02/01/17 - Smartphones are stealing our time. This new year, I want to claim it back (34)

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/dec/29/smartphones-time-new-year-apps-resolution-facebook

This article firstly, started off with a scenario of which the writer said the following: I sit with a friend having some seasonal drinks. The second she gets up to go to the toilet, I catch myself reaching for my smartphone. But instead of taking it out and idly filling the two minutes she’s gone, I flip the switch on the side to silent and look around the room instead. I’m practicing for 2017. The writer and a lot of other people believe that smartphones are taking too much time of ours when we could be getting on with something more productive rather than searching through what is going on with our friends. In addition, the writer also goes on to talk about how the people that lived hundereds of years ago and have the same lifestyle as what we have now, they would be terrified with this culture considering back then, people would only have access to news through word of mouth or either newspapers but that would take weeks to arrive.

• On average, smartphone owners use them for over three hours per day.
• From worrying reports of smartphone addiction, to the identification of smartphone faux-pas such as “phubbing”.
• It is in this context that we should understand the pathology of smartphones. Next time you look around a train carriage and can count into double digits the people staring at their smartphones, remember that above all these devices are used as instruments of distraction.

In my opinion, I believe that the title of this topic is a thing; everywhere we go, we will always see the majority of people on the streets using their smartphones for social media uses. A lot of the time, people would use their smartphones only to waste their time and wouldn't want to be doing anything that may be productive or very beneficial to them. So, to conclude, I don't believe that this can be solved because nowadays, we have been bought up in a society now where using smartphones have now become a normal thing and no one bothers with taking notice of it considering 'everyone who has a smartphone and has got nothing to do, will also be roaming around on it'. Therefore, I believe that this cannot be changed and is only the beginning.