Addiction is the only prison where the locks are on the inside.
~Unknown
Growing up, there were many rules surrounding gadgets in my home. At the time, no child used a real phone or laptop. They were all play toys, still our use of the toy gadgets was heavily regulated. We couldn’t touch our toy phone or laptop until we had taken our afternoon nap and done all our assignments. When the toy gadgets were eventually given to us, in less than two hours, they were taken back and we had to do any other activity that didn’t involve screen time.
At the time, this felt like the highest form of torture because why buy us the gadgets if you wouldn’t allow us play with them to our hearts content? My siblings and I slowly moved from anticipating the time of the day when we would get the toy gadgets to creating our own happiness by playing with other things that were in abundance and couldn't be collected from us.
This action by our parents not only taught us how to create happiness from nothing, it also taught us how to pace ourselves when gadgets were involved. This doesn't mean I wasn't addicted to my phone when I eventually got one because I was. The allures of the internet was so enticing. I liked the fact that I could connect with people all over the world through social media and this is what I did with almost all of my time.
There was no day that passed by without me dropping an update or connecting with new people virtually and this became very addicting. So technically, I wasn't addicted to the phone. Instead, I was addicted to the things the phone could enable me to do. It was fun until my phone got stolen and realization hit me so hard. I'm not exaggerating when I say I had subtle withdrawal symptoms. Initially, I was in denial because I didn't believe my phone could be stolen but I soon accepted the fact and tried to adapt.
This took a great toll on my mental health because I used my phone to do almost everything; from checking the time in the morning to doing basic and complex calculations. Of course I realized that I had a wrist watch and a normal calculator after the phone got stolen but this didn't stop me from hating the feeling. Luckily, I was still in school and I could distract myself with lectures and studying.
By the time I got a new phone, I was already used to doing so many things without the phone and this made me less dependent on the gadget. My screentime was limited and I picked up the phone only when I wanted to do something beneficial. Moreover, for someone who always used her feeding money to buy mobile data, I had saved so much mobile data money in the few weeks I was without a phone and I wanted to keep saving some more.
This experience taught me the mental implications of addiction and I never wanted to be in that situation again. However, with the way the world is evolving, we all have to use our phones to do a few things daily and this is fine, but reaching the point where we can’t live without said phones or a point where we make unnecessary excuses just to scroll on social media is clear addiction and we all know this isn't a good thing.
