The Complicated Relationship We have With Our Smartphone Essay PDF

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The Complicated Relationship We have With Our Smartphone Essay. You can use this as a topic in your essay writing assignment and take this content as a reference....

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The Complicated Relationship We have With Our Smartphone (Word count: 991) In today’s world, technology has reached a lot of heights. Especially the phones have revolutionized and made our lives easier. We now have more options than ever before to communicate with each other, which is why we need to be able to use our mobile phone at all times. From recipe apps to GPS to only accessing the internet at the fingertips, a mobile phone can do anything that’s why everyone wants it nowadays and even if you are not using your mobile phone for a long time, you still want to know what’s going on around you. This essay will elucidate about issues that students who were interviewed in the article” My Smartphone and me: A Love-Hate Relationship” by Donnas Freitas and Christian Smith (2017) face due to smartphones in their daily lives. Relationship with phones can be very complicated as having a mobile phone is a good thing but it also has a negative side effect on us. I will also be sharing my experience and point of view on this topic.

To begin with, a student name Gina said in the interview that it frustrates her that how people don’t have a proper one on one conversation anymore because they are so busy with their phones all the time. If one person takes out their phone everyone follows. She’s done it herself and regrets it. Most people nowadays meet just to click pictures and show people on their social media that how they are having fun outside but in reality, everyone is on their phones posting pics, messaging, using social media etc. She adds another issue that it’s hard to stay away from her phone and she brings her phone everywhere she goes. Not only because she had to check her messages or phone calls but also because students received a lot of emails from school and if they miss even one email, that could be something very important like a group project, meetings, or someone wants you to sign a

waiver for something etc. Which is totally true as me being a student myself I know how hard it is to keep up with all the college emails and deadlines which you track using your phone. Students like Gina, Kristin, Amy and many others when they were away from their phone due to some vacation or some problem they all felt the same thing which is relaxed and there was no phone controlling their lives, they were able to spend more time with their family and do things that they wanted to do without any distraction and how time wasn’t the main issue of their day but when they returned to use their phone, it was full of messages, emails, notifications which stressed them out.

Which brings me to another issue that most of the students had the constant pressure of being available 24/7. As people expect instant responses and instant communication. It’s actually hard to function in the society if you don’t communicate or if you make yourself unreachable. The world is becoming more connected than ever before, and we living in a time where technology has become so powerful that half of our life is dependent on that small non-living device. Some students also mentioned how they have to make excuses to stay away from their phones so that they can concentrate on their studies and how it’s hard to study without unplugging their phones. They felt like replying to people but also felt the need to take some break. Where there were students trying to get rid of their phones to concentrate the interviewer met a student who could not live without her phone and who risked her life just for her phone where she could have been stabbed but all she was concerned about was her phone.

After reading the interview I realized I face similar problems. I know how Gina felt because I have been in that same situation a lot of times when I used to go to college in person before COVID-19 where my group will always meet up but no one will talk they will just click pictures to post on their Instagram or Snapchat stories but don’t really

make any real conversations and as I mentioned before being a college student I receive a lot of notifications from college, teachers, classmates regarding assignments and yes I also feel the pressure of being available 24/7 and always connected. Students in this interview also talked about the different strategies they used to unplug themselves from their smartphones like some used to keep their phones in another room while studying or go to a place where there is no WIFI available. A student also mentioned an experiment that they did at school where they kept their phones in the bin during dinner time and how the entire cafeteria was louder than normal as everyone was talking and laughing rather than being on their phones. For me I use the strategy where I keep my phone in a different room while studying that helps a lot or else, I would give my phone to my parents during my exams.

I believe my relationship with technology will be more intense than now in future as technology is becoming very powerful day by day some say in future we all will be fully dependent on our phones and technology and if you think about it everything is becoming virtual now in 2020 from schools, colleges, lectures, work, meeting, even weddings. Technological determinism the development of social and cultural values in society. As said in the reading smartphones are here to stay and someday WIFI will soon be everywhere all over the world, so being unplugged will be more difficult. But I will try my best to stay connected to the real world too as real human interaction is very important for anybody’s mental health....