How often do you hear older people talk about mobile phone addiction? Now a days I hear it a lot, more than I want to. Because they identify me as one of “them”, a teenager. But are mobile phones really what teenagers are addicted to? Or is it not even really the mobile phone they are addicted to but what they do on their phone?
As a teenager I see everyone at school hang around in groups, lingering for friendships that actually mean something. When you look at them like that you'd think that they have found their people. They have found friendships for life. But what if all of this isn't true and groups at highschool are simply a bunch of people who are all afraid to be alone so they flock around in groups? What if... Well if it's like that then it might be right to say that in small villages in which “mobile phone” addiction is the worst, teenagers simply don't get a chance to find like-minded people so they go off searching for internet friends.

Now after years of frustration seeing my age group glued to their phones I decided to go online and do the same thing to see what the hype about all this is. After only a couple of days after registering on websites like Interpals or Students Of The World I had many interesting conversations about topics that interested me. I had finally found what I too, like all the others had been looking for. A feeling of belonging and people that shared the same interests as me.

I now understand that we should rename “mobile phone addiction” to internet addiction. Because when having conversations with people online, getting to know people also means wanting to spend time with them, and keeping in touch. In order to do this one needs to reply to messages and keep the other person updated. We get attached to people online, not to our mobile phones. Now this is excluding taking selfies because I find that's another addiction altogether. I just want to set clear that if we want to get our children and teenagers off mobile phones we need to find a way to unite teenagers living in towns, villages and cities. Everyone should get the chance to meet like-minded people and feel a sense of belonging in real life too, not only online. I call for a revolutinary step to help teenagers all over the world do this.