Phone Addiction

The other day I was in a car with a friend of mine when I reached for my pocket. I didn't feel any vibration and I didn't hear any rings but I reached for my phone anyways. The funny thing was that I didn't even have my phone with me, it was in a backpack in the trunk. I found myself with a slight feeling of anxiety.

There are 2 problems here.
1. I reactively went for my phone once I was in a quiet, unstimulating situation.
2. I was getting anxious when I realized I wasn't in direct contact with it.

I feel like this happens a lot. Not just to me, but also my friends, it seems all too common. Why are we addicted to our phones and go through slight degrees of withdrawal when we don't have it? I believe it is because we see our phones as a piece of us.

The cell phone is no longer just a tool to get into contact but instead it IS the only way that we seem to communicate. Our phones are essentially our voices in this media ridden, social networking plagued society and being disconnected is a cardinal sin.

I wish I didn't NEED my phone but how else will I be able to know when people text me or when I get a comment on a photo posted to Facebook or Twitter?!

Memes

I am constantly on an image sharing website known as Imgur. This site is a wonderful online community where people attempt to not only share their funny pictures and art work but also to share both heart wrenching and grotesque stories; All through different interesting images. Among these images are things known as memes which come from the Greek-Latin root that means repetition.

These repeated images include favorites like "success kid," "overly attached girlfriend," and "confession bear." These memes effectively work as a symbolic meaning through image. The interesting thing about these memes are that all the while that they are common and repeated by nature the captions and creative spins that users can place on them generates a whole new meaning.

The use of memes are not just limited to imgur, reddit or 9gag. These memes are more or less what defines internet humor because of their reproducibility and easy creation. Memes are not limited to the digital medium but are more or less what makes the internet unique.