What’s the first thing you do when you wake up? Holding a smartphone or ..?

Don’t be surprised if the answer is smartphone, because it has been a global phenomenon. The results of research by the international institute, International Data Corporation (IDC) in 2018, revealed that 80 percent of smartphone users check their smartphone within 5 minutes after they woke up.

Current technology allows us to do activities in smartphone, from shopping, operating household and residential devices, completing work, to doing exercises.

Not only when you wake up, the Global Mobile Consumer Survey 2018 from Deloitte even notes that the average smartphone user checks their smart phone 47 times a day.

So, don’t be surprised if the time spent on the smart phone screen is much longer than when you interact socially with people around you.

The sight of a family eating one table in a restaurant, however, each family member are busy with smartphones, or a reunion which ending with a photo session that will be uploaded to social media without any exciting chat about each other’s life journeys, are things you often see. Or have you experienced it too?

Based Millenial Report 2019 done by IDN Research Institute, there are 63 million millennials in Indonesia (aged 20-35 years). As many as 94.4 percent of them have connections to the internet, the majority of their consumption time is 4-10 hours per day.

Of this number, 13.4 percent of senior millennials and 6.5 percent of junior millennials spend 7-10 hours per day consuming the Internet. This research conducted before the pandemic era, which impacted them to do work from home (WFH) policy.

Then, is it okay to love your smartphone more?

The PEW Research Center studied adult Americans and found out that 67 percent of them admitted that they do checking their smartphone, even though they put the ring tone off or in a vibrate mode. That is a sign of an addiction.

Some signs should be used as an alarm to start limiting the use of your smart phone, as reported by Psych Guides, feeling the need to use smartphone frequently, breaking relationships or work because you focus more on the smart phone screen, want the best type of smart phone, and feel anxiety when not holding the phone for a particular time.

When resting, it is essential to put your phone in silent mode while sleeping. It will make you sleep better. The quality of the rest will be significantly affected when the smart phone notification sound is on. The disturbance is not only caused by notifications but also the temptation to open the smart phone immediately.

Enjoy a hobby. Nothing is more enjoyable than doing what you love without distraction. Gadgets will not replace the joy when we enjoy our hobbies.

It is important to spend time with the people we love. Don’t exchange the happy smiles of family, friends, friends, spouses, and children for virtual smiles. (corcomm / fim)