For many people, there is an over-reliance on our phones. While it has enabled us to communicate better (and always be available), have access to any information in a second and even allow us to work on the go, there are many signs that we are becoming over-reliant on them.
Our phones will often contain all our contacts, messages, emails, photos and give us useful apps for banking, maps, social media and much more. But what happens when something happens to disrupt our ability to use our phones? This could be if our phone or wifi signal is weak, the battery is low without an outlet in sight, or the banking app is down for maintenance. Many of us become useless and unable to function properly. We suddenly lose our bearings when walking or driving around when the GPS map fails to update. We can’t pay for our meal because our payment apps are down and we didn’t bring any cash, or we miss our train because we didn’t download our digital ticket and the weak signal in the station meant we couldn’t get it in time. These are all personal experiences where I have found myself overly reliant on my phone and I want to change that.
Technology has come along leaps and bounds over the past few decades. Just ten years ago were downloading music onto our phones physically but nowadays the majority of us just stream it. Twenty years ago the first commercial camera phones were being released and now the cameras on our phones are even more powerful than the full-sized professional cameras back then. Having so much power in such a small device means that we have so much potential in the palm of our hands, however, many of us don’t fully utilise this and take it for granted, aimlessly scrolling through social media instead.
The question being “are we too reliant on our phones?”, means does it affect our ability to function and perform daily tasks without it? For many yes this is true, but this is not completely our fault. Technology is so heavily integrated into our lives now that it would probably be just as hard to function and do many useful tasks, even if you had never had a phone. Our horizons have been widened greatly and this has given us many opportunities. We save time and effort searching for and booking accommodation using online rooms schedulers; we can save time, effort and money by shopping online, and we are able to capture any moment in an instant thanks to our phone’s cameras.
We may think we need our phones to do everything and in many ways, society is being rebuilt where they are an essential tool that we don’t leave the house without, but we are only reliant to the extent to which we need them. Many of us still know how to ride the bus without a phone, shop for groceries without it and even do basic daily tasks without the need for it, but the choice on how reliant we are on them is still in our hands and something we can control.lobehjul.dk/wp-admin
