Do you constantly find yourself on your phone? Are you picking up calls, reading messages, Whatsapp’s or checking Facebook updates before the beep is over? Do you find yourself checking and re-checking your phone even when there are no messages? These are signs that display nervousness, stress and anxiety.
In todays high-tech age, everything from food to home supplies, electricians to plumbers, entertainment to news, shopping to spa services is available at the touch of a button. While this has many benefits, it has brought about different problems! We become accustomed to picking up our phone for all these reasons and sometimes no reason at all! More and more Indians are spending time on gadgets. According to Indian statistics, an average Indian spends minimum 5 hours/day on internet usage on tablet or laptop, 2.36 hours of internet usage through phone and an additional 2.36 hours are spent specifically on social media. With 39% women and 61% male users the consumption of cell phone usage in India puts us as the third highest cell phone using country. We use cell phones to talk, chat, shop, read the news, read blogs, financial advice, meet romantic partners, social networking via Whatsapp, LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook et al … because google kaur knows it all!
What this does: Constantly checking and re-checking your phone or wanting to be connected to your phone via social networking or games initially reduces the individuals anxiety. However in the long term, such usage gradually increases anxiety, reduces tolerance levels and attention span and for some individuals leads to panic attacks when separated from their phones for short and long durations. Gradually, your phone sucks you in its own world. You will start to check your phone even when there are no messages or notifications. At times, you may get disappointed when your phone does not beep for a while. This may make you question your self-worth and perhaps feed into your anxiety, thus making it a vicious circular process.
What it leads to: Being sucked into your phone has the same fascination of losing yourself in a fiction novel. Yet, it is much more addictive and harmful. At the touch of a button there is so much stimulation available that gradually one starts to loose interest in everything around them. The level of stimulation will then always need to be at that level or more to generate an individuals interest. It almost acts as a drug, gradually increasing your tolerance to provide the same level of satisfaction. Thus, when similar levels of stimulation are not available one tends become moody, irritable, distracted, cranky, stressed and anxious. Additionally, one looses the present. You may be sitting in a room with your family or out at a party with friends but being on your phone takes you away from all the moments you could enjoy in the present. You may tend to feel distant from family and friends. For some individuals it is also that because they feel distant from their surroundings and the people in it that they feel the need to constantly be on their phone.
If you have started to feel a disconnect with your spouse, family or friends due to the gadgets in your life then therapy can help you restore this balance. Therapy can be useful to assess your situation, and improve you unconscious recurrent behaviour patterns. As famous author ALEX MORRITT endorses, “the more time we spend interconnected via a myriad of devices, the less time we have left to develop true friendships in the real world”.
