Her eyes glued to the screen of her smartphone, a 28-year-old accidentally fell into a river in Wenzhou, Southeast China's Zhejiang province, and drowned on Dec 29. No one was around at that time.
A video posted later on the Internet revealed these facts, shocking people across the country and eliciting a wave of sympathy for the family of the woman, surnamed Wang, especially her two children. The video also highlighted the dangers of smartphone addiction.
For years, authorities have been warning people not to use their mobile phones while driving or crossing the road. Some local transportation authorities have also issued regulations explicitly forbidding the use of phones while driving. In December, traffic police officers in East China's Shandong province, speaking on the basis of their experience, said texting or talking on the phone is much more harmful than alcohol or drug addiction for drivers.
Regulations and official warnings are aimed at people's safety and well-being, because research shows using smartphones while driving or crossing the road is hazardous; the brain needs time (may be a second or less than a second) to switch from the virtual to the real world and within that time a serious accident can occur. Besides, excess use of smortphones even in normal circumstances and environs can lead to neck pain and poor eyesight.
But if smartphones are such a hazard, why do we use them?
The "US Smartphone Use in 2015", a report by Pew Research Center, says different people use smartphones for different reasons. Apart from facilitating activities such as making calls, texting, seeking information and banking, smartphones also provide "productive" and "happy" emotions. Despite that, the report says, many people don't think smartphones are "essential".
A more interesting fact is that, 93 percent of the surveyed people in the 18-to-29 age group used smartphone at least once a day to overcome boredom. Many of them used them to connect to the Internet where social media networking sites act like magnets.
After Wang's death, her husband told the media that she used to be glued to her smartphone even while eating. Wang's story is not unusual. Thousands of people show the same symptoms. In fact, a term has been coined for smartphone addiction: "nomophobia", or the fear of being without your mobile phone - no+mo(bile)+phone.
"Nomophobiacs", psychologists say, reflect social disconnect or disorder. Due in part to the pace of life and greater demand for decision-making in the Information Age, tremendous amount of anxiety is caused. People are spending more time than ever accessing or trying to access information, for which they have to fiddle with their mobile phones, computers or other electronic gadgets.
Worse, the demands of a fast-paced life have pushed people into a spiritual and cultural void. More often than not people use their mobile phones for social networking to escape "loneliness", which takes them farther away from the real world.
Another worrying fact, according to the Pew Research Center report, is that the younger smartphone users are the angrier about using it as a tool. The more expectations we have from a tool the more disappointed we will be if it doesn't provide the expected results.
Given the rising concerns about safety, it is better that smartphone users decide what they are looking for in their gadgets before using them, and turn them off after completing a specific function, instead of fiddling with them in the hope of encountering more dopamine-spurting co-incidents.
