Smartphone Addiction In Us Teenagers Contributed To The Rise Of Self-Harm And Sucide Rates

The invention of smartphone is innovative as it differs in size to a computer, it serves a similar function to it. Hence, this have benefited the society in various ways. Users are able to communicate with others and obtain any information needed constantly (Anderson, Mark S. ). However, in countries like United States, this innovation seems to have impacted the users negatively. Growing in the era of advancement in technology, youngsters in US have been relying too much on devices such as smartphones which have led to the phenomenon of smartphone addiction. According to Anderson (2018), United States is the largest smartphone market in the world with 95% of the teenagers having access to a smartphone and 45% of them being on the internet all the time. Teenagers are always on their phones because they access social media sites through their smartphones as their usage are intimately intertwined. (Griffiths,2018) Hence, this has resulted to the event of smartphone addiction to occur.

Due to the mobility and efficiency of smartphones, teenagers are more exposed to inappropriate materials such as visual representation of self harm which have led to the rise of detrimental effects such as infliction of self-harm and suicide. Statistics have also proven that self-inflicted injuries rose 8. 4% every year in US (Eltagouri 2017) Thus, this essay will discuss the rise of self-harm and suicide among teenagers associated with the phenomena of smartphone addiction in United States. It will then show that current solutions such as availability of treatments and rehabilitations lack effectiveness. Hence, new strategies will be proposed to tackle this issue. Teenagers that are addicted to their smartphones are increasingly exposing themselves to harmful contents which could influence their actions such as to commit self-harm or suicide. Statistics have shown that youngsters who spend more than five hours on the internet are 71% are at risk of committing self-harm and suicide (Fuhr, 2017). Although teenagers might be influenced by other sources to commit this action, as they frequently came across such content which conforms to their inclination, it have led them into thinking that it is acceptable to hurt themselves. (. . . ). Hence, those whom are addicted to this device are at risk of self-harm and suicide. For instance, the social media site Tumblr promotes the aesthetic of self-harm through ‘dark’ visual images and cutting seems to be the main form of self-harm that is represented on this platform commonly.

According to Seko and Lewis study,they have discovered that 91. 8% out of the Tumblr images that they stumbled upon while browsing the site are images of skin cutting such as carving of words and images into it (Alderton, 2018). Not only does this postings have triggered the minds of those who are suffering from anxiety issues to commit self-harm, it have also been misrepresented the idea as ‘cool’ and ‘aesthetic’, which further mitigate this problem by increasing the number of self-harmers (Alderton, 2018). As 45% of the US teenagers are addicted to such sites which promotes the idea of self-harm visually through their smartphones, it is clear that the phenomena of smartphone addiction has contributed to the rise of self-harm and suicide trend in US (Anderson,Jiang,2018).