Is My SmartPhone Hurting Me?

 1. After reading the two articles, it is clear that Jean Twenge is a believer that cellphone use is causing harm to teenagers physical and mental health, while Sarah Rose thinks that cellphone use could be positively affecting teenagers/other age groups more than harming. However, I want to make note that Sarah Rose mentions both sides of the story and is not a firm believer that cellphones are no harm to society. Twenge talks about suicide rates, depression, sleep deprivation, social skills, and overall mental health are in decline due to cellphone usage. She states, "there is compelling evidence that the devices we've place in young people's hands are having profound effects on their lives-and making them seriously unhappy." Sarah argues in her article that many researches and writers who write about this topic, are biased and only look into one side of the story and data. She points out that, yes, cell phone usage is damaging peoples health, however, there are benefits as teen pregnancy, teen car accidents, alcohol use, smoking, and other illegal acts are going down in percentages for teenagers/young adults. She believes that it should not be all negative, because there is proof that goof things are coming from it. 

2. I was the most excited ever when I got my first ever phone (technically it was an iPod touch, but practically the same thing) and I had been looking forward to getting one for the longest time. I also had this weird fascination about cellular devices, and thought they were super cool. Any older woman that had one was immediately a celebrity to me, I was just so amazed. I feel that my parents did a good job with keeping an eye on my screen time limit, which helped a lot. I was also not able to get social media until I was in late middle school, which is still too early in my mind now. However, of course I begged my parents everyday for it when I was that age. On top of having screen times and app limits, I also had to put my phone in my parents bedroom for the longest time so I wouldn't stay up late on it. I hated it at the time, but I will forever be grateful that they did that for me. As I got older, I definitely started using my phone more and more and got the social media apps and I would say I could tell a difference in my mental health. It can be very degrading and as a young woman, a lot of that will stick with you and really hurt your feelings. Fast forwarding to today, I definitely use my phone to much and I have tried to limit myself by setting time limits on social media apps and even deleting the ones I knew were unnecessary for me to have. I do have to say that I heavily rely on my phone as it's my main source of communication with my friends and family. As a babysitter for numerous families, I rely on apple messages to text them and have them text me. I would love to put my phone in a drawer for a day, it would just be hard getting myself to do it. Last summer, I went to a camp where I did not have my phone for a week. It was amazing not having social media, but It was really hard not being able to talk to my mom and dad whom I normally talk to daily. 

3. I do believe that there is a way to keep cellphone use from causing such damage on our well beings. This is by setting limits, not using in bed and right when you wake up, avoid social medias, and so much more. I think the main problem is that humans have addictive mentalities and don't know how to draw boundaries when they should. From these articles we learned that date can be used to make a specific argument, but you cannot use that data to overpower everything else. You have to consider other research and data that contradicts your point and what are trying to convince the reader of.