Smartphone Addiction

Before you read: some questions to help you think about the topic and the words you might need.

Do you know somebody who is crazy about using their smartphone? Tell about it.

What would you do if you couldn’t stop using your smartphone?

Smartphones could be making people dumb.

Seoul prides itself as being the most wired city in the most wired country. About 70% of South Koreans have a smartphone, and this is the highest penetration rate in the world. But the fixation with young people with anything digital is worrying many parents. So the Korean government has decided to make sweeping changes to try to wipe out this problem. The plan includes army camp style classes in schools to help students to slowly be free from their addiction.

Even though many teachers take smartphones off students during class, students still spend about 3 hours a day on their phones. According to a Korean government survey, about 20% of students are addicted to their smartphones. And the ministry says that this addiction is measured by how much students are depressed, feel anxious without their phones and want to be with their phones rather than their families. Some students have even become violent when separated from their smartphones and at the least, people have become unable to communicate or learn communication skills with others because of their obsession. It seems that the problem starts at an early age as mothers give smartphones to their babies to play with to keep them distracted.

However others like Dr Han a psychologist at Chung-Ang University caution against making the problem bigger than it really is, and the risk of demonizing technology. He doesn’t believe that people will stop communicating with each other because of technology. But that people’s online obsession will keep changing as new gadgets continually replace the old ones.

It seems ironic that we live in the communication age, but in some ways some of us are communicating less with each other.

Try to guess the meaning of the words in bold and match them with their closest meaning from the choices in the right. Some of the answers are very close and have similar meaning. The meaning of these words is how they are used in the reading.

 The answers are below the table.