How many of you are reading this on an iPhone, Android, Blackberry (if those still even exists), or any other smart phone? Statistics say that that people between the ages of 18 to 24 check their phones at an average of 74 times a day, according to an article published by TIMES. If you take the people in the U.S. that’s upwards of 8 billion times a day.
When the iPhone was introduced in in 2007 an addiction, whether we like it or not, was born. People are constantly staring at an artificial screen for a sense of comfort and ease. My guess is that every morning, you immediately check your phone, right? You go straight to your texts, social medias, missed phone calls, etc (it’s okay I 100% am guilty of this too). But my point of this article is not to call you out on your phone addiction, it’s simply just to state that we should put them done for a little bit of the day.
Studies show that too much blue light (the light that reflects from your phone) can have detrimental effects on our eyes. In an article done in 2014 by gigaom.com, patients that were 35 years old that wanted to get Lasik for new lenses in their eyes, their existing lenses resembled a 70 year-olds. At SCAD, especially, we need our eyes. Our eyes help us to see the world and our art.
But other than phones physically hurting us, they can create pyschological hindrances as well. Insomnia is at an all time high in children because they use their phones too much before bed. When we’re bored, we pick up our phone. When we are experiencing something exciting chances our we’ll open Snapchat to update our stories instead of being in the moment.
Phones are glued to our hands. Walking down the hall at SCAD, I notice that almost everyone is hunched over looking down at these magical screens. Eyes moving back and forth engrossed with whatever is on the screen. Most have heeadphones in to block out the sounds of the world too.
As our lives become more digital, the world is starting to turn away from the unfiltered reality to the comfort of filtered and altered reality through social media that is so readily available at our fingertips. But I encourage you to put down your phone for an hour. Just one hour. Less phone use can help you with your creativity and procrastination, and at SCAD these things are very important.
Take some time to be disconnected from the digital world. Walk through the park, read a book, grab coffee with friends, or create some art from something that inspires you- you’d be surprised how much it can help to step back for a bit!