SMARTPHONES DON'T HAVE NEGATIVE AFFECTS ON OUR SOCIAL LIVES.
It's crazy to think that the world didn't have Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram 20 years ago. We can all agree that many people nowadays spend hours on their phones everyday. People spend more time looking at a screen instead of physical objects, people, buildings, the sky, our families, our friends. 20 years ago people spent zero hours looking at smartphone screens. It is our time that's at risk here. But I'm not saying that's a bad thing. I clarified that there are really good consequences of smartphones. Let's face it, you only live once, and no one lives forever.
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You might be one of the few that lives in a place where the use of smartphones has not exploded yet. But there is a really good chance you aren't since you're reading this article on the internet. I'm not going to lie, smartphones are really amazing utilities. We can take selfies with our friends, type up reports as if our phones are laptops, and even create our own internet personalities for the whole world to see. These are all great consequences because a smartphone is like a "mobile device that combines telephony, with the internet and with computing" (Brown).
What happens in the next 20 years, no one knows for sure. Try to value the time you have with your friends in person because life may throw a curve-ball at you and you may end up in a completely unexpected situation next year. Maybe we'll all be living in a virtual reality in the near future, who knows? Smartphones can be used to connect with friends over great distances which is wonderful. Smartphones have been a revolutionary step in digital communication and networking. We have access to tools like Facebook which let us instantly contact hundreds of people and keep in touch with multiple groups and organizations. Educational apps such as iTunes U help us learn college material in our own time, and file sharing apps like Google Drive make smartphones more productive in instantly sending our documents, projects and other files to the cloud. This increased functionality enables smartphones to replace many existing computing devices such as personal computers. Maybe we'll have access to something even more connecting in the next 10 years.
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What I would like you, the reader, to take away from this is to ask yourself the question 'is it worth my time'? Would you rather be on your phone in a group of friends instead of talking, or keeping your phone away in that situation? I know it's hard to see sometimes. We act subconsciously when we pull out our phones to use, and I know this because I catch myself doing the same thing. Don't lose sight of the moment. And make every day, ever hour, every minute hooked into a screen worth your time. Because your time is indeed important.