Students and faculty at American University discussed this week their phone habits and their thoughts on the implications of that usage with many wondering about addiction in a constantly-connected society.
Victoria Knight, 26, a summer intern on campus, said she uses her phone for alarms, reminders and maps, noting the usage is “embedded” in the way most of us live.
“It is so hard to navigate life without it,” Knight said of her phone.
According to a Baylor University study, 44 percent of Americans said that they couldn’t go a day without their phones. That has led researchers in the last decade to study whether phone addiction is as dangerous as other compulsive behaviors and what the societal implications are.
Every single time we get a notification on our phones, our brains get a hit of dopamine–the feel good neurotransmitter. We are constantly on our phones because our brains crave that good feeling. According to The Dopamine Project, all addictions stem from the brain’s desire for dopamine.
The main attraction to our phones stems from our need to be constantly connected.
Hannah Kim, 19, said that she thinks that society is “going to become more dependent on social media because of how easy it is to connect with people.”
Alongside it being easy, social media is also convenient. We don’t even have to move to talk to our friends and we can stay up to date with family and friends even when we don’t have the time to see them.
Although being constantly connected may seem a bit invasive, for some it can be very beneficial.
Kim uses her phone for networking opportunities to find jobs.
John Tam, 21, claimed that being connected can be very helpful, especially during emergencies.
Tam also added that “you have access to the internet, you have access to people, you have access to just the whole entire world in the palm of your hands.” He believes that smart phones have the power to educate the world.
Born in the late 1980s and 1990s, millennials individuals grew up with technology right by their sides. According to an analysis done by the Pew Research Center, older generations aren’t as dependent of their phones because of “unique barriers.” These include physical challenges in manipulating technology and lack of confidence in adapting.
Knight noted that it is harder for millennials to stay off their phones because it has been with them their entire lives.
Though they can’t even begin to imagine their lives without their phones, Kim and Tam admitted that they would be living totally different lives without them. Kim believes she would be more physically active and even went as far to say that she “would feel more personally connected to the world.”
On the other hand, Tam believes that we would all be majorly inconvenienced in a no-phone life.
“Life would be vastly different,” Tam explained. “It would be a lot harder to stay connected. I think we would still find a way to communicate without our phones, but the ease of what we have now wouldn’t be there, that instant connection.”
Phones aren’t going anywhere anytime soon.
According to the Pew Research Center, cellphone ownership has risen from 62 percent of Americans in 2002 to 95 percent in 2018.
Due to the changes we have seen so far, we can predict that phone use is going to increase exponentially in the coming years.
When asked how she would resist the urge to become completely embedded into the technological world in coming years, Kim said that she would “try to recognize and focus on what is most important.” She added she hopes her life won’t be centered “around technological use.”