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By Chizoba Njaka :

With increase in the use of smartphones, most students are becoming too lazy and inactive to their studies. They usually or continually glue to phones, scrolling through social media and playing away their hours which could have been used for something useful. Indeed this device is designed to make life easy and save energy at any point in time but reverse is the case.

The most worrisome thing today is that what was introduced to serve as easy means of communication through phone calls, messaging, emailing or more or less seen as mini-computers, cameras, and organizers have now become threat and harmful to the lives and health of both young and adults in the society as well as the wellbeing and mindset of Nigerian youths.

Students and pupils are not exceptional in this habit because all they think most often is how to get or have access to Android phone for one reason or the other which affect them socially, economically, psychologically, mentally and academically due to its continous technological advancements and daily welcoming initiatives.

Mobile phones are one of the most commonly used gadgets in today’s world because it indeed makes lives easy and convenient. When it comes to interaction among peers, teens like to admire and approve, comment, and criticize. They are not always communicating one on one but instead are constantly checking for responses and likes to their posts and others.

Funnily, whether physically present, or absent in a particular setting, the software companies continue to find ways to draw people into their perfect target audience.

Honestly, children are most vulnerable to smartphones and other technological gadgets. Right from childhood, they are introduced to smartphones through which they listen to music, watch cartoons of different kinds, play games, chat with friends, and watch films.

Meanwhile, teenagers tend to be naturally more sociable, they are at an age of questioning life and the things that happen around them. Interacting with new people is a part of this process. The evolution of technology created new possibility for socializing and allows for this generation to do exactly this, but online.

Young ones communicate through an array of social websites and apps like Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, among others that allow for these connections to be built even if individuals are thousands of miles away. When these apps are used and they met with positive interactions, positive messages from friends, and believe quality relationships are blossoming, dopamine is released.

They also get distracted by the device while studying due to the constant pings of notifications that demand instant attention. They get introduced to the virtual world via smartphones and get immersed in it. In fact, people’s lives revolve around it more than anything because of its usefulness in communication via voice, messages, and mails as well as surf the internet using phone.

Meanwhile, there are lots of inappropriate content on the internet. Students, who are too young to differentiate between fact and fiction, find these mesmerizing and risk getting misled. The pull of the virtual world is so strong, it increases social disturbance and moral downfall.

Consequently, young ones, especially students have found to spend much hours a day on their mobile phones, compared to adults who usually have a busy day. Students activities on mobile phone is so much more than talking and texting. For them, it opens a gateway to an escape from reality, which includes games, films, apps, and the biggest time consumer of them all is the social media.

While this gadget transforms the societies and economies for the better, little do one know that it could be harmful to people and the society at large. The excessive use of it brings distraction and takes young ones away from concentrating on whatever they are doing.

Call or chatting can come in at any time. Society generally expects you to have your phone switched on, charged up, and within reach at anytime. Many callers or text senders can become frustrated or annoyed if they do not get an immediate response.

However, Nigeria youths do not even believe that one must struggle to survive either by education, learning trade, self acquired skills, but rather depend or leverage on others hard earned effort to succeed. They believe they can get away from everything using mobile phone.

Making series of contacts through smartphone is now trending among the youths, misleading advice or instructions given to them either from unknown fellows making them to take some dramatic actions and decisions which can endanger their future.

In other words, through the use of excessive mobile phone, they involve themselves in fraudulent activities like yahoo yahoo businesses, secret cult without knowing, cheating, blackmailing, frauds or hacking banks and individuals account, pornography among others.

Interestingly, days are gone when one will say parents provide smartphone to their wards. This days, most of these youths particularly the female folks acquire theirs through their boyfriends or prostitution, robbery as well as birthday gift thereby giving them the opportunity to access the device at wider range.

Interestingly, not only do parents provide their wards with smartphone but teachers whose duties are to teach and impart knowledge on these children are not helping. They are indirectly encouraging, and promoting the students using smartphone by asking them to browse on a particular topic and make notes on their own.

Most often, the teacher will threaten the students that such assignment will be scored and recorded if well done. Imagine a child of 10 -11 years in junior class doing homework with mobile phone or browsing to build his or her notes. Such is an avenue for the child to delve into something else because no one is there to guide or know what he or she is doing. For those who do not have smartphone will go extra miles to have theirs in order to please their teacher whose work is to make notes for the students to copy.

Apart from the aforementioned effects of excessive mobile phone usage, research showed that constant staring at mobile phones affects eyesight and eye health. Eyes tend to get dry, and the vision blurry. The eyesight gets affected, too, and kids have difficulty in reading.

Using phones day and night ruins eye health and the repercussions last a lifetime. This is one of the worst negative effects of mobile phones.

The virtual world they view on their mobile phones is highly distracting. Students find it fascinating and spend hours lost in it. It is not only misleading but confusing, too. It also distracts them from their studies and sports as kids wish to spend more time with their phones than their books. They tend to lose focus and their academic performance suffers badly.

Not just that there is good evidence that mobile phones contribute to sleep deprivation, especially when people use them late at night or in bed. Teenagers, in particular, need good sleep to help their developing brains, but often suffer worst from mobile phone related sleep problems.They will be having difficulty sleeping despite feeling tired after exhausting much time on mobile phone.