Are you addicted to your smart phone? Are you reading this on your smart phone? We use our phones for pretty much everything these days, and this is especially true for people who have family who are not living in the same area, or even in the country as is the case for Caribbean people with family back home.  We use our phones to track storms headed for our loved ones, and to see photos of family that we may not be able to see in person for quite a while. But when is it too much?

Recently I was on Good Morning Washington to talk about smartphone addiction and how to get “sober.” If you feel like you can’t live without the phone, you feel anxious when you don’t have it or when your battery starts to get low, or you are missing out on important moments with family and friends because you are on your phone, you may have a problem.

The phone addiction is one of the most difficult to overcome because we do everything with our phones. We have become so accustomed to being connected all of the time, the phone is often required for work, and our social lives after work. The phone is constantly notifying us that we are missing something, have missed something, or that we are about to miss something. Some people are finding that they can’t put the phone down. Not to eat, and often not even to sleep. Phone addicts feel anxious if the phone isn’t in their hand or nearby, and they don’t feel relief from that anxiety until they check their phone.

See also: The Center for Internet and Technology Addiction collaborated with AT&T to find out the nature of compulsive cell phone use and the use of smartphones while driving. 

I just graduated from law school in May, and I think my real issues with the phone began when I started school. I already spent a lot of time on it because of blogging and social media, but my phone use really ramped up in school. Everyone was younger than me, and I felt like I was lost. The phone had all the information. My classmates kept each other updated on GroupMe, the world was passing me by as I was buried in books, so I checked Facebook to see what everyone was up to. I had a social media and the law class that actually required me to live tweet the class and keep up with social media above and beyond my normal use. I found myself constantly checking the phone, even though I had my sound notifications off, because I was worried about not knowing what was going on.

Then my son got really into instagram and twitter, and I see him with his head down on the phone, and I could really see myself. He was like a mirror. If one of us asked a question, we only got half answers and then he would trail off.  He would drop everything if the phone made a noise. Constant checking. I’m thinking – is that what I look like?