Smartphone Addiction a Sign of Depression?

Ms.  M Sri Vidhya Venkatesan 

MS - Counselling and Psychotherapy, Master of Arts in Psychology, Bachelor of Arts - Psychology and English Literature

Psychologist • 59 People helped • 16 Years experience 

 

The Smartphone addiction has got all hooked. With millions of apps catering to your different needs, smileys, emoticons and memes instead of relying on words to express what you feel and getting to know the whole world at one tap, you feel severely addicted to your Smartphone. But, is that a healthy sign? On introspection, you will probably find that you spend more time over the virtual domain through the social networking sites rather than having a heart-to-heart with your family and friends.
Of late, smartphones are being held responsible for causing depression as a result of increased isolation. Let’s find out whether the theory is well propounded or not.

1. One of the major signs of depression is lack of adequate sleep. Sticking to your smartphone till the wee hours of the morning affects your level of concentration, resulting in anxiety and a bad temper.
2. When you spend a lot of time on the gadgets, you slowly compromise on your thinking capacity. You take everything internet serves you as granted without clarifying. With every piece of information available on the internet, there is nothing left for you to imagine or create.
3. Addiction to social networking sites is taking away all your creative potentials; and on one fine day, when you discover this, you might feel increasingly disillusioned, resulting in depression.
4. One of the worst causes of depression is cyber bullying. The virtual world might welcome you with all kinds of threats and humiliation and this happens majorly on the social networking sites. As a result, you feel your self-confidence is at stake, resulting in severely low self-esteem and subsequent depression.
5. Abandoning your smartphone completely is utopian, because they serve needful purposes as well. But, what you can do is limit the time you spend on the device and replace it with something creative. Otherwise, it might not be too late before you start silently sliding into depression.