WhatsApp: Most popular Messenger and Free Calling App.
With the digitalization boom in India, access to mobile and Internet has become easy and cheap. Now a days everyone has access to Smart phone and this has helped easy access to information and make a lot of business sense. But over use of mobile phones has a lot of negative consequences. It not only affects your physical health, but also puts lot of stress on Social and Mental health.
Everyone who use smartphone has WhatsApp. It is the most popular app, and allows for free voice & video calls and messages with photos. It helps to easily and quickly reach out to friends and families. But people are so much addicted to WhatsApp, that they have lost focus on their regular day to day activities. Kids focus on education has been impacted, mom’s schedule to cook food has changed and they are paying more attention to friends messages over their children’s immediate need, youngster are staying late night chatting with friends on matters which are not of importance and they are active & fresh during morning hours which impacts their productivity. And as this situation continues it leads to health issues and in some case permanent effect on their mental health. Like TV people blink less when they are on chat and their neck position is also downwards, and this affects their eye and neck.
It has been noticed that people who use WhatsApp had lot of mood swings, they are continuous under stress, are very impulsive, get angry very fast and in some cases undergo depression. People make excuses from important work schedule to check WhatsApp messages, sometimes they lie to their parents and partners about their WhatsApp usage, they start hiding things from others, they become very defensive when someone takes their phone, etc. People are spending more time sitting at home which has reduced face to face interaction with friends and communities. Also, lot of fake news can be easily spread through it leading to wrong information being shared and in some cases people start believing it as it is being forwarded by friends.
What are the Signs that you are addicted?
- You keep staring at phone to verify if you have received any new message.
- You impatiently wait for the blue colored double tics
- You keep checking the status of your friends
- You keep browsing through friends profile photos at least 5 times a day.
- You take your phone with you in bathroom.
- You keep sending good morning and good evening messages.
- You keep forwarding jokes and messages without even reading it properly
- The first thing you do when you wake up is check your phone for messages
- You take unnecessary break from important work to check your messages
- You don’t find any free time to spend with your family and friends
How can we reduce addiction
- Not every contacts you have in your mobile are your friends, remove them from your WhatsApp chatting list.
- You don’t have to join every group you heard of.
- Nothing is more important than your family and near ones, messages can wait to be read. Most of the messages we receive are of not much value.
- Make a habit to check your phone only your work is complete. If someone needs urgent help they will not wait for you to check the messages, they will simply call you.
- Not every picture you take has to be shared with friends.
- There is no need to forward every message and joke you receive.
- Your status don’t change that often, so there is no need to change It daily on WhatsApp
- Try to use WhatsApp only when you are not doing any productive work. e.g. traveling in bus.
WhatsApp has become an essential part of our daily life, it is designed to help improve our life quality, but please make sure it is not taking over our real life and pushing us towards a fake one.
Very very true.
This is a big problem and it is going to affect our society a lot.
Good article Rabiya.
My wife is so addicted to this. She chats late nights on Unnecessary topics and then waits to check if everyone has seen that. It seems to me some kind of disease and not just addiction.