Do we need our phones 24/7?

Ok, I do own a phone (obviously - a 17 year old girl in this day and age without an iPhone is strange, let alone a 17 year old in this day and age without a phone full stop) and I admit, I carry it everywhere. To school, to the gym, to work, to my boyfriends, even to the toilet.

Why?

It's not just a phone anymore. Its a tiny little computer, tablet whatever you want to call it - Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Blogger etc are all in your pocket - accessible at any moment (with WiFi or mobile network of course). Not to mention, texts, calls, whatsapp etc. This poses the question, why would we be without our phones?

What are the benefits of always having our phones with us?

• Never miss a thing, your friends are a phone call or text away, gossip is a tweet away.
• You can remember important moments by instagramming a photograph of it. 
• If you feel you are in an awkward situation, you can pretend to be on the phone, or update yourselves on what everyone you know is up to via friendstream. 
• If there is an emergency you can call someone instantly (signal permitting) 
• You can find information instantly via google or another search engine.

Implications of always having our phones with us?

• We become reliant on them, become lazy, instead of thinking what something means we google it, instead of working out an equation, we use the calculator.
• Our friends lives become in synced with ours, we care more about what their up to than what we should be doing. Honestly, do you care that your friend is having pasta for dinner?.. 
• Memories aren't memories anymore, their pictures - which I suppose means we can remember them more, but does it also mean that we hinder the memory, and how good it could be, because instead we wished to take a picture? 
• Some people today do not know how to act in conversations or in social events because they are so reliant on communicating through their phones.
• Instead of exercising our brains, we exercise our fingers. 'Googling' the answer to a question instead of answering it ourselves. 
• We do not appreciate the time we have with our loved ones, as we spend the time on our phones. 

This video below was the inspiration for this blogpost, which I came across scrolling through Facebook. 

It's definitely made me think about how often I use my phone and whether I really need to.