We only have 24 hours in a day, and for many people living in this day and age, the majority of those hours are taken up staring at a glass screen and swiping endlessly. With rising awareness of the issue, there are many things that need to be understood by those struggling to get passed the easy escape iPhones give us from reality. Technology use is only growing stronger, and there must be a boundary set between life and the life created within our phones. 

Do you ever feel like you are wasting hours or even days on your phone? Well, for some Americans, that is true, having half of the US population struggling to fight off their constant need to look at their iPhones. Many people’s lives are overtaken by phones not by choice, but by the draw of life. We didn’t choose to be born into this generation surrounded by screens. We choose to use phones and support companies that make these addictive devices, like Apple and Samsung, and it is hard not to when it is all you have ever known. According to Cross River Therapy, there are 77% of Americans that have phones and 23% have managed to live without them. Luckily, there are still a small number of people out there finding ways to live lives not entirely consumed by a phone, but unfortunately, for the majority, life is on their phone and they revolve around it. 

There is a difference between being an iPhone user and an addict. Using your phone for texting and calling is considered standard use, but wasting hours of your life constantly viewing others’ posts and non-stop watching videos that you will probably forget about a minute after is what you call an addiction.

The issue with phones is not the phone itself, but what is held inside it. The highly calculated world of social media spreads a plethora of new content every day and is the key component of this crisis, especially among teens. Cross River Therapy States that teens spend almost nine hours every day on their phones with the only outcome being high levels of anxiety, depression, and lack of motivation. Some may even hear phantom notifications, which is when you check your phone thinking that you heard a notification from an app, but quickly come to realize it was just your imagination. Now, this is scientifically proven to affect many people, and I have even experienced it myself. For some reason though, the attachment to the phone overpowers these highly negative side effects. Many teens struggle to feel at ease without a phone in their hand, ready to use at any given moment. This attachment and obsession affect 66% of teens, causing severe mental health issues (Cross River Therapy). 

The main cause of these mental health issues is social media. Seeing online how we are supposed to look, act, and think can be seriously constraining to the growth of someone’s character and true passion in life. Feeling like there is a mold we all must fit every day is very controlling over young minds. Parents fail to see that and their children are highly lazy and unmotivated to do anything that takes up the slightest amount of energy or time away from their social media activity.