Mara Bertelsen
Hour 2
Impact of Cell Phones on Society
Cell phones have become just as important to carry with you as your own head. When we forget our cell phones, we feel lost without them. A cell phone used to be chunky and a hassle to carry around. Only the wealthiest people had cell phones and it was a real treat. But now-a-days, a cell phone is common and 90% of 11-15 year olds have their own cell phone. Cell phones have advanced over the years, and are now not only for talking but for texting and the internet. They also are becoming less of a burden in school and teachers are adapting to using them as resources.
The first cell phones were plain and large, and quickly were given the name “the brick”. The brick weighed about two pounds and offered only half an hour of talking time for every recharging. Over the years cell phones have gone from “the brick” to ones that are about the size of an Altoids box and even smaller. I know my phone can offer me three to four days of talking time before I have to charge it again. But each phone is different when it comes to charging, and it also depends on how much talking time or texting you do on your phone. Cell phones have evolved so much now that most cell phones offer internet and email access. Company workers often have Blackberry’s so that their work emails go to their phones. This way they are always connected to work and never miss important information. When cell phones first hit the scene they were similar to credit cards in that people only used them for emergencies. Now people’s cell phones are their lifeline. They can be very helpful when there is a problem or emergency and they have often been able to help people in times of need. I read a scary story in someone’s blog on blogspot.com where her cell phone really did save her life. She was driving somewhere and had to use the bathroom so she stopped by this dog park where she often would take her dog for a walk and walked to the restroom. There was a man in his car that was just watching her and she was getting nervous, so as soon as she got into the bathroom she decided to leave and when she opened the door the man was waiting there for her. She quickly shut the door and locked it and luckily she had her cell phone so she called a friend that lived near there to come and get her. The friend showed up 15 minutes later and the man was hiding behind a wall waiting for her. He quickly ran away after seeing her friend and they called the police and reported their experience. Without her cell phone she could have been stuck in that bathroom for who knows how long waiting for that guy to leave. Her cell phone really came in handy that day and possibly saved her life.
For years, as cell phones have become increasingly common, teachers have fought to keep them out of the classroom and from distracting their students, but now there is no fighting. Nearly 73% of students in a classroom have their mobile phones on during class and 13% say that they received a call or message during that class. Those statistics are from 2001, and being a high school senior myself I would correct that statistic and say that closer to 95% of students have their mobile phones during class and more than half of them receive a call or message during class. The teachers have a hard time trying to keep our attention with all of these distractions but I believe the best way to keep our attention on the class is having us put our phones on our desk during class or being stricter about seeing cell phones during class. One of my teachers has a system that for every five cell phones she sees we have to take a pop quiz. I think that that is a good way to motivate us to not have our cell phones out or visible. More and more teachers are also using cell phones in their lessons to include them. Teachers aren’t oblivious to the fact that most teenagers are addicted to their phones, so they are incorporating them into their lessons so students might not be as tempted to text during class when they get to use it for other activities. History teachers especially are using them to take class surveys. This is a smart way to connect learning to the cell phone and also get the point across. Also, after school activities and even some classes depend on cell phones to send out important messages. Teachers have discovered that if they get each person’s cell phone number and carrier they can send out text messages from their computer to their student’s phones. Just yesterday I received two text messages from my teachers; one telling us about a test that we were going to take today and the other saying that we have a meeting after school on Thursday. This is a more convenient way to get information out because students always have their phones and rarely check the internet for updates.
