Seven Ways Your Smartphone Addiction Is Ruining Your Health
How often are you on your mobile?
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Mobile Phone Blues - From finding a date on Tinder to updating your Facebook status to binge-watching Being Mary Jane on Netflix, our smartphones are a vital part of our day. But can our dependence on being plugged in dampen our health? Read more about how overusing our smartphones is bad for us. — Kellee Terrell(Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
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It Ruins Our Sleep - If you are sleeping with your phone in the bed, you are in trouble. Not only will the stimulation keep you up at night, the blue light from the screen messes with your melatonin levels (sleep hormones), which can screw with your mental health and increase your risk of certain cancers, including breast and prostate, writes Business Insider.(Photo: Mother Image/Rana Faure/Corbis)
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It Creates Anxiety - The constant need to be plugged in can create serious anxiety, especially when one realizes they left their phone at home. This anxiety and fear is called “nomophobia,” which is short for “no-mobile-phone phobia.” A recent study found that 66 percent of people are constantly checking for their phones and incredibly worried about losing them. Also, women were more pressed about this than men, the study says.(Photo: Dann Tardif/LWA/Corbis)
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It Hurts Your Neck and Back - The constant crouching over and looking down to check your phone can create back and neck pain. All that texting can cause pain in your hands and fingers, too. (Photo: Zoran Milich/Getty Images)
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It Causes Vision and Eye Problems - Constantly staring at a small screen all day can cause blurry vision, dry eyes and headaches. Extended time looking at the screen, not blinking enough and the blue light from the phone can play a factor in eye trouble. (Photo: David McNew/Getty Images)
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It Obliterates Healthy Boundaries in Relationships - There once was a time when the only way people could get in touch with you was on your landline. Now we have the ability to check work emails all through the night and people can know where you are at any given time thanks to social media. It makes it harder to have privacy and create boundaries. This constant need to have to check in can cause a lot of stress in our lives. (Photo: Ashley Corbin-Teich/Corbis)
Photo By Photo: Ashley Corbin-Teich/Corbis
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It Makes You Feel Vibrations That Aren’t There - You can actually think that your phone is vibrating even when it's not. It’s called “phantom vibrations” and it's a real classified syndrome. Past data found that 89 percent of college undergraduates and 87 percent of hospital workers admit to having this syndrome.(Photo: Martin Green/DPA/Landov)
Photo By Photo: Martin Green/DPA/Landov
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It Causes Accidents - Whether you are driving while texting, walking or crossing the street with your headphones on, smartphones distract us from paying attention to our surroundings. In 2010, there were more than 100 accidents reported due to smartphones that ranged from walking into moving traffic to falling down. (Photo: 13/James Woodson/Ocean/Corbis)