Phones are one of the needs for today’s society. Most teenagers can’t go a minute without their phone with them. Phones are making kids less social towards one another. Instead of actually socializing we text, update our social medias statuses, play games, or watch videos. What makes us so addicted to you

“The average user actually checks their phone around 110 times (a) day,” says Vitoria Woollaston on dailymail.com. With that information we can infer that most people check their phones a lot each day. The reason we check our phones every time they buzz is because the dopamine trigger in our brains wants us to get the “reward” of our phones. Getting phone calls from people are rewards to us.

We want to feel like we belong in a group so having social media and keeping up with it is our way of doing just that. Will Bernard said smartphones are not addicting by themselves but they are addicting because of social media. When someone likes your post, the dopamine makes you feel pleasure from it and makes it a habit to check your phone every time it buzzes. So, could the problem be the dopamine trigger in our brains and not us? Yes, like I said the dopamine makes it so we want to check our phones every time they buzz. The dopamine also makes us want to have the pleasure of opening the notification from our social medias that tells your someone just liked your post.

Researchers at California State University attached electrodes to Anderson Cooper’s fingers so that they could measure his heart rate and perspiration. Sure enough, when a notification popped up on Cooper’s phone his heart rate and perspiration increased. This happened because of the dopamine, it made him happy and increased his heart rate and perspiration. Basically, proving that dopamine makes us want to open our phones.

So, from this information we can get the idea that the problem isn’t us. The real problem is Social media, and the dopamine in our brains. Maybe now we can have a little bit of sympathy for people who our always checking their phones. Also, you now know why you are constantly checking your phone.