Does your phone use you or do you use your phone?

Are you lonely or depressed? Blame it on your smart phone. The studies over the years are now pouring in that reveal that if you limit your social media your loneliness and depression will cease. They are even determining that when toddlers and up spend a lot of time doing apps on screens, they are losing their ability to use their senses especially the 3 dimensional ones of smell and touch. An example of the divide in perception is observed that if a child say plays the Lego app for hours on end and then is confronted with real building Lego blocks, they have to start all over again understanding the 3 dimensional concept of actually building the blocks.

Our young teens are filled with depression and loneliness because they are on their media screens all the time. Many are cutting themselves simply because there is no real discussions, no real time smiles and no real time physical hugs. There endorphins are not being used. They are losing the delight of real time touch, smell and emotion of spending time with other real people rather than their images on Instagram and media. So the old fashioned way of real interaction works better on our mental health.

Clinical psychologists have been studying child behavior ever since the boom in phone app use began in 2007 when the I Phone was introduced. By 2012 widespread use of phones were increased by teens. Now since then the percentage of teens drinking or having sex fell.  Teenagers spend on average now 4 -5 hours a day playing or observing images on their phones per day. Not at sports or extracurricular activities like music or art lessons using real 3 dimensional sports equipment, musical instruments or art supplies.  MRI scanning   of their brains are showing that their brains are not using the senses often enough and their electricity in the brain is drying up. Kids are now relating to each other in a very different way.

Emergency room visits from teens cutting themselves have tripled now. The Pew Research Center is studying all these causes and effects as they relate to all that time our kids of all ages are spending on media. Having good friends that you have never met in person is a relatively new thing but now all so common. The Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology has released a report based on their research studies that when college kids reduce their time to just 30 minutes per day on Instagram, Facebook and Snap Chat their loneliness and depression decreased as well as having more time to work on their studies and increasing their grades. So with all this proof will folks just put down their devises? Probably not.

Our doctors will just prescribe anti-depressant drugs that we all know is a danger too since most are highly addictive and in the long run harmful. Will they ever prescribe getting a hobby or meeting new people in person? Nah! There is no money to be made with old fashioned people interaction and joy. But you can encourage it to each other. You can put the device down and do a sport, musical instrument or try to draw something. A 3 dimensional positive experience. Hug someone daily. The National Institute of Health is currently spending 300 million dollars to study these effects on our brains over the next 20 years. Will we be completely different people by then? Will our brains look completely different by then? What we all know is that our smart phones have become the most important thing to have in our lives now in some cases even over any human interaction for joy or stimulation. Our phones should be a took you use and not a tool that uses you.