Smartphone addicts

More and more people are the owners of a smartphone nowadays. All my friends seem to have one and they can't stop laughing at my old, unbreakable phone that works perfectly fine for calling and texting. Apparently, they cannot live without their smartphones anymore. Because what would you do when you can't check your e-mail, your facebook and your twitter accounts at any moment of the day? They all want to be reachable all the time, because what if someone e-mails you and you can only reply an hour later?

It is strange.All these things do not seem to matter when people simply do not have access to them. But all of a sudden, from the moment that people do have access to them, they cannot live without them anymore. Why? What exactly has changed? Right: nothing, except for the person carrying the phone.

I don't feel like any of my friends have any advantage over me for being able to be online always. I never had any problems when I could not immediately reply on an e-mail while they could. In fact, I don't think it really matters when you reply to an e-mail. If there is an emergency, if someone needs me right at a moment, they will call me. By sending an e-mail, a sender (unintendedly) implies that there is no hurry for a reply, a few hours don't make a difference. So why should I be online all the time?

All the functions of a smartphone are, by almost all people, only used for entertainment. And of course there's nothing wrong with that. Sure, it is nice when you have to travel, for example, to be able to use Facebook to kill time. But it is just not something you cannot live without. It is an addiction. And if you think that word makes it sound worse than it is, you're wrong. Recent research showed that using a smartphone might affect both sleep (as you can read in this article ) and relationships.

Last but not least, smartphones can be moodkillers. When I invite my friends over, I only have to wait for the inevitable moment that one of them takes a quick look at her smartphone, reads something funny, ridiculous or otherwise remarkable on twitter, and all my other friends want to see it too. At their own smartphones. And while they're doing that, all start checking their e-mail, Facebook and Twitter accounts yet again. Get the party started.