Do you Know #3 Are Smartphones as bad as they are made to be.

1).Introduction

After watching SciShow's video about phone's and there affect on sleep, I was inspired to look into other renowned harms of the phone and act as a myth buster, verifying the harms by searching for studies and articles about this topic, so I can see if it is just correlation or not.

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Hope that you find that post beneficial and/or helpful. if you find any mistakes or misinformation in the post please inform me to fix them. I generally make gaming and educational related posts, if you like this one you might like the rest and the ones to come. And I would like to expand into other categories in the future.

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2).Blue Light

Let's begin with what SciShow video. To summarize, there is something in our retina called the ganglion cells, which can regulate the circadian rhythm. The ganglion cells would order the release of a hormone called melatonin when we are in dark place with dim light. That hormone would make you fall a sleep.

Here lies the problem, where the ganglion cells are more sensitive to blue light,which is released in abundance in monitors, including your phone's.

Thus it is suggested that using phones TVs or anything with monitors can make sleeping a burden, as it disrupts the circadian rhythm. Disruptions in the circadian rhythm can lead to many diseases including cancer. Nevertheless, most of the studies made about blue light did not change variables such as light, moreover some did not use humans and used other animals , hence there is not conclusive evidence about what was aforementioned.

I have not listed everything in the video and tried to just summarize, so it would be better for you to check out the video. I did not want to cut down on that video's potential view, especially that I got inspiration from it.

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3). Myopia

To begin with what is Myopia, Myopia is shortsightedness.Myopia has been spreading rapidly recently, where in China 90% of youngsters are affected by myopia, moreover the number of the people affected by myopia is increasing too in the west.

A worldwide that is happening recently is that the growth of the eyes tend to not slow down when in your children late teens causing myopia.; since the eye grows too long form front to back for the light to be collected be focused correctly.

In other words, your eyes gets to big that the focal length is before the retina, so you need to close in to see properly.

One might say that monitors and technology are to blame, as it is suggested that having stuff close to us ,like while using phones or reading books, might contribute to that trend; since it is thought that your eyes might adapt to that environment and lose the ability to see further away becoming nearsighted.

However near work and genetics are excluded for the reason of the myopia epidemic as near work has been present throughout the years.Furthermore scientists failed to make out a firm relationship between myopia and near work so it not the main factor. also genetics could not be the culprit as the increase in myopia is too much for it to be explained by genetics as a study about a community in Alaska showed that the population of said community had only 1.5% of them affected by myopia, however 50% of there grandsons and children had myopia. And finally computers and phones are too modern and the epidemic trend started before their popularity and as there is not much studies into them they are also excluded as main factors.

It is apparent that there is a correlation between the education that people are having and their nearsightedness. Moreover since most education happens indoors, it is suggested that the reason for shortsightedness is not being outside as much nowadays. As a result there is not as much UV exposure for children as it used to be. and that lack of UV exposure is the predicted factor for becoming shortsighted.

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4).addiction

Phone addiction is a true occurrence especially that we are currently in a world that tries to terminate boredom, and as apps most likely want us to using them as much as possible. As a result games and social network applications are designed to be addictive, thus you would be addicted to the device you access these applications through, especially since that device is easily accessed and is portable.

First of all, Dopamine is neurotransmitter that is in the brain it is basically the want chemical, where whenever you do something

that might benefit you in surviving or just please you, for example a big fatty burger, your brain would reward you with dopamine. Then whenever you are in a situation where you can get more of that delicious burger, your brain would release dopamine to tempt you into doing so. Dopamine is helpful as it aides you in survival. In an experiment revolving mice they found that dopamine deficient mice approached food but did not eat enough to survive.

According to to Nir & Far there are three types of rewards that your brain rewards you by while using phones. Firstly, novelty, when you scrolling down social media apps you would find yourself rewarded with dopamine, as you know that you would get to see more of what you like, either it is news of friends or just another meme and just the mere anticipation gives you dopamine. Secondly, the reward you get from validating ourselves. This is done mainly by finding people that like and approve what you do and post. Thus you would find yourself tracking people opinion about what you do and you would get happy with the interaction. Last but not least, wanting to be in a part of a group, and craving connections makes you want to interact with people in communities and finding out what people have to say about you might get rewarded by dopamine.

Not only does dopamine let's you want to use the mobile phone more, but also due to constant repetition it becomes a habit. Where neural pathways are formed and reinforced, resulting in you doing this action without thinking about it when a stimuli occur like vibration in your pocket.

In normal addictions your supply of dopamine tends to decrease as you are desensitized against an action (your brain got bored from it, closing down dopamine receptors), hence addicts needs more stimulation to reach the same amount of dopamine which feeds into the positive feedback loop.

However this is not with same phone applications especially games. since these games control your use of itself limiting you after finish your lives. you are not likely to get desensitizes. In addition having sporadic success when the game gets harder makes you hooked in the game as you know the rewards wont always come and you want to play more for the chance of winning.

It can be conculded that mobile phones on there own are not addictive, however most applications are indeed addictive and they are build this way to lure you into using them as much as possible.

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5).cause cancer through emitted radio-waves

Electromagnetic waves is present all over the place, from the radio-waves used by electronic gadgets to communicate with each other; to the visible light we use to see to; to microwaves waves we use to heat up food. and well, radiation can be often associated with high energy radiation that can cause cancer and radiation poisoning,however for radiation to cause any harm it needs to be energetic enough to ionize atoms, where waves that ionize parts of the DNA especially the proto-oncogenes and tumor suppressing genes would likely disrupt the division of cells and cause cancer. Proto-oncogenes aides in cell division while tumor suppressing genes restricts it and states when a cell should die.

Now the energy held by EM waves that determines if it is ionizing or not is only determined by the frequency of the wave, where E=hf. (h=planck's constant and f=frequency). Therefore as the frequency increase the wave become more energetic until it becomes ionizing in the UV light range. Radio frequency is a lot lower than UV frequency where frequencies used in smart phones tops of at about 30-60 gigahertz (6*10^10 cycles per second) while UV light frequencies is about the range of 8*10^14 to 3*10^16 cycles per second. Moreover intensity does not contribute to the energy of the particle so it would not increase the ionization of the wave. In addition there was not any consistent evidence that can increase the risk of cancers.

Nevertheless, your body can be influenced in another way by radio waves. As your body absorbs and emits radio waves. Thus it absorbs energy from the incoming radio frequencies causing the body to heat up, yet the absorbed waves would not increase the bodies temperature considerably. Other effects that might be induced by EM waves released by phones have resulted in inconsistent results so more research is needed to fix the uncertainties and other contributing factors to such varied results.

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Again, this post is made from a student who have searched for the information and represented it here. Hence if you are an expert and you spot any inaccuracies in my post please inform me to fix them. Also feel free to criticize in the comments below.

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6).References

https://www.wired.co.uk/article/eye-sight

http://www.berkeleywellness.com/self-care/preventive-care/article/are-mobile-devices-ruining-our-eyes

https://nei.nih.gov/health/errors/myopia

https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/radiation/cell-phones-fact-sheet

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC18425/

http://www.thewisdompost.com/essay/addiction/mobile-addiction/cell-phone-addiction-meaning-symptoms-causes-effects-and-treatment/1045#causes

https://busy.org/@omegagamerow/pkb78jetx

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7).Image Sources

https://www.jax.org/news-and-insights/2018/july/retinal-ganglion-cells-rna-sequencing

https://webvision.med.utah.edu/book/part-xvii-refractive-errors/the-science-behind-myopia-by-brittany-j-carr-and-william-k-stell/

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/345158758919974716/

https://www.everydayhealth.com/dopamine/