By Sambridhi Shrestha

Do we own a phone or is it the other way round?
Drug addiction, rehabilitation as a cure
Alcohol addiction, rehabilitation as a cure
And most importantly PHONE ADDICTION… What is the cure??? 

One of the most underrated addictions of the modern world whose consequences are yet to unfold. We might have a more disastrous outfall of results in the next decade but some of the disturbing consequences have already started surfacing. 

While eye strain, headache and neck pain are the obvious consequences of phone addiction, there are undiscovered and unsung consequences under the rug, and when it crawls out of the rug it might be too late. 

No doubt that the past decade has given us disruptive innovation and brought along a heavy baggage of health problems. It wouldn’t be wrong to say that innovation is the innovator of health problems which have emerged in the past few years.

Tech neck, a term used for the stress in the muscles while using gadgets resulting in pain, stiffness and soreness on the neck and shoulders. In our daily lives we feel this pain at least once but it has become so common that we have started living with that pain. As a matter of fact the pain is there but we have mastered the art of ignoring that pain. This ignorance is the initiator of the rising neck problem, one in four people between the age of 18 and 30 are seeing spiky growths (lumps) as long as 3 cm on the muscles where the head meets the neck. This growth occurs to support the neck.

The most common habit that people who own a smartphone have is using their phones right before going to sleep and right after waking up. Many don’t realize, or care, that this directly affects the sleeping pattern. The blue light produced by the screen of your mobile phone limits the development of melatonin, the sleep-wake cycle regulation hormone (aka circadian rhythm). This makes falling asleep and waking up the next day much more complicated. Since it has a short wavelength, the circadian rhythm appears to be particularly sensitive to blue light. Due to the emergence of this problem The National Sleep Foundation suggests to read a book before going to sleep rather than using cell phones.

Cell phones are developed to function through radio frequencies. With new advancements in terms of radiofrequency this is just the beginning of alarming health problems. No definitive or compelling proof that cell phones are harmful to health in the short or long term has been identified in intensive international studies. The World Health Organization (WHO), however, listed RF radiation as ‘probably carcinogenic to humans in May 2011, based on an increased risk of glioma, a form of brain cancer.’ According to Softpedia.com, the European Research Institute for Electronic Components in Bucharest discovered that mobile phones emit radiation, which triggers red blood cells to leak hemoglobin.

These are just a handful of consequences of excess usage of cell phones. Laziness, mental health, anxiety are some of the major outcomes underlined due to excess usage of cell phones.