Cell Phones in Society

Cell Phones in American Society By: Nick Levatino Cell phones are a key essential for almost everybody today living in the twenty first century. Cell phones have effected American society in many positive ways, but also many negative ways. Cell phones and its industry has allowed the United States to be the biggest and leading country in the cell phone industry. From extensive research there has been many positive effects from cell phones and many negative effects from cell phones. Cell phones have had a major impact on the American Society. Many people are looking for the answer to the question that how have cell phones effected our society ? A mobile phone or otherwise known as a cell phone are a tool for communication allowing us to send and receive phone calls through a radio frequency link over a wide geographic area. In the twenty first century cell phones have come a very long way, from almost weighing ninety pounds to being the size of a small note pad the technological advances they have made in such a short time is mind blowing. Now a days cell phones have capabilities to send text messages, browse the internet, camera, application manager, gaming device, PDA and the list is continuing to grow as companies are making cell phones almost as important as water. Mobile phones are not just a national necessity but an international staple to life for five billion people of the world. People all over the world are constantly connected 24/7, 365 days a year. Social networking platforms such as Twitter, Instagram and Facebook have allowed people to tap into one another lives and get to know each other through a technological - social environment. Cell phones had many positive effects on society but also many negative effects as well. Mobile devices have many positive influences on our society. Mobile phones have capabilities to get in contact with friends, loved ones and emergency contact in a faster more efficient way with other capabilities to help keep individuals more organized. As a society cell phones have made a major advancement in the way we communicate with one another as human beings. Cell phones can be used now as a way to communicate with others and to enhance social networking with each other. Social networking is the use of dedicated websites and applications to communicate informally with other users, or to find people with similar interests to oneself. With the technological advancement of cell phones we have now been able to get in touch with each other faster and more efficiently. The networking capabilities a cell phone and its apps has are endless. You can now find anyone at anytime with the internet and with cell phones having quick internet capabilities to obtain information this has allowed us to do just about anything we can do on a laptop without the hassle of carrying a computer (Ling). Cell phones are a great tool to help us as a society communicate with one another. Over 87% of American adults are subscribed to a cell phone in the United States. Another great impact cell phones have been aid to us in keeping ourselves organized. With most cell phones these days having smart phone capabilities we have access to many different ways of keeping track of our everyday life. With everything from banking applications, schedule and task keepers and many different applications this has helped keep our lives simple and more organized within this 4 inch device. Most smart phones in this day in age can store anywhere from 8GB of information to 32GB. This amount of information you can store in these devices is almost endless. This has allowed us to keep and store important information such as notes, projects, application management systems and important documents. Cell phones not only help us communicate with friends and loved ones but also help us in emergency situations as well. Due to a study done by the The Journal of Emergency Medicine it was stated that evidence and statistics have lead to the conclusion that the use of cell phones to alert emergency help services in emergency situations has an improved outcome for patients. This is due to the fact that cell phones allow us to get in contact with emergency services much more faster than landlines. Thousands of people are saved every year due to the fact that they were able to contact emergency services, or even record events that could lead to helping law enforcement. One positive influence cell phones have had on our society is the industry these technological devices bring along with them. The cell phone industry is a relatively new and booming industry within American society. The cell phone industry has been nothing but a positive effect on our society. With new cell phones always coming out and advancing in technology has been opening up over 350,000 jobs within this booming industry. Opening jobs in the fields of advertising, trouble shooting and support, technological engineering and corporate level positions; this is helping post graduate college students. And for those of which who are still in college cell phone specialists working for companies like Verizon, T-Mobile, and AT&T have built retail locations where you can examine the cell phones capabilities before purchasing. This is allowing college or high students an opportunity to learn more about the technology and the industry. The American cell phone industry is valued at 200 billion dollars. This has given our government 23.4 billion dollars in revenue as well ("Wireless quick facts," 2013) . Cell phones are a great tool to help us as a society communicate with one another but there have been many cases of cell phones having a negative effect as well. Over 87% of American adults are subscribed to a cell phone in the United States which is 303 million people. But as an individual and as a society cell phones are causing many negative effects on society. 29% of Americans say that their cell phones are the first and last thing they look at for the day. 44% of Americans say they sleep next to their phone so they don’t miss a text message or notification (Jerpi, 2013). These statistics show that us as individuals may actually be addicted to our cell phones. The negative impact cell phones have had on society are detrimental to us as individuals and a society as a whole. Cell phones can have a negative effect on the way we have face-to-face communication. Face-to-face interaction is a concept in sociology, linguistic, media and communication studies describing social interaction carried out without any mediating technology. Cell phones are mediating technology in terms of the definition of face-to-face communication. With texting and social networks being accessed at almost every second it is “easy” for us to talk to people and get to know one another through a technological setting. In some cases this is good, but it can have a negative impact on the way one communicates as well (Haverila, 2012). When one buries him/herself into their mobile device it is easy to have it become habit forming. Everywhere you go these days you se someone looking down at their phone and walking along. This has caused us to be addicted to our devices to the point that we have a hard time keeping our heads up and making eye contact with others and having a genuine face-to-face conversation. Without this skill you being to lose your social skills which can only hurt an individual in the long run. Another negative effect of mobile devices is the fatal epidemic of texting while driving. In 2011 23% of car crashes were caused by the driver being on a mobile device. That is 1.3 million car accidents (MIE Research). This seeming to be the biggest problem cell phones are having on our society. With 82% of American teens driving are cell phone users must worry the public that these new drivers are using their mobile devices while driving. 34% of teens have admitted to texting while driving. In 2010 studies show that driver distraction was the cause of 18% of all fatal car crashes. 3,092 people died in distracted driving accidents and 416,000 people were injured (Federal Communications Commission). These statistics alone show that texting and driving is nothing but a crisis in our country. The Virginia Tech Transportation Institute found that text messaging creates a crash risk 23 times worse than driving while not distracted. If individuals would stop texting and driving this will decrease the rick of getting into a car accident and it will also set an example for the teens who are new drivers and not how to get distracted by your phone while driving. With cell phones also affecting your health through accident based situations, they have also been a target within society for thieves. Countless numbers of people every year have had their cell phone stolen from then whether it be that they were burglarized or robbed. In some cases people have even been beat up or killed over their newest smart phone technology. The reasoning for this is is that cell phones have a high price value. Someone stealing a cell phone is not so much looking to use it for themselves but to sell it and get money for it. Cell phones also have an underlying health issue that is still being further researched. The problem of cell phone use being linked to certain types of cancer. Because of the radio frequency given off from a cell phone during use has been known to be the same type of radiation found in some cancer patients (Devra). Mobile Phones have a influence on the way individuals function in society. It has both positive and negative consequences. In a positive light it has opened up many new and advanced ways to communicate with family, friends and even meet new people. Also with the advancement of the mobile phone industry on American soil it is opening up a lot of jobs as well for citizens. With all the positive though comes a negative. A vast number of cases and studies show that mobile phones can cause divergence of attention, enhancing crime and health related problems. The mobile phone craze is here to stay and is only advancing over time which is great, but we must know that there are negative effects it has on our society as well. With this still being a study that is getting looked into thoroughly the only way we can put some of these negatives to a halt is to unplug ourselves from our technology life for a bit and enjoy the cell phone for its positive effects on society.

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