Smartphone Epidemic by Stephen Marcellino

                A study was conducted at the Alabama State University showed that 75% of students rated themselves totally dependent on their smartphones (Richard, et al). In a society that has become completely over ran by technology, this number may be an understatement. This phenomenon was thought to be a completely absurd thought as few as just 10 years ago. However, smartphones have infiltrated our everyday lives as they now become our alarm clocks, research device, phone, and even our camera. As smartphones become more popular and smarter, will these be another piece of technology that will be obsolete after a few decades, or will they become the new norm of society?

              When the word “smartphone” is used, today’s generation automatically imagines the latest iPhone or Samsung phone. However, the smartphone has been out long before either of these companies had even thought of developing such devices.

The first smartphone was known as the Simon by IBM and was first released in April of 1992 (Sager). This is not the smartphone that you would normally think of with apps, games, a camera, and multiple screens you can swipe through. This smartphone, instead, attempted to incorporate in your phone, the ability to fax, page, and call, all in one device (1). This phone weighed a whopping 18 ounces and had features that allowed you to touch or poke with a stylus to select through multiple icons that included a calculator, phone, and even email (1).

The smartphone was not popular, however, until Apple’s announcement of the revolutionary iPhone in 2007 to be released later that year ("Apple - Press Info - Apple Reinvents the Phone with IPhone."). This phone featured a single home screen button, and emphasized the use of a touchscreen. In the coming years, smartphone sales would raise from 122 million sold units to 1.4 billion units ("Smartphone Sales Worldwide 2007-2015 | Statistic.") pushing iPhone to be the 9^th best-selling consumer based commodity of all time (Calio, et al).

Google also released their first smartphone soon after the iPhone was released in November of 2008 ("A Brief History of Smartphones - TheSnugg.com."). This phone was not as well released as the iPhone as it had a physical keyboard, rather than the onscreen keyboard featured on the iPhone (Smith). This phone did have all other features that the original iPhone featured like email, texting, calling, and even limited internet capability (2).

As the popularity of the smartphone grew, so did the addiction, growing from something that was nice to have but only obtained by the wealthy, to a product that everyone uses for every part of their daily lives. A large share of the blame for this sudden addiction to something that was once seen as a materialistic product to own goes to how accessible they are.

This could prove to be problematic as we tend to want to use our smartphones when we should be focusing on more important tasks, the latest and most dangerous example, using our phones while we drive. However, this seems to be a problem that does not seem to be going away any time soon, especially since the usage of GPS on the phone is growing in popularity. According to a poll of more than 9,000 people conducted by Lifehack.com, more than 60% of people prefer to use their cell phones as a GPS over a dedicated GPS devise, or even an in-dash GPS unit that comes in a car (Henry).

Another big cause of smartphone addiction is the implementation of games on cell phones. Starting with the arcade classic, Snake, being added into cell phones in 1997, cell phone gaming has become a community all of its own to now include games like Grand Theft Auto 3 and long RPG’s like Final Fantasy VII (Purewall). The one game that seemed to have started the craze and lust for gaming on cell phones was a game called Angry Birds. This game, released in May of 2009, grew to over 50 million individual downloads over the next few years and had accrued more than 200 million minutes of game play per day (Mauro).

While games on smartphones are designed to give rewards in order to give the sense of accomplishment, phones also have this basic design in them, increasing the amount of dopamine released in the brain and making them more addicting (Itzkovitch). Phones accomplish this through the satisfying ding that they emit when you get a message, the tone they have when you get a phone call, and even by appealing to our materialistic side by making owning the latest phone a status symbol (1).

The addiction of smartphones is being passed down from generation to generation, starting the next earlier than the last. According to a study reported by Going Wireless, 38% of children under 2 use mobile phones and a staggering 69% of children under 8 are reported to owning their own cell phones ("Kids Wireless Use Facts."). When children are given a device that is capable of doing so much at such a young age, it only stands to reason that an addiction is going to form.

Children are not becoming addicted to smartphones and other devices just because they are given them at a young age, they are also seeing that being addicted to smartphones is socially acceptable and do not view this as a bad trait to have. In 2012 a study was conducted of 5,000 people of several different nationalities and races and found that smartphone addiction is occurring all over the world (Gilbert). The study found that 84% of those they surveyed admitted that they could not go a single day without their phones, 20% check their phones every 10 minutes, and more than 50% sleep with their phone next to them (1).

This addiction can also cause possible bodily harm when used in situations when smartphones should be left in a person’s pocket. In 2013, a Taiwanese tourist visiting Australia had to be rescued after falling off of a pier because she was looking at her phone and walking ("Tourist Walks off Australia Pier While Checking Facebook - BBC News."). She was found in a floating position on her back after the police arrived in a speed boat because she could not swim, apologizing and telling the officers that she said “I was checking my Facebook page on the phone and I’ve fallen in.” still clutching her phone the whole time (1).

Someone walking off of a pier looking at their phone may seem like something to laugh over and thankfully no one was hurt. However, there are times that result in very tragic accidents and can lead to be fatal for one person or many people. Three Houston teens were killed on their way back from a spring break vacation in South Padre Island (Karedes). Using her phone as a GPS to navigate herself back home, one of the teens were distracted and veered into oncoming traffic, then colliding with an 18 wheeler(1). Distracted driving occurs more frequently since the popularity of the smartphone and cause around 330,000 injuries every year and is six times more dangerous than driving drunk ("Texting and Driving Statistics - Distracted Driving Drives Up Risk.").

With the growing risk of smartphone addiction and smartphone use conflicting with our daily lives in a way that could harm us, texting and driving for example, there have been steps taken to try and prevent people from being hurt. These steps have been taken by our local governments, federal government, and even the private companies that make these phones and cell phone providers. It may be too soon to see whether most of these steps will be successful in trying to pull each other out of the small screens that seem to control our minds, but there definitely have been many attempts that have failed to do so.

One of the steps taken have been from varying local governments across the country have implemented strict cell phone laws that prohibit cell phone use while driving. Currently there are 14 states that have passed primary enforcement laws against any kind of cell phone use while driving ("Distracted Driving Laws."). This means that a citation can be written to a driver for using their cell phone without another traffic offense being committed(1). However, it is believed that these laws prohibiting cell phone use while driving does not reduce the number of crashes caused by distracted driving. In a study conducted in 2012 explained that these accidents weren't preventing accidents by removing the risk of cell phone use, instead they were just taking the cell phone use away from people who would have gotten into accidents anyway (Morton). They explain that the problem with drivers being distracted by cell phone use actually stems from the users willingness to use the technology, rather than the user's willingness to obey traffic laws (1).

Another main cause of the smartphone epidemic is the fact that using smartphones has become so easy, it becomes addicting to use. Some people even experience withdrawal symptoms when they go an extended period of time without their cell phone. There are various ways you can fight this addiction in the same ways you would fight any other addiction. This addiction is also not like others in a way that it is next to impossible to detox yourself from smartphones and stop using them all together. One way that is proposed is to slowly ween yourself off of smartphones bit by bit until you are down to a level of use that you are comfortable with (Steinmetz). They also state that it is very important to inform everyone that you plan on doing this in order to prevent any conflict of you slowly weening yourself from these devices (1).

While weening yourself off of smartphones is a good way to lower your use of these devices, you still need to be able to get over the urge to check and use these devices. One way proposed is when you have an urge to use your phone, close your eyes, take a deep breath, count to five, then continue with what you were doing previously (Wong). Doing this action will help fight the urge to check your phone when you are busy doing an activity or working. Wong also writes that if this does not work and you still have the urge to check your device, just repeat the action again until you can focus on what you were working on before (1).

In order to fight the addiction that smartphones hold over our lives, we must instill in our children that it this behavior is not a good one to have. There have been major pushes to ban smartphones from schools in order to remove the constant distraction that these devices bring. A study conducted by the London School of Economics found that schools that have strict bans on smartphone use in the school have test scores 6.4% higher than schools that do not (Kottasova). The use of technology in schools can be very beneficial in some cases, however, there is a time and a place that these devices should be used, and they are currently causing more of a distraction in a classroom setting than they are helping. This solution working depends on the cooperation of the parents that allow their children to have smartphones. Most parents dislike schools banning these devices because it limits them being able to contact their children (1).

While the smartphone epidemic does not fit into what an epidemic is usually viewed as, it still has the basic concepts of what an epidemic is. Miriam-Webster defines an epidemic as affecting or tending to affect a disproportionately large number of individuals within a population, community, or region at the same time or excessively prevalent (Merriam-Webster). It fits in as an epidemic because the amount of people who own a smartphone is such a large amount, and just about every single person who owns a smartphone suffers from smartphone addiction and has become a problem that is very difficult to find answers for.

Camus may not have seen smartphone addiction as an epidemic in a traditional sense, but he will have viewed that the amount of people that are addicted to these devices to be reaching the same level of a disease caused epidemic. Camus may have thought that the amount of control that these small devices have over our everyday lives vastly absurd and would have really enjoyed studying how this came to be. Camus’s extreme belief in freedom would have caused him to be extremely happy in the amount of freedom that has been given by using these smart devices in such places like the Egypt, and even sparked a revolution (Guston). Camus may have argued that for this reason, the addiction to smartphones may be an acceptable outcome of providing humanity with this level of freedom. However, Camus may also have seen how some freedoms have been taken from us in the form of companies using and collecting our data and selling it to the highest bidder in order to learn our behaviors and how to sell us products.

Smartphone addiction is an epidemic that has been brushed off as something that is not as serious as other addictions. However, the growing number of people who own a smartphone compared to the amount of those owners who claim that they cannot go a full day without using their phone proves otherwise. With new phones coming out every year that are more advanced and are making our lives easier, this may be an epidemic that we cannot overcome.

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