SMART PHONE ADDICTION
                                                      

If you were born in the last 30 years, chances are that you spend hours every day on your smart phone and rarely look up from the screen. In 2016, 76 per cent of Canadians owned a smart phone and that number is increasing rapidly every year. Many people of all ages in this current era have lived most of their lives in a world where smart phones are commonplace and we are only just starting to understand what the impact of these devices have on the mental  health of our youth.

It is not an exaggeration to conclude that teens nowadays are on the brink of the worst mental-health crisis in decades. Much of this deterioration can be traced to their smart phones.

Millions upon millions of people of all ages are addicted to their smart phones. I am not one of them. That is because I only use it in a case of emergency, or when I want to call someone or receive a call from someone when I am not in my home. That is what smart  phones were originally designed to do.  Nowadays, there are many other things that smart phones offer their users. They included, playing games, getting current news and weather, getting road traffic information and using a map to find your way to your destination etc.

People are spending almost five hours a day on their smart phones and the problem isn’t just what they’re looking at—it’s also what they’re looking away from. A person looking at a smart phone screen while walking across a road is not actually seeing the approaching car that is going to hit him or her.

Even my small grandchildren have smart phones. What do they do with them?  They play games on them.  When they get older, they will communicate with their friends who also have smart phones. My grandchildren will also be like millions of other children—suffering from smart phone addiction.  Trying to pull them away from their smart phones is like trying to pull them away from their bowls of ice cream.

When you’re on your smart phone constantly, you can forget what it means to have a genuine interaction face to face with someone. You can lose the ability to live in the moment and, even if you’re surrounded by friends, it’s possible to feel completely isolated if you or they are constantly on your smart phones.

I remember back in the 1960s while I was in a Greyhound bus being driven around the western part of the United States and having conversations with fellow passengers. Two of my fellow passengers told me about events in their lives. I was so intrigued at what they told me that I decided to include their stories (without their real names) in two of my published books of short stories.

Direct conversations face to face are slowly slipping away.  Nowadays, the travelers are for the most part, glued to the screens of their smart phones. Soon, direct conversations between strangers will go the way of the dodo bird which also doesn’t exist anymore. 

I see people walking on sidewalks staring at the screens of their smart phones. One day while I was on a sidewalk, a man was so intent at watching the screen of his cell phone, before I could move off the sidewalk, he walked right into me. I said to the startled man, “I hope you don’t do this when you ae driving a car.

Millions of smart phone users have stared at their smart phones while they are driving their cars.  Consequently, a great many of them are killed or alternatively, they have killed someone else, whether in their own car or in someone else in another car or at a crosswalk. Most jurisdiction make it a serious offence to drive while talking on a hand-held smart phone while driving a vehicle If they have an accident as a result of talking on their smart phone, they will be in a great pile of legal doggy poo in you get my drift.

In the province of Ontario in Canada, if someone causes a fatal accident as a result of that driver looking at his smart phone, the penalty is extremely serious. Careless drivers who cause bodily harm or death will face a maximum of $50,000 in fines, two years in prison, and a five year license suspension. 

Distracted drivers who haven’t injured or killed anyone because of their distraction will face a license suspension of three days (a first in Canada), a maximum $1,000 fine and escalating penalties for further offences.

Not long ago while I was in the sitting room of my doctor’s office, I turned to the man next to me and asked him if he could tell me what time it was since I accidentally left my watch at home. He didn’t look at me as his eyes were glued to his smart phone, He did speak however. He said, “Can’t help you as I am busy right now.” His eyes were so glued to the screen of his smart phone, he didn’t even want to move his eyes to his watch to give me the time.   

Have you ever wondered why you have to wait so long for the man who is sitting on the only available toilet in the men’s room in the restaurant to finish what the toilet is used for? I will tell you what one such man was doing while I patiently waited for him to finish what he went into the stall to do. He was playing a game on his smart phone.     

Don’t laugh. That happened to me. I asked him if he could hurry up. His response was, “Do your thing somewhere else.” I decided to teach him a lesson he would never forget.

I am renowned as the one man people don’t want to do a wrong to. When I get even, my punishment is extremely harsh but well deserved. Of course, if their apology is sincere, then I spare them the grief. In this particular event in my life, this inconsiderate creep spending his time on the toilet playing a game on his cell phone didn’t apologize to me. That was a BIG MISTAKE on his part.

The toilet in the stall next to his couldn’t be used as the toilet was temporally out of order.

I stood on the cover of the toilet, pulled out my penis and pissed upwards so that the flow of urine would go over the seven-foot wall that separated us.  It then sprinkled all over the obnoxious man sitting on his toilet. He screamed in anger. Needless to say, I was out of washroom before he even pulled his pants up.  

Then in order to make him suffer some more, I stood near the entrance of the washroom waiting for him to exit the washroom and when he exited the washroom, I, with a disguised voice said to him in a loud voice so that everyone in the restaurant could hear me. “Hey, Mister. What is that horrible smell?  Did you piss in your pants? Didn’t you wipe your ass before you pulled up your pants?” He quickly paid his bill and with a red face he then ran out of the restaurant amidst the laugher from the other customers.  

There are seven ways in which you can no longer suffer from your smart phone addiction. Here they are.

  1. Download a Moment app, which tells you how much time you spent on your smart phone the previous day.  The first time you see a number in the eight-hour range, you will be encouraged to put an end to your smart phone addiction.

2.  Turn your smart phone to black and white. All functionality is still there.  You just aren’t attracted to it anymore. If you have an iPhone, go to Settings – General – Accessibility — Display Accommodations — Colour Filters — Grayscale. Naturally it  is conveniently buried under six menu options, however, you can do it.     

3. Add extra swipes before work. So many people are merging their lives into one phone. Do you have your work email on the same phone you want to take out on Friday night? If so, it is better to separate the accounts (for example, use the Mail app for your personal email and download the Gmail app for work, etc.) and then move the work app a few screens away. What do the extra three or four thumb swipes do? They give your brain a conscious one-second pause before you subconsciously check your work email at midnight after your visit to the bars etc.

4.  Recent research from Australia shows that exposing our brains to bright screens before bed reduces melatonin production the sleep hormone. Bummer! What helps? Well, if you can’t stay off your smart phone then at least enable it into the  Night Shift mode. It dims the screen and reduces that blinding brightness which makes your evolutionarily slow brain think it’s morning time. If you’re on a smart phone, go to Settings – Display & Brightness – Night Shift.  

5. Any retailer will happily sell you an alarm clock for $10 or $15. If you’re using your smart phone as your alarm clock — DON’T.  Consider the $15 an investment in your mental sanity as it will allow you to wind down and wind up without getting pinged with the latest Trump tweet. It’s much nicer when you get back to waking up on your own with your alarm clock. 

6.  What’s the first thing every app asks you when you download it? “EatMoreDoughnuts would like to send you Notifications. OK?” You click OK because, well, you’d like to eat more doughnuts. And you just downloaded it. And the app never lets you forget it. Get intentional. If you’re on an Smart Phone, go to Settings – Notifications and scroll down your list of apps. Start by turning them all off and then cruise the list again combing for anything that might be crucial.

7.  Shut your smart phone off as soon as you get home. This way you can spend your time conducting yourself as a normal person who isn’t addicted to that small item in your hand.  OK men. I am not talking about your penis.

8. Get something better to do than waste your time staring at your smart  phone screen.

9. Don’t ever use your smart phone when you are sitting on a toilet in a public  washroom in a store, restaurant , theatre or mall. There is always someone like me who will get even if you don’t vacate the stall as soon as you have finished doing what nature forced you to do. It is conceivable that the sprinkle may have originated from me.

Excuse me. I didn’t hear what you said as I was so intent at looking at the screen of my smart phone.