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Lee Si Eun

Professor Vincent Gilhooley

English 202

25 May 2017

Negative effects of smartphone on human

Mankind always try to make their life more convenient and efficient. In the

procedure of advance, smartphone came out and made a revolution on earth. Then it

influenced peoples life style in many ways. The word smartphone means a mobile personal

computer with an advanced mobile operating system with features useful for mobile or

handheld use. With the valuable functions, smartphones provide services by diverse

applications that have different performances. Because of this convenience, the number of

smartphones owners have jumped from 35% to 68% between 2011 and 2015. (Marty-Dugas

9) Consequently, smartphone brought various side effects to human. There appeared people

who are addicted to smartphones and it can be harmful to their daily life. Constantly keep in

touching with people on smartphones even though they have nothing to communicate is

smartphone addiction. (Sarwar 7) People who are addicted to the smartphones are increasing

more and more. However, it can cause problems on peoples socialization, concentration, and

health problem.

First, people can be affected by smartphones on their socialization. Some people who

more like to interact on the SNS came out in society. For example, people who have poorer

social skills tend to have more frequent use of the Internet with smartphones. It appeared that

loneliness has been found to be significantly associated with smartphones addiction. Those

people who are lonely have trouble with face-to-face communication would like to interact
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with people on their smartphone like social networking applications. (Leung, 2) Even though

they can communicate well on the smartphones, they couldnt when they face people. In

addition, many smartphone users who work for an organization are getting stress because

they are encouraged to monitor their work-related e-mails constantly even after working

hours. (Sarwar, 8) In other words, smartphone is making workers to do the business even in

their home too. The fact that they cannot have free time in their own place can cause them to

have great exhaustion. In short, the higher integration of the work and home facilitated by

Smartphone result in workhome interference (WHI), which is considered as a potential

source of stress that having negative effect on employee social and family life. (Sarwar, 8)

Secondly, an alteration in distraction has been triggered by smartphone. As the

internet is in peoples hand and can handle it with their fingers, they cannot take their eyes off

from smartphones easily. Looking into various social networking sites is what people usually

do with their smartphones. Because of SNSs trait, smartphone users keep check their SNS

even though there are no alarms. Besides, as SNS frequently gives new materials, people get

attracted to many interesting things. Furthermore, a research has revealed that people

frequently used smartphones unconsciously. (Marty-Dugas, 2017) For this reason, when they

are being with other people, they habitually check their smartphones, not concentrating on

their communications. Moreover, on a research, some people believed they had missed

important information because of distraction from smartphones. (J. katz-sidlow, 1) It means

that people could miss the information they might have to be aware of and it could cause bad

result in some way. Plus, smartphones affected students performances. Today, many students

are using smartphones and other electronic devices during the class. They were likely to

multitask but they were distracted and distract others too. As they use more devices, they got

lower grade in class performance. (J. katz-sildow, 4) Also, it is not only distracting for the

student, but it can also become distracting for other students around them and even
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sometimes for whole class (Sarwar, 5)

Finally, smartphone can be detrimental to health. Lookout, a mobile security

company conducted a study on Smartphone users in USA and found that 58% of Smartphone

users check their phones at least once in an hour and another 54% of respondents said that

they check their phone even while going to bed to sleep. (Sarwar, 7) Plus, according to

another survey, 33% of mobile workers admitted that they check their phones for email and

message throughout the night. Nearly 50% of those surveyed said, they wouldnt even think

of going to bed without have their Smartphone s tucked under their pillows. (8) Indeed,

smartphones are invading sleeping time and disturb people to get sufficient and deep sleep.

Insufficient sleep can make peoples daily performances lower. (Lanaj, 2014) On the other

hand, according to an article, smartphone addiction is not just a buzzword but researchers

have recognized habitual and compulsive communicating as a serious psychic problem. It is

also established that obsession with our Smartphone is also responsible for significantly

altering our brain s perception for the device. (Sarwar, 7)

In light of these reasons, it is so true that many people cannot adequately accomplish their

given tasks fully due to unnecessary usage of smartphones. Misuses of smartphones are

making peoples body fatigue and disturbs their life pattern. Of course, smartphones are being

greatly helpful to get through lots of difficulties, but overuse of them could be a tragic rather

than assistance. Smartphone use to interact with friends or family might be way more

convenient, but there should be a boundary of using it. Keep touching it with fingers even a

person is right at the front would be distractive and couldnt give full attention to the person.

When studying, smartphone is the best interruption and people might cant take eyes off from

it if it in sight. A good way to get rid of this habit, when wanted to completely concentrate on

the study, is setting up a time. For example, a person is going to study for a subject, then
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he/she could set up the time for an hour and take a rest for 10minutes and continue to study

again with the same way. Before going to sleep, it is good to put smartphones away from

people. It might give people a fully deep sleep to start the next day freshly. The comfiest

thing can be the most harmful thing in your life.

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References

Bian, Mengwei, and Louis Leung. "Linking loneliness, shyness, smartphone addiction

symptoms, and patterns of smartphone use to social capital." Social Science Computer

Review 33.1 (2015): 61-79.

KatzSidlow, Rachel J., et al. "Smartphone use during inpatient attending rounds: prevalence,

patterns and potential for distraction." Journal of hospital medicine 7.8 (2012): 595-599.

Lanaj, Klodiana, Russell E. Johnson, and Christopher M. Barnes. "Beginning the workday

yet already depleted? Consequences of late-night smartphone use and sleep." Organizational

Behavior and Human Decision Processes 124.1 (2014): 11-23.

Marty-Dugas, Jeremy. The Relation Between Smartphone Use and Everyday Inattention. MS

thesis. University of Waterloo, 2017.

Sarwar, Muhammad, and Tariq Rahim Soomro. "Impact of Smartphones on

Society." European journal of scientific research 98.2 (2013): 216-226.