Facebook and Cell Phone Addictions: Do You Have One?

I’ve always known I was extremely attached to my cell phone as my main source of communication with my friends and family but I didn’t quite realize the extent of it until earlier this week. There was an incident involving my phone and a glass of water that no amount of leaving it in a bowl of rice hoping to suck out the moisture or praying for it to “come back to life” would save it. I’m one of many other University students and young people who our pretty much texting or on their phones for most of the day so I found it very difficult to be without my cell phone even though its now been less then two days since I haven’t had it. I go on facebook at some point every day but now that I don’t have my phone I find myself repeatedly checking it as I have to use it as my main source of communication with everyone and it’s kind of scary to realize how much I actually depend on my cell phone for social contact.

You always hear people say young people these days are addicted to their cell phones and that cell phones and facebook are a huge part of our identities and now I completely agree. We have these devices now and easy to use technologies that make instant communication possible; people become so encompassed in them and they become such a huge part of our daily lives and interaction with one another that it is hard to go from having them at the means of our disposal to not having them at all. It’s not necessarily a total loss of identity, I still feel like me without my cell phone and I wouldn’t say I feel like a part of me is missing I just feel…disconnected and out of the loop. You get used to being able to text your friends to make plans or if you just feel like talking to someone that without it or a home phone it becomes much harder to keep in touch with people day to day. I think it’s also worth mentioning that some people are so addicted to their cell phones that they forget proper etiquette in social situations. I was in the grocery store the other day talking to someone on the phone while in line and once I got to the front of the line I told the person I had to get off the phone as it was rude to talk on the phone while at a cash desk. The cashier thanked me and said its very rare for that to happen and that now a days most people just continue their conversations and ignore the person in front of them which is very rude. It seems as though we don’t think about the way our face-to-face communication suffers due to our obsessions with our cell phones and that maybe we all need a crash course in proper cell phone etiquette and when its appropriate to use them and when it’s not.

I think facebook is also something that people are “addicted” to. Many people find themselves needing or wanting to check facebook multiple times a day. There is again this feeling of being disconnected or out of the loop. People are extremely interested in finding out more intimate details of each other’s lives through pictures, wall posts etc. Facebook is a good tool for reconnecting with people you may have lost contact with and for keeping up to date with what your friends are doing. But I think this has gone too far and sometimes people are abusing it as a tool to snoop further into the lives of others and sometimes people they don’t even really know. Do you think you’re addicted to facebook and cell phones?