The ‘cell phone’ or mobile phone using cellular data, was invented in 1973. However, the cell phone that we all know and love, the high speed mobile computer with internet access, was invented in 2007. The very first ‘smartphone.’ Today, 97% of America’s population owns a smartphone. Since their rapid rise in popularity over the course of the early 2010s, the smartphone has boasted convenience, speed, and accessibility. While it certainly provides these things in excess, do cell phones really make our lives better?

Over the past 30 years, advancements in technology have been increasing in both frequency and significance at an exponential rate. The world of today is ruled by a device, the smartphone, that our ancestors of the recent past could have never imagined. The smartphone allows us to cut out or skip over so many boring, menial tasks such as sending paper mail, paying paper bills, calling on the landline, looking at paper maps, and using address books, to name a few. The smartphone has been encroaching further on our society, such as making in person shopping and dining all but obsolete. 

All of these tasks are now feasible with a few clicks here and a few swipes there, and that certainly gives us more free time. Not only does smartphone use give us more free time by automating a growing list of menial chores, the collective American people are spending less time at work than ever before. This isn’t to say that Americans should be working more, the free time smartphones provide us with is certainly a positive. 

The 2020 census recorded that the average (full-time and employed) American works a little over 37 hours a week. Compared to an average of 47 hour work weeks in the year 2002, according to data from the Washington Post, that is a significant amount less. The American people now have more free time than ever before. What do we do with it? 

According to this survey of smartphone data, the average American spends three hours and fifteen minutes a day on their phone, and checks it over 96 times a day. 1 in 5 smartphone users report spending more than 4 and a half hours a day on their cell phone. It gives, and it takes away. 

Some of this smartphone use can be attributed to more efficiently doing the same boring chores that plagued us all before the smartphones’ invention. But these numbers are alarming.

This brings up one of the most glaring harmful effects of the smartphone: it’s incredible addictiveness. In a recent survey, 48% percent of Americans reported feeling addicted to their smartphones. This number was even higher in teenagers. Much of this addiction can be attributed to the massive levels of dopamine the brain releases every time a smartphone user checks their phone, similar to the dopamine release granted by alcohol to alcoholics or cigarettes to smokers. Excessive use of smartphones has been proven to alter brain chemistry just like these other addictive substances, making the user increasingly reliant on their mobile device. 

This addiction branches off into numerous other problems. Smartphone users experience intense separation anxiety when without their phone, or when they haven’t checked it in a while. Being without one’s phone means potentially missing out on social events, reminders, important messages from work or loved ones, etc. As more and more of our lives get pulled into our smartphones, the fear of being without them builds and builds. 

To add to this anxiety, there is an incredible amount of social pressure among teenagers and young people to reply to messages immediately. I’ve observed among peers, friends, my family and myself the nervous rabbit hole which one can fall into when they don’t immediately get a reply. What’s going on? Does the person I’m talking to not like me anymore? Are they mad? 

When people expect an immediate response, they can get worried, annoyed, or even angry when they don’t get one. This just adds to the anxiety of being without your smartphone. Nobody wants to have their friends and acquaintances think that they’re being ignored, so they respond no matter what, wherever they are and whatever they’re doing. It’s a vicious cycle, with people expecting immediate responses and therefore feeling more pressure to give them.

We do not need smartphones. People lived before them, had good, meaningful and happy lives before them. It can be hard to even consider living without a smartphone, and there are thousands of ways to rationalize their use. But for many, they are nothing but a burden.