How Modern Life Affects Our Physical and Mental Health

Life was simpler, slower-paced and less hectic than now. Today, the modern lifestyle has changed everything. From my perspective, modern lifestyle is when one person can do everything they need at their fingertips from any part of the world. For instance, using ‘ibanking’, we can transfer funds using our mobile phones from one country to another country with the effect of immediate. Accessing the internet could be done in every part of Singapore in the name of ‘wifisg’, even at void decks and train platforms.

Online platforms gives us additional support to get what we want within a click such as buying a dress which has to be shipped from USA, having video conference with our international friends and many more. Although the modern lifestyle has made things easier and convenient for everyone, it has also become stressful and most importantly, unhealthy. Modern lifestyle has brought us a lot of advantages and at the same time disadvantages. The disadvantages of living the modern lifestyle are threatening to individuals.

The following essay will examine the views on how the modern lifestyle affects people’s health. It will focus on the disadvantages of living the modern lifestyle which are technology, sedentary lifestyle and modern-day convenience.

Technology plays a vital role in today’s modern life. As much as technology is playing a big part in our life in security and info-communication, it is also one of the biggest threat. Technology affects an individual physically and mentally. The types of negative impacts on physical health are eyesight issues, neck tightness and losing the sense of hearing.

For example, the use of mobile phones, personal computers and other electronic devices up till late, can affect an individual’s sleeping pattern and it may lead to sleep disturbance. It could even cause psychological problems such as disturbance, narcissism, expectation of prompt gratification and surprisingly depression. Being too attached to the use of mobile phones or the internet is expounded to depression symptoms. Nowadays, from adults to youngsters have become so preoccupied with the use of technology and social networking that the idea of leaving them is impossible. Hence, the rates of technology and social networking utilization are increasing quickly. Social media sites such as Facebook and Instagram alone declared the combined monthly user base of two million people all over the world. The basic way of how people communicate with their family, friends and colleagues are done through text messaging and social media sites. According to an article of the Straits Times Singapore, with 95 per cent, the highest device people use here is the smartphone and 80 per cent of them look at their smartphone when waking up in the morning or just before going to sleep. The top online activities people engage in at least once a day are Reading personal e-mails (90%), Online messaging and calling (79%), Social media and networks (71%), Work or business purposes (57%), News and sports updates (53%) and lastly Games applications on smartphones and tablets (29%). The study by consultancy Ernst & Young (EY) polled 1,000 people aged from 18 to 69 who stayed in Singapore for at least a year and had access to the Internet. Mobile phones can be also crucial emitters of radiation, depending on both our phone model and the network on which it works. The World Health Organization (WHO) says the strength of radio frequency (RF) radiation from mobile phones reduces exponentially the more the distant the device is held away from the body. Thus, the safest bet is to keep your mobile phone as far as possible from your ear and body at all times. Make use of the speakerphone function if possible while talking on the phone. This will reduce the amount of radiation hitting our body compared to placing our phone directly against our ear. Another way is a quality shielding phone case that is created to block various kinds of radiation. According to Emmanuel Mesthene (n.d.), “Technology is neither good nor bad, it is neutral”. This means that technology can bring us luxuries, but it also can cause problems. Therefore, how we make use of technology is very important.

Another disadvantage that affects people’s health in the modern lifestyle is a sedentary lifestyle. A sedentary lifestyle is defined as where an individual does not get the appropriate amount of physical activity. Therefore, living a sedentary lifestyle is becoming an important public health problem. People are using up their free time doing sedentary activities such as sitting or lying down while using electronic devices like mobile phones and watching tv. Studies have shown that leading a sedentary lifestyle can contribute to obesity, type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Obesity and sedentary behaviour is known to be associated with cardiovascular disease (CVD) in women. Statistics from the Centres for Disease Control (CDC) has shown that the rates of obesity are higher than 30% in the United States of America. In addition, the commonness of obesity and sedentary behaviour forecasts the existence of cardiovascular disease death. According to Australian study researchers, they discovered that those who sits down for 11 hours a day had a 40 percent higher chance of death within three years compared to those who sits down for less than fours hours..