I wrote on this blog 6 years that cell phone addiction among young people was beginning to interfer with some of my classroom activities. Unfortunately over the past 6 years, the problem has not gotten any better. It's gotten significantly worse. Clearly this is not a problem that's going away anytime soon. Teachers must now be prepared to deal with cell phones in their classes. (There's also some speculation among my colleagues that the coronavirus lockdown last year caused the younger generation to increase their reliance on Social Media.) At any rate, I've been thinking for some time about trying to talk to my students about Cell Phone addiction, and for the start of the new term, I tried to make up a worksheet. The students are put into groups, discuss the questions, and write down their own ideas first, and then compare their ideas with my suggested answers.
As with all of my classroom activities, this was thrown together in a bit of a rush. I may, if I ever have more time, try to refine this somewhat. I'm also not an expert on this area, but I tried to make the information true to the best of my knowledge.
This worksheet was used in conjunction with showing my class some videos on Cell Phone addiction:
* Dopamine Fasting 2.0 - Overcome Addiction & Restore Motivation (this one I recommended as homework)
Anyway, here is the worksheet:
Cell Phone Addiction
What is Cell Phone Addiction?
What Causes Cell Phone Addiction?
What are the Symptoms of Cell Phone Addiction?
What Can I Do?
Cell Phone Addiction
What is Cell Phone Addiction?
Cell phone addiction is when you are constantly checking your cell phone, even when you should be doing other things.
What are Some Other Names for Cell Phone Addiction?
Of course, it is not the phone itself that is addicting, rather it is the applications on the phone that are driving the addiction. For this reason, cell phone addiction can also be known as “Social Media Addiction”, “Internet Addiction”, “Gaming Addiction” or “Digital Addiction”.
What Causes Cell Phone Addiction?
Because of evolution, our brains are designed to seek and collect information. Our brains are also designed to interact socially with other people, and we are especially designed to feel happy when other people pay attention to us.
As part of this design, our brains release dopamine whenever we have positive social interactions. This dopamine makes us feel good.
Social media applications on cell phones are designed to trigger these dopamine releases by giving us the feeling that we are getting positive attention from other people.
Since our brains are always craving more dopamine, we find ourselves going back to social media again and again to get more and more dopamine releases.
Addiction happens when our brains stop producing dopamine normally, because our brains have been trained to rely on cues from social media to get the dopamine hits. At this point, we need to rely on the Internet and social media just to feel normal again. And if we stop using the Internet or social media, we begin to feel distressed.
What are the Symptoms of Cell Phone Addiction?
You often pick up your phone and check social media without even thinking about it. You don’t know why you are doing it, but it just feels normal.
Once you get on social media, you find it very difficult to get off again. You end up scrolling on social media for much longer than you intended to. You don’t understand why you can’t stop looking at social media, but you just feel compelled to keep looking.
Sometimes you use social media, and you completely lose track of time.
If you are not able to check social media for a time, you start to feel anxious.
You start to think a lot about your social media even when you are away from social media
You want to concentrate on class, but you keep checking your cell phone instead. You can’t explain why.
In the evening, you want to do your homework, but you find that you keep checking your phone instead of doing your homework.
What Can I Do?
Avoid mindlessly scrolling on your phone--even when you are bored. This will only increase your brain’s dependence on social media.
Turn your phone off and put it away when you’re not using it.
Put the phone in your bag. Don’t leave it out on your desk when you’re studying
Try to break the addiction by “dopamine fasting”--that is, by intentionally going for long periods (e.g. 5 hours) without checking or using your phone.
Gradually try to build up willpower to resist your addiction. It won’t be easy at first. Willpower is difficult, and needs to be slowly built up over time. But every time you catch yourself reaching for your phone, try to force yourself to put your phone down and concentrate on something else.
Turn off notifications on your phone.
Don’t use your phone to check the time. Get a watch instead.
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