A study of extent, negative effects and remedial measure of digital addiction.

1. DIGITAL ADDICTION-
BITTERING HAPPINESS !
A QUALITATIVE STUDY OF THE EXTENT, NEGATIVE EFFECTS
AND REMEDIAL MEASURES OF DIGITAL ADDICTION WITH
SPECIAL REFERENCE TO SMART PHONE OVERUSE
PREPARED BY-
SAKSHAM SHARMA
INSTITUE OF
MANGEMENT STUDIES,

2. Research objectives
•To explore the extent of Digital addiction.
•To explore the Negative effects of Digital addiction
on various aspects of life.
•To propose remedial measures to overcome Digital
Addiction.

3. Excess of anything is bad
अति सर्वत्र
र्र्वयेि...

4. NEWS ARTICLES HEADLINES
“26-yr-old in Bangalore admitted to hospital to treat Netflix addiction” (The Hindu,
2018)
“Giving your child a smartphone is like giving them a gram of cocaine” (Independent, 2018)
“Video game ‘Fortnite: Battle Royale’ is cited as a reason for divorce in at least 200 divorce
petitions” (Fortune, 2018)
“Ignoring People for Phones Is the New Normal.”(The Atlantic, 2016)
“4-year-old boy slipped and fell 50ft down a waterfall while trying to take a selfie”.
(Indiatimes, 2018)
“McDonald's Introduces Smartphone Lockers So People Aren't Distracted During Family
Meals”.(Entrepreneur India, 2017)

5. MOTOROLA phone-life-balance study
65% feels smartphone as there best friend
47% give priority to smartphone over engaging with people
57% feel compelled to constantly check smartphone
77% feel panic when they think they have lost there smartphone

6. DIGITAL ADDICTION
• compulsively using digital technology, which would manifest as
another form of addiction if that technology was not as easily
accessible to them. (Wikipedia, 2018).
• “a primary, chronic disease of brain reward, motivation,
memory, and related circuitry. Dysfunction in these circuits
leads to characteristic biological, psychological, social, and
spiritual manifestations. This is reflected in an individual
pathologically pursuing reward and/or relief by substance use
and other behaviors” American Society of Addiction Medicine
(ASAM)

7. Digital
Addicition
FOMO
NOMO
PHOBIA
SELFITIS
SOCIAL
MEDIA
ADDCITON
(SAD)
PHANTOM
VIBRATION
SYNDROME
INTERNET
GAMING
DISORDER
(IGD)
OMINO
MANNIA

8. ALARMING STATISTICS ABOUT OUR
SMARTPHONES USE
An average person receives 63.5 notifications per day.(Martin, 2014)
91 percent of millennials check their phones 150 times per day.(Qualtrics, 2017)
52 percent check their phones a few times per hour or more, whether there’s a notification
or not.(Gallup, 2015)
74 percent of mobile users ages 18 – 34 report an urge to immediately pull out their phone,
open an app when bored.(Comscore, 2017)
Average user touches, swipes, and taps their phone 2,617 times per day.(Dscout, 2017)
An average adults spend over 4 hours per day on mobile devices. (Emarketer, 2018)

9. AVERAGE TIME SPENT PER DAY WITH MOBILE
INTERNET In-app vs Mobile web
hrs:min
Source: www.emarketer.com

10. India has most internet addicts:
study
53% of Indians are connected to the internet every waking hour which
is higher than the global average of 51 %, a new international study
has found.
• "That is higher than 51 per cent global average, 36 per cent in
China and 39 per cent in Japan," said the study titled
'Connected Consumers Are Not Created Equal: A Global
Perspective.‘
• "97 per cent of the respondents from India said they have a
Facebook account with 77 per cent saying they logged in to the
social network daily"

11. Negative
effects
of
Digital
Addiction

12. Vision Problems
• Excessive use of smartphones can lead to retinal damage or in
worst case macular degeneration, a leading cause of blindness
says, American Macular Degeneration Foundation.
• Based on a survey of 2,000 people among which 55% of them
experienced discomfort in eyes after continuous use of
smartphones.
• exposure to blue and green light from smartphones also causes
dry eye syndrome.

13. Disturbed
Sleep
• The light exposure from smartphone at night can actually push
back sleep time twice as long as a coffee does, it also suppress
melatonin, the hormone that helps with sleep timing.
• A survey says, 63% of smartphone users age 18 to 29 and 30%
among age group 30 to 64 fall asleep with their smartphone or
tablet in their bed.
• Using smartphones immediately before going to sleep, reduces
and delays the amount of random eye moment (REM) sleep, the

14. Stress
• Study says that “the need to immediately read and respond to
every one of these incoming alerts is causing rising stress
levels”.
• The respondents of the study which include 100 University
students, Public sector employees and retail workers accept
that the stress has got so severe for them that they have
started experiencing phantom vibrations, a feeling that their

15. Anxiety & Depression
• People who spend lot of time on social networking platforms
like WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, twitter etc. develop FOMO
(Fear of missing out) in them and feel anxious when they get
disconnected to Wi-Fi or internet.
• A study in Northwestern University revealed that “the more time
people spend on their phones, the more likely they are to be
depressed”
• “There is a bidirectional relationship between depression and
use of technology. The latter can be used as a coping

16. Loss of our ability to
do deep meaningful
work
• The pings and buzzes of notifications from smartphone distract
us and affect our ability to concentrate on a task it triggers a
series of conflicting thoughts inside us like should I ignore the
notification or should I interrupt what am I doing now to
respond?
• Being ‘on call’ by vigilantly and continuously checking the
phone for anticipated, forthcoming content also contributes to

17. Loss of the ability to be fully present in your life

18. DISTORTING
RELATIONSHIP
S
A study at university of Essex found that when people are having
personal discussion when a phone in nearby them (even neither
was actually using it) reported lower relationship quality and
have less trust in their partner. They also felt their partner was
less empathetic to their concerns.

19. OVERCOMIN
G
DIGITAL
ADDICTION

20. Recognize
what is
affecting
you most
Recognition of a problem is the first step towards determining its
solution. You have to first recognize what under the umbrella of
digital addiction is affecting you the most like what most attracts
you, which apps you open frequently, which activities are
consuming your time, how much time do you spend on phone

21. TURN OFF NOTIFICATIONS
It is the pings, buzzes, vibrations and the flashlights that draw
our attention to phone all the times. It creates itch to rush to
phone and see it and in case, if we resists our self to check it, we
get anxious, which is called FOMO (fear of missing out
something important).
You will be amazed to see that how this small action will

22. Schedule time to give reply
Schedule a fix time to look and respond to emails and messages
from social media. Find some specific slot in a day for it and it
should be not be immediate hours before and after sleep. Also
notify your colleagues about the same.

23. Go Grayscale
Color icons of the apps gives shiny reward to our brains every time
we unlock it and to get this reward we open it many times aimlessly
or unconsciously, the same process won’t happen if the app icons
were grey or black and white.
To turn your phone to grayscale go to Settings > Accessibility >

24. Allow
Yourself
to be
Bored
First thing that we do when we are idle or feeling bored is we
take out our phone and will start scrolling social media or
playing Candy crush, which is diminishing our mindfulness and
wasting lot of time.
Also, we are missing out the ‘creative ideas’ and ‘eureka

25. Mute your phone at times
In mute mode you won’t get any stimuli from phone about call,
messages, email and from all the essential apps whose
notifications you cannot turn off. Even vibration/silent mode can
distract us so it must be complete mute

26. Uninstall
Most
Distracting
apps
Some apps are distracting you a lot and wasting hours of your
important time then you should better uninstall them rather than
struggling with the carving to open it all the time.
Such apps mostly include social media apps (Facebook,
Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, WhatsApp etc.), the Gaming apps
(Candy crush, PUBG, Subway surfers etc.), online shopping apps
(Amazon, Flipkart, Myntra, ebay etc.) or the entertaining apps

27. FIGHT TECHNOLOGY WITH TECHNOLOGY
Diehard phone users or the one who find it difficult to put a
control on the self to break this addiction then you can use
technology as a helping hand, there are apps available which can
manage your smartphone use for you.

28. PRACTICING
MEDITATION
Conquering any addiction is a journey not a day task! There are
always high chances of relapsing, though one has suppressed it
for a long time but it may relapse again gradually with time. So
one also needs to gain inner strength daily to defeat this
addiction permanently and practicing meditation will really help.

29. conclusion
Digital addiction has become an epidemic today and smartphone
has majorly contributed in spreading this addiction. And the way
technology is advancing day by day with an exponential rate, it
implies the condition is going to be much more worse in coming
years, so it will be wise to address this addiction today.
The solution is not to abandon technology at all, which is not
realistic in today’s competitive world and isn’t even necessary as
well we need to take control of the way we use our devices, the
suggested measures mentioned above to overcome digital
addiction are very effective and can bring amazing results.