Nowadays, it seems that everyone needs a smartphone, because a person's whole life revolves around this device so brilliantly created by the best minds of our generation. My concern about this comes from observing the behavior of other people in relation to the use they give to these useful devices.

My concern comes from an observation of the behavior of other people, and not mine, mainly because I make little or no use of these devices, my phone is a compact and uniform black piece, with a tiny screen and even smaller keys, which is virtually indestructible.

The device allows me to make phone calls, receive text messages, although for some strange reason it does not allow me to send messages, it gives me the time, it has a calendar that tells me the day of the week and the month, it allows me to play the Snake game, in addition to owning a flashlight. Wow, state-of-the-art technology!

It would be understandable that I had a phone like this if I was a sexagenarian lady, but no, it's not the case, I'm relatively young, just a few years above twenty. But even so, I have voluntarily decided not to participate in the prevailing telephone culture. Actually, I have never assimilated the use of a mobile device, and usually when I leave home I forget mine on the bedside table. For me, cell phone addiction does not make any sense, I don't say that people don't have their reasons to stay constantly connected to them, but I personally don't have that motivation.

I remember a couple of years ago, when I was studying in a catholic institution, it was not allowed to bring phones, that resulted in the students getting to know each other much better, in fact, I got to know those people with whom I studied just one year better than those with which I had studied throughout high school, where phone use was allowed, and I like to emphasize this, because I feel that cell phones take people's minds away. In addition, it is amazing to see how academic performance increases by removing this type of distraction.

Not using a cell phone also allowed me to be more efficient and make much better use of my time, both at university and at work. Although it is true that sometimes I envied a little the colleagues who used their phones to record Roman Law classes.

Most of the people I can visualize, are practically slaves of their interaction with cell phones, to the point that if for some reason they cannot have it, their patience and anxiety can be greatly compromised. This is quite serious, because when a person's health and moods are highly dependent on a mobile device, we can speak of a very dangerous level of addiction and dependence, because it compromises the well-being of the person.

Nomophobia?

The term means no-mobile-phone phobia, which despite not being recognized by the World Health Organization as an addiction, seems to have effects on some of the members of our society. According to an investigation, the levels of stress and nerves of these people are comparable to those suffered by someone the day before the wedding, or the day of the visit to the dentist. Come on guys, let's face it, what kind of phobia is this? it seems another absurd excuse to medicate people. But if something tells us this, is that the dependence of us towards any type of electronic devices is increasing alarmingly.

We are constantly being bombarded by a flow of information that is mostly useless and superfluous through these electronic devices, of which we are increasingly dependent. Children from a very young age are already interacting with these devices, I have seen children cry because they don't have their ipad at hand, or because their parents don't want to give them their cell phone.

It is true that technology is good, but nothing is good in its entirety, everything has a relatively bad side too, the point is to find the balance between the utility that this technology can have and the artificial dependence that may exist with respect to it.

Changing phones every year is not something that is really necessary, and I don't say that you don't do it if you have the capacity to do so, but I would not recommend forcing yourself to update electronic devices every time, and each occasion, according to each of the updates made by the market, since that makes us consumers without decision power, because in a market in which consumers buy, by artificial necessity, everything that the technology companies sell, it transfers the power to decide the course of things, which consumers originally have, to companies.

If the seller is the one who really decides what the changes are going to be, at what price the product will be sold and purchased, and all the other important decisions, only allowing the customer to decide between a white or black device, and all this simply because users have an artificial need for a product that does not really have that value, the consumer, client and user has simply lost all the benefits offered by an open and free market economy, that is, he gives his freedom of voluntary form.

Nowadays that happens to all of us, not only with mobile devices, but also TV, computers, videogame consoles, and many other electronic devices. This is possibly the biggest sign that we live in a digital age. What differentiates us mainly from past civilizations is definitely the use of electronic components. However, if something shows us the story, it is that each past civilization sees its fall in the heyday, something similar to the Pax Romana, many describe that period as a time of progress and development, but that later became the point in which Rome began to descend. We have also seen the advance of technology, and how it drives society to levels of wealth never before known, but it may be that when we reach our peak as a civilization, we will see later the fall due to the artificial dependency we are creating about these technological devices.