Adults, particularly younger generations have become exponentially more reliant on cell phones. This reliance has manifested it 's self as addiction, and greatly impacts a large portion of our daily lives. This impact can be seen as separation anxiety from cell phones to being used as a buffer between ourselves and those we wish to distance ourselves from. We must first discover how to be comfortable with only our thoughts, then we can begin reconnecting with others face to face. Without learning how to cope without the constant reassurance of a cell phone in our own presence, we as a society cannot continue to grow as a whole with each other. Cell phone addiction is becoming an epidemic among younger users especially, manifesting it 's self
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The constant need to be occupied by a phone, whether it be from boredom, FOMO, or turning to it to be consoled leads to never truly being alone with just your thoughts. However, it is "in solitude we find ourselves", where we develop and form our opinions and feeling we can then in turn share with others (Turkle). Yet if our eyes are constantly glued to a screen, this process cannot fully happen. Instead, we are influenced by others more than ourselves. This addiction to constant connection allows us to present an edited form of ourselves to the world, and to "put your attention wherever you want it to be" (Turkle). We are able to keep ourselves at a distance or perhaps find more than we want to know simply by enveloping into our cell phones. To put the lengths some people will go in perspective, a study showed a large percentage of people in a focus group chose to give themselves an electrical shock rather than "be alone with their own thoughts" (Wilson et al). One idea of why these results were so shocking is due to the inability of those so addicted to cell phones that they have no power to self-soothe. These participants in particular "focused on their own shortcomings and got caught in ruminative thought cycles", and chose to shock themselves rather than to allow human emotion to happen (Wilson et
The constant need to be occupied by a phone, whether it be from boredom, FOMO, or turning to it to be consoled leads to never truly being alone with just your thoughts. However, it is "in solitude we find ourselves", where we develop and form our opinions and feeling we can then in turn share with others (Turkle). Yet if our eyes are constantly glued to a screen, this process cannot fully happen. Instead, we are influenced by others more than ourselves. This addiction to constant connection allows us to present an edited form of ourselves to the world, and to "put your attention wherever you want it to be" (Turkle). We are able to keep ourselves at a distance or perhaps find more than we want to know simply by enveloping into our cell phones. To put the lengths some people will go in perspective, a study showed a large percentage of people in a focus group chose to give themselves an electrical shock rather than "be alone with their own thoughts" (Wilson et al). One idea of why these results were so shocking is due to the inability of those so addicted to cell phones that they have no power to self-soothe. These participants in particular "focused on their own shortcomings and got caught in ruminative thought cycles", and chose to shock themselves rather than to allow human emotion to happen (Wilson et