How Mobile Phones And Social Media Have Negatively Affected Us

Mobile phones and social media have become parts of our lives. It’s made a lot of things easier and has made a couple more worse.

Gone are the days when one had to go all the way to visit someone, now they can just call them or send them a message to check up on them. Good, right? However, there are bad sides to everything and unfortunately, phones and social media have a lot of it.
The addiction associated with these platforms is not something we can wish away, it’s gradually destroying a lot yet we don’t see.

1. Relationship

Partners in relationships are constantly at each other’s throat because one of them is constantly on social media whiles they are together. Flirting has been taken to a whole new level with social media. You have people sending messages as late as 1am and you start thinking why anyone will want to chat at that particular time. It’s surprising when your partner also wants to respond at that time because they think it’s ok.
Date nights are reduced to time on social media instead of time to talk and get closer, bonding is thrown out the window in favour of social media time. Many relationships have ended because of one thing or the other related to social media but yet, the addiction keeps getting much worse. All of a sudden, partners feel they don’t have to work on their relationship when they encounter an issue all because another person of the opposite sex is giving them more attention than they can even handle. This is a real issue.

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2. Friendship

Back in the day, people actually went all the way to their friend’s house to visit. They then spend quality time talking about themselves and discussing very important issues. Lately, all you’ll get is a “Hi, how are you doing” on WhatsApp. The best you’ll get is a few minutes call to say hi and go like, “I don’t have credit can you call me.”
Even when they finally get to visit, both of them will spend 90% of their time on their phones. The only time they get to talk and laugh is when one sees something online and prompts the other to it check out. They then talk a bit about it and get back to doing what they know how to do best, be on social media. This is our definition of friendship now, we forget that friendship goes beyond just saying Hi or being around, it’s what we do within that period when we are together that defines our friendship.

Photo: Paa Kwasi Photography

3. Health

Let’s not kid ourselves, too much of everything is bad. being on the phone for a very long period of time is not the best health-wise. The effect is not that much but it can become an issue over a long period of time. Watching your phones screen for a long period of time will put a lot of strain on your eyes, it’s just like watching a computer monitor. Even in the dark, people will be looking on their phones chatting heartily without thinking of what they are doing to their eyes.
You’ll find people talking on their phones whiles it’s plugged into their charger, this is a very serious act that can lead to an explosion. It’s not a joke, yet people do it because they need to talk to that person and their conversation is more important than their life.

Image: TechTimes.com

4. Sleep

We are gradually heading to an era of sleep disorders. Like I stated earlier, the effect of these things are not immediately felt but over time, they become nightmares. We have become so addictive to our phones and social media to the extent that we’ll wake up at dawn to check if we some notification of sort. Once we realise someone had sent us a message or there’s a Facebook notification, we head over immediately to respond and sleep can take the back seat. You go on Facebook and realise that people were still posting as early as 2am in the morning. People are actually depriving themselves of sleep just to be on social media. This is a very bad thing. The body needs at least 8 hours of sleep each day. Working it over time will result in you being grumpy, stressed, tired and frustrated.

Image: Bonbonbreak

5. Lies

The promotion of lies has become an everyday thing on social media. People create accounts using fake credentials and they can keep up that profile for years meanwhile they are nowhere near that profile. It’s like faking is the new real thanks to social media. People also use the platform to spread lies about other people and this goes quite far. Of course, with a China phone and 2 Ghana cedis for data, one can be on social media. It’s become the platform for perpetrating lies.

Image: QuickMeme

6. Smear Campaign

The best way to destroy someone is to post something about them on social media. This happens on daily basis. Once someone has an issue with another, the next thing is to start a social media smear campaign. This can even include their friends but truth is, this wasn’t so much when there was no social media and it’s because people are copying blindly from the westerners. A girl suspects another girl of seeing her man and the next thing is to post her nude pictures on social media or spread it through Whatsapp. They can make a whole post about the person with their picture to make their case. This is how low we’ve sunk as a people thanks to social media.

7. Nudity

There has never been a time in our history where we’ve been exposed to so much nudity like this time and because of social media. The moral fibre of our country has been shredded beyond repairs. A very young Ghanaian girl decides to post her nude pictures on social media just to get attention. There are people who are also using these platforms to solicit for men and women. This is the new day prostitution. We wake up each day to a new “leak” as it has been christened which is either two people having sex or a lady touching herself. This was never so a couple of years ago but it’s now a daily occurrence.

Image: Naijalog

8. Education

Education is falling greatly in this country and a bigger chunk of it can be attributed to phones and social media. I know you’ll say these are normal things in the western world. Yes they are but unfortunately this is Ghana, we were brought up a certain way and the sudden addiction to phones and social media is preventing students from concentrating on their studies. These students are so busy on Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp, IMO, Snapchat etc. so much that they have no time to study. When it’s time for exams, they’ll use this same medium to try and cheat. Once they know they’ll have assess to answers during the exams, they won’t waste their time studying and this is seriously affecting us as a country.

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