Smartphone addiction is becoming more and more common and lots of teenagers get affected by this. This addiction to constantly being online and available is making them, unfortunately, act more and more like zombies.
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They almost never talk to their families anymore and when their phones are out of charge, they just runoff. Plain and simple, they think they can’t live without a mobile phone. As well as this, because smartphones can damage your eyesight, they can also be lethally dangerous if they are used improperly. Experts are aware of this problem and have put together a few tips on how to conquer smartphone addiction.
South Korea is the country with the highest addiction risk
This is a huge problem in South Korea as this is one of the most interconnected countries in the world. Almost everyone has access to the internet and about 95 per cent of all adults own a smartphone. In South Korea, about 20 per cent of the population is at risk of becoming addicted to the internet.
CNN recently reported on a particularly serious story in which a 16-year-old student from South Korea decided to sound the alarm bell herself. At four o’clock in the morning one day, she realised that she had been surfing the internet for thirteen hours straight.
The 16-year-old had a distorted sense of reality and checked herself into a detox camp
When she noticed that she was slowly losing her grip on reality and it felt like she had been in a dreamworldall day, she knew something was wrong with her. She felt completely shook up. Yoo Chae-rin told CNN:
I felt like my sense of reality was fading. Even when I had a fun and productive day (with my friends), it felt like a dream.
During an interview with CNN, 16-year-old Chae-rin’s father, Jae-ho, revealed:
There wasn’t much conversation among the family. If I talked to her about her phone, there would be an argument.
His daughter secretly circumvented the rules of just two hours of mobile phone use a day and her addictive behaviour increased enormously.
When she was 16 years old, she herself decided that she had to do something to get help and so checked herself into a detox camp. These camps and free to visit in South Korea and you only have to pay to cover the food costs. Her father was relieved because he had been trying to get her mobile phone addiction under control for a long time.
In these detox camps, young people hand in their mobile phones at the entrance and spend their days doing exercise, crafts, being outside in nature, meditating and conversing with other people there. According to camp director Yoo Soon-Duk, the first day is a bit difficult, but you can soon see the positive effects that these camps have on the kids.
