Amidst food, water and shelter, a fourth human necessity has snuck into the lives of billions of people: the smartphone.

Few things accompany us everywhere, yet society has become dependent on these small rectangular devices.

At the touch of a button, we are able to navigate wherever we want to go, answer whatever question pops into our minds, connect with people regardless of physical proximity, order food to our doorsteps and know what the weather for the next two weeks looks like.

Rideshare apps like Uber and Lyft have eliminated the need to call or flag down a cab, and many restaurants offer a QR code link to an online menu at each table rather than physical menus.

Society now assumes that its members have access to the Internet at all times, and this assumption usually proves correct.

Whether walking, driving or unwinding, our phones never seem to be more than a few feet from us at all times.

Screen time (the amount of time an individual spends on their phone) data supports that statement; a study done by Comparitech found that worldwide, the average smartphone user spends about three hours and 50 minutes looking at their mobile device daily.

Put into different terms, around 1,400 hours a year are spent staring at a small metal box.

Yet we have the same amount of time in the day as our ancestors did.

So, what time has screen time replaced?

I think smartphones have largely impacted hobby culture.

Before the rise of technology as we know it today, there was no such thing as “brain rot.”

Brain rot is Oxford Dictionary’s 2024 Word of the Year and is defined as “the supposed deterioration of a person’s mental or intellectual state, especially viewed as the result of overconsumption of material (now particularly online content) considered to be trivial or unchallenging.”

Social media scrolling on apps like TikTok, Snapchat and Instagram has widely been coined brain rot scrolling, illustrating the detrimental nature of spending free time online for mindless dopamine hits.

Activities done for enjoyment in the past included reading, drawing, playing instruments and playing sports.

Now, we regard many of those activities as extracurriculars and no longer incorporate them into our lives to the same extent.

Children are spending less and less time playing outdoors, and imagination has been easily undermined by stimulating videos.

Infants are enraptured by parents’ cell phones as soon as they are exposed to the stimulation a phone can provide through light, color and sound.

Addiction starts from a young age. Cell phones have become an integral part of society and redefined culture.

A commonly known rule known as the “10,000 hour rule” asserts that a skill can be mastered in 10,000 hours of practice.

If we are wasting thousands of hours a year on screen time that does not in any way serve to better ourselves, how much of that time could have been used to develop our talents?

How much of our potential are our phones wasting?