Monday morning saw me barely able to wake up. I left sick to my stomach and my head was killing me. No, I didn't get a second round of the flu or a typical college hang over ... though a hangover sounds like the closest thing to what I was feeling. No, I felt so sick because my weekend was packed with everything technological related. I watched episode after episode of Friends and an anime series that I don’t even remember the name of now. I read fanfiction late into the night. I watched TV for hours while making dinner and then eating in front of it. In short, I had an overload of electronics and was running on an average of 4-5 hours of sleep a night. What kind of weekend is it when you come out of it worse then you went in?
Looking back over this weekend makes me sick with the amount of time I wasted glued to a screen. Sitting down to write this blog, I wanted to explore the health related problems that I faced and that millions of people face every day from tech use.
• Like me, millions of people have sleeping problems developing from that one more episode of Friends or that one more chapter of our favorite anime. Sleeping problems cause other problems in our lives as well. Multitasking is the first to go while our diet is the next. Sleep deprivation, according the National Traffic Safety Administration causes more than 100,000 crashes, 71,000 injuries and 1,550 deaths per year!
• Scientists from Tel Aviv University have also recently found that over exposure to cell phone use leads to oxidative stress. Basically, your risk of cancer goes up when you use your cell phone more.
• Thinking about cell phones and health risks also has me thinking about all the oils and bacteria that reside on them and are transferred to my skin when I make phone calls. Acne is a major crisis in teenagers’ opinions and it seems cell phones are a major culprit. I also recently read an article that said your bathroom toilet seat is probably cleaner than your cell phone. That is just plain disgusting.
• Most devices that we use give off some type of radiation which our bodies absorb. Looking into it, there is no concrete evidence to prove that it is harmful but I have a very strong feeling that cancer rates are going to be highly correlated to tech usage in the future. I shudder to think how much my technological usage has scarred me.
• Pains from using mobile devices seems to also always be on the list. I remember in high school teachers always commenting how everyone was going to get arthritis from texting or their backs were going to be crooked from always slouching at the computer. I highly doubt these tales are not going to come true.
• Sorry guys but a study (published on the US National Library of Medicine web page) recently found that computers connected to the internet through wifi decreased sperm motility and increased sperm DNA fragmentation. I wonder how children born 50 years from now will be affected by all this we are going through.
• The same site as mentioned above also has an article published by doctors that found that people are starting to experience hearing loss from listening to music to loudly through their ear buds or headphones. In a way, I’m not surprised.
It’s really interesting how much technology is killing us and we are enjoying it while it does. Coming back to class from this weekend will be hard since I’m so tired but actively writing down all the problems that could happen to me (not the sperm one of course though a similar study has found a similar thing with eggs and fertility in women) has motivated me to at least put down the iPad and go outside, even if its snowing and freezing.
The lesson you learned from this is nearly identical to the lesson I learned in my blog post last week.
ReplyDeleteI fall victim to many of the things you mentioned. For the past few months I've been finding it difficult to fall asleep before 2am because there's just so much I could be doing instead. I could be checking reddit, getting a game or two of Halo in, playing 8 Ball Pool on my phone, watching some Bar Rescue reruns or even some Late Night Weather Channel (my guilty pleasure).
I see all over the place that in order for the best circadian rhythm or whatever it is, you need to stop using all electronics for an hour before bed. I laugh at that because I find it hard to put down my electronics so I can go to bed at all. It has to be a conscious effort on my part to say "Okay, it's 3am now and I need to be up for class in a few hours. The longer I stay up the more miserable (and more likely to skip) I will be. I need to go to sleep."
I'm sacrificing my physical life for my digital life when I do that. Instead of taking care of my body and getting the sleep I need, I indulge myself in the latest news stories. Instead of hitting the gym like I so desperately need to, I watch some shows and comment on facebook posts.
I think a more appropriate time for me to stay glued to the couch all day would be when I am old and frail and cannot get up.