I would be at work. That shows that even while I was not supposed to be on my phone, I still found the time. It is always hard to not want to stay connected to news and my friends and family. Although the most useful function of phones might be the ability to keep people connected, I struggle with that the most. I have exactly 100 unopened texts. I will read them when they first pop up on my phone, then despite telling myself I will respond later, I usually fail to respond. That seems ridiculous, as I have spent over 8 hours on my phone each day this past week. I respond to the people or things most important and ignore the rest. The same goes for my Snapchat a well. I spend a lot of time on Snapchat, but that is only to respond to a solid 5 people. I love being able to easily and quickly communicate with the people I care about.

I spend the most of my time on my phone on social media. My phone breaks down my usage for me, listing what I use and how much time I spend using it. I spend the most time on TikTok, a short mobile video app. All videos on this app are shorter than one minute. I had refused to download it for a long time, but now that I have, it is truly an addiction. This may be the unhealthiest app on my phone as it has led to ADHD tendencies. While I am watching a show or movie, I usually take “TikTok breaks” because my brain struggles to focus long enough to watch something that requires an attention span longer than a minute. I spend the next most time on Snapchat. I am on “Snap” a lot because my team, roommates, and my best friend and I communicate mainly through it. I have deleted Snapchat many times over the past 5 years because it causes a lot of stress in my life, but I always redownload it. My third most used social media app is Instagram. I have done the same with “Insta” deleting and redownloading it after taking breaks for my mental health. Despite my admittance to the unhealthy things that these specific 3 apps bring into my life, I continue using them. My realization of the detrimental properties of these social medias should make me realize that I need to cut down on my usage drastically.

        I use my phone the most to communicate, use the internet, and scan social media. One of my favorite usages for my phone is being able to watch Blues hockey games from it on Fox Sports Go, and when I am not watching the game, I can look up the score in seconds. My pone is used mainly for my personal entertainment, but I would say that about 8% of the time, it is used for classroom use. I can access Blackboard from my phone, which is extremely useful if I need to check on things for a class quickly. I use my calculator on my phone a lot as well as the internet to look up anything I may need for a class. I also use my Dell computer, but mainly just for homework and classes. I used to use it to watch streaming networks, but now I use my smart TV for that. That is my newest piece of technology, and I can not imagine watching my media on anything else. Being able to access all of my streaming networks, cable shows, as well as project things from my phone onto it, makes it almost too easy to get distracted. I am surrounded by technological distractions almost every minute of every day.

My dad is the head of IT for a road construction company in St. Louis. Being as his life revolves around technology. I go him whenever I have problems with my phone or computer. He refused to get us iPhones growing up and also limited what apps we were allowed to have on our phones. I remember by best friend begging my dad over the phone in 6th grade to let me download snapchat. I was so happy when he caved, but looking back, I wish he never had. We had Motorola smart phones growing up and I felt so left out not having an iPhone. My dad hated working with his coworkers Apple products at work so he did not want us having them. We finally convinced him to let us switch over to iPhones halfway through my Freshman year of high school. My dad has always been one to lecture us about the dark side of social media, so I am very lucky to have grown up with a dad who knows all about new technology.

I find that when my groups of friends and I get together, there are times when we all sit there on our phones. Do not get me wrong, we love spending time together. Technology just controls our lives now. We have grown up in the peak of technological advancement, so it is hard for them to not control our lives. My generation was blessed as well as cursed with the technology that we have today. I want to say that I will not allow my children to grow up with “iPad babysitters,” but that is impossible to promise myself, as it is practically the new norm. I spend too much time on my smart phone for someone who says constantly that they would be “so much happier and less stressed with a flip phone.” I am both scared and excited to see just how technology will continue to advance throughout my lifetime. I just wish now that it did not have the control over my life that I have allowed it to have.