In today's world, the smartphone plays a major role in our daily lives and like everything else in life, it has its advantages and disadvantages, unfortunately too much dependence on the smartphone is bad for us.

Smartphone addiction is dangerous because it can happen to anyone and without realising what we are doing, it can take control of our lives.

Here are some of the harmful effects of smartphone addiction:

A) Constant use of the smartphone for checking social media sites, messaging apps and constantly getting updates of people who are known and unknown to you causes unnecessary worries because you are wasting time on checking updates instead of concentrating on what you need to do for the day.

B) Although using the smartphone to get work done is a good thing, excessive checking of emails and online messages on sites like WhatsApp can lead to stress and make you feel that you are not doing enough to meet the deadline at work.

C) Smartphone addiction affects the brain because when you get continuous messages, it confuses the brain with too much information and most of it are not helpful in getting work done.

D) Dependence on smartphones leads to interruption when you are middle of something, it distracts you and prevents you from thinking clearly and in the process you forget what is important and needs to be done urgently.

E) Research has shown that people who continuosly use the smartphone especially for gaming, find it difficult to deal with people in the real world because of the ability to create multiple identities while playing online games and on social media and are unable to deal with problems that have serious consequences.

F) When you spend too much time using the smartphone, it makes it difficult to get the required number of hours of sleep, which in turn affects your concentration and ability to pay attention to your daily routine.

Now that we are aware of some of the negative effects of smartphone addiction, here are some ways we can work to prevent it from disrupting our daily lives:

1. We need to make a serious effort in order to reduce the amount of time spent using the smartphone by taking part in physical activities, sports like football, cricket etc. where there is physical movement or read physical books to improve your knowledge and learn something helpful that can be used to improve your life.
2. Go for a brisk walk, jog around the park or any other physical exercise that will help you to keep your mind and body healthy instead of looking at the smartphone and getting updates that do not help you to improve your wellbeing.
3. Make it a point to reduce the time spent on playing mobile games, this will give you more time to catch up on current events and get important work done.
4. When you are traveling, avoid using the smartphone, observe your surroundings, it helps to know your destination and to learn about the world around you.

Smartphone addiction can be stopped, it is upto the individual to know the dangers and prevent it from taking over your life before it is too late.