the iPhone obsession

Have you ever left your iPhone at home for the day? How do you think that you would feel if you left it home for the day? Sad, lost, like a major part of your life was missing? That is totally normal for college students to feel this way, in fact it would be odd if a college student did forget their phone, and they did not feel that they were missing something important. 

There are many reasons why we feel so lost without our phones, but how many of them are justified in that we should be stressed without it. A few reasons could be that we feel stressed that someone is trying to get in touch with us and we cannot respond. Maybe it is because we feel that we will fall behind the rest of the world and not know what is going on our various social media sites throughout the day. Another major reason we might feel weird without our phones is that our phones are useful tools in avoiding awkward real life social situations.

It is no secret that most people have their cell phones with them at all times, and that when it beeps or vibrates we tend to look at the notification immediately. So maybe we feel so lost without our phones because we are concerned that someone is trying to talk to us. Also most people have those people that they talk to just about every day, and often times all day every day. It could really shake up your day if you cannot talk to someone that you typically talk to all day.

Social media is a huge part of life now, and nearly everyone has the app instagram, twitter, facebook, or snapchat on their phones. If you miss a few hours of social media updates it seems like you need to “catch up” and try to figure out exactly what you missed. Generally people check their favorite site or sites daily, and often times multiple times a day. Is not checking social media for a long span of time a concern for someone who forgot their phone at home for the day. Once you are in a routine of checking twitter every couple hours it can be very weird not to have your phone. Whether it just is because it feels weird not to be up to date with our social media, or a legitimate concern that we are falling behind the rest of the world social media is certainly one of the reasons many of us would feel lost without our phones.

 One major reason that most people, college students at least would feel lost without our phones is because our phones help us escape awkward social situations. It is not very often that you see someone standing off by themselves and just staring off into space or anything like that, more often than not, when people are off on their own their noses are buried in their phones. Maybe we just found some free time and want to check up on our phones, or maybe we are trying to avoid boredom, but although people do not admit it we do go on our phones to avoid awkward situations. I am sure that every college student has seen someone that they did not want to talk to coming their way and put their head down to look at their phone until they passed this person in order to avoid the situation. Avoiding social situations or using your phone for comfort in social settings is another reason why we would feel lost without our phones.

I am sure that most college students can understand the feeling when their phone is left behind on accident. But why do you feel this way? Do you think that this a problem that we should address?