The real hidden cost of cell phone

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Phones have now become an integral part of our life. Most of us wake up by alarms set on phone and probably engage with it before sleeping. As per the article in Business Insider, we touch our cell phone 2617 times a day while for some extreme users this number could go up to 5400 times a day. The research also found average users spent 145 minutes on their phones and engaged in 76 phone sessions per day. As for iPhone users, Apple recently confirmed their device users unlock their phones 80 times every day. That's about 6 to 7 times every hour. 

This translates to a very high number and nothing in the history of mankind has been able to penetrate our life's in such a way. Without any debate, we are actually addicted to our phones.

Considering the high number, one of the question that pops up is how can we reduce the time spent on phones. But I believe this is not an important question, at least not the most important one. The most important question for me would be what is the cost of such addiction. Without knowing the cost and the impact of the cost it’s difficult to ascertain the right action.

What is the real cost of such high engagement on phone?

I believe phone has taken away the single most important thing which helps us deliver quality work or enjoy what we are doing and that is FOCUS. In today's world, where excellence and creativity are more important than ever, our success does not depend on the time that we spend but actually depends on the focused time that we can spend on the work.  Focus work would not only translate to better output but can also save time as well. This time can be used for leisure activities and may be on the phone itself :). This also has a potential of making work life balance better. The impact of being always available to notifications is not just limited to work, it has an effect on personal life as well. If your attention is available to any app on the phone, then you also loose quality time with your loved ones. If a single beep of phone puts a curiosity on your mind to figure out what that beep is about, then you have actually become a modern-day slave of computers. This I think is the biggest irony of our century.

What should we do to take our life back from the phone?

Phone in itself is not bad. Even the inventors of phones and apps did not have this intention of making you less productive on impacting your personal relationship. Software and hardware were designed to help humans in all possible ways. So, the solution of the problem also lies with the phone and it’s a very simple solution. Every phone can be configured in broadly 4 ways. They are:

1. You can be notified with ring and vibration for calls and messages from anyone
2. You can take away the ring and yet be available to everyone on vibration mode. This is less intrusive than the first one.
3. You can be notified either via ring or vibration only for selected set of people
4. You won’t get any buzz or beep for any case

Depending on how you want to use your time, you can choose any one of the settings. e.g. if you want a good 1 hour focus, then enable option 4 where you won’t be reachable to anyone or you can even explore option 3 where you are available to only a selected set of people. The setting would also remove the possibility that you have to attend to anything else and this would move you to a totally different frame of mind. The overall point that I want to convey is that leverage the phone settings to help you focus on what you need. The other way to look at the same point is that define time slots in your day where you change your availability. You should not be available in same way to everyone in the world throughout the day. 

This is one mechanism to get your life back and use your phone as a mechanism to help you move forward than pull you back.