Benefits Of Smartphone Essay

Smartphones: Helping You or Dragging You Down?

If we pay attention to our surroundings, we can see smartphones everywhere - in offices, schools, homes - wherever people are, smartphones are always in their hands. In the 21st century, it is really hard for people to live without a smartphone. A surprising fact is how fast the growth of smartphone users has been. Heggestuen (2013) stated that their research shows a surprising number of growths, one of them being that by the end of 2013, global smartphone penetration will have exploded from 5% of the global population in 2009 to 22%. That's an increase of nearly 1.3 billion smartphones in four years. A smartphone is a cellular telephone with built-in applications and internet access. In addition to digital voice service, modern smartphones provide text messaging, email, web browsing, still and video cameras, MP3 players, video playback, and calling. In addition to their built-in functions, smartphones run myriad free and paid applications, turning the once single-minded cell phone into a mobile personal computer (PCMag, 2014). By that definition, we can see how convenient a smartphone can be. However, few studies suggest that smartphones have more drawbacks than benefits.

The first drawback is in the physiological aspect. It is true that smartphones can reduce stress levels because they can provide a lot of entertainment such as listening to music, watching movies, playing games, and most importantly, social media. But at the same time, this can lead to addiction to smartphones, which can become a disorder called communication addiction disorder. According to recent research, addiction to smartphones is increasing rapidly. The Ministry of Public Administration and Security of Korea reported that...

In addition to addiction, smartphones also pose a risk to privacy and security. If we download a fake application that is available in the market, we introduce malware into our phone. Malware is a malicious program that can disable or control a device and can easily steal important data stored on the phone without the user noticing. Most users do not even bother to pay attention to phone security, making smartphones even riskier to store data inside.

It is true that smartphones have benefits, and these benefits are always linked to one reason: convenience. However, if we study and analyze all aspects, each benefit in every aspect, such as education, human relations, health, and privacy, has its own drawback. Some aspects can cause serious problems, such as harming a person physiologically and physically. Therefore, it can be clearly stated that smartphones have more drawbacks than benefits.