Roses are red, dinner is for two, but we’re on our phones, wait, who the hell are you?

CADY COHEN

Do you take this iPhone11 to be your wedded partner, and to live together in marriage? 

The greatest love story is someone who is with you through the very peaks and lows of your life, who is always there for you.  They remind you that everything will be okay, no matter what time or circumstance, and that they are the joy you need in your life. I'm not talking about movies like, "To all the boys I loved before" or the "Kissing Booth" of Netflix, I'm talking about real love and that's the connection we have with our cell phones. You've heard me, this piece of technology has it all and meets if not all of our needs and wants, most people can't even do that!  But is the problem that we value it more than life itself?

The safe answer would be no, but that doesn't justify why we're staring at our phones in a single day over 200 times. Our phones are described as our life lines, something we can not survive without. Telephones do everything from keeping our social media linked, listening to music during a workout, cooking the recipe we found online, checking your bank account to see how broke you are after visiting Whataburger. It's no wonder how our phones affect our everyday lives; basically, we're using it for everything. It's a treasure and I would say even more of a treasure than our loved ones.

I'm not saying that if it comes to us choosing between them in a life / death situation, we wouldn't choose our loved ones but if you think about it, who do you engage most with in a single day? Your smartphones, or those you love? I am in college so I have to use my phone to check in on my relatives, but I have found that I don't check in with them as much as I do with my phone. It's not easy to deal with phones and a lot of that is just customary.

Health Boosters

I admit when I wake up in the morning that the first thing I do is reach and look at my device. Currently I shut my alarm, get up, go to the bathroom and bring my phone with me. Possibly the last thing we do every night is turn our alarms on but check Facebook quickly while we have it open. We are all guilty. We've checked the weather before our feet hit the floor, read the news and responded to emails. No trouble. There's always the feeling of panic around our phones, like when your phone's dying and you don't have the charger or dropping your phone and being pillaged with fear that you have damaged it. I know it would be disturbing to lose my cell. One day I remember running over my phone with my car, later I found it on the road and my heart had shattered just like the tempered glass. I couldn't wait to have a phone so I got a new one that same day. I know, I suck.

Forget the coronavirus virus!  

Dominique René

The addiction to smartphones is a massive epidemic that has taken hold of the planet. I don't actually suggest it's a lethal virus, but it's a definite distraction with the relentless loss of moments from here and now.  I swear to myself that I never want to be that person but it seems difficult to get away sometimes. I always keep my phone around me at all times, I still feel compelled to check it out and worry that if I don't, any important information could be missing. I don't think we recognize even when we don't look at our phones and have them put away our brain goes elsewhere. This is something that is really counterproductive to our capacity to consider what we should be doing. Receiving notification distracts people and when I'm in class, listening to my instructor and my phone vibrates? I look down for a split second and then it just turns into a rabbit hole and I'm already forgetting what the professor is saying by the time I crawl out. It's insane to see how reliant we our on our cell phones. It is our fault that we give it too much power by making it be part of our social connections, news, work, all.

Till Death Do Us Part

I always find it amazing to know that our phone is likely to be the only one that will see us die and be with us at that time. Smartphones are as equally important as anything else in our lives. I'm not trying to bash the existences of devices, because I love my smartphone and the great value of entertainment. While we sometimes go down the rabbit hole of social media, it also allows us working folk to keep up with friends, family, and news. It also celebrates diversity and when watching funny cat videos that gives us joy. I'd say we just have to rein it in and take control of social media and not the other way around.