Phones: Convenience or Addiction?

So we all know that feeling when your driving in your car, late to school, work, or whatever your doing that day, you check your pocket and boom it hits you. Your whole day is ruined!  You feel naked and lost.  What time is it?  You just know that today will be the day that there will be some sort of unsolvable emergency because you just found out- you left your phone at home.  GREAT.

            Today phones are used for just about anything.  If you leave your phone at home, you really do feel naked.  What if your girlfriend/boyfriend can’t get ahold of you?  What if your babysitter has a question about your child?  Without a cell phone there could be no way to communicate with others.  You don’t have your camera with you.  You can’t check your bank account.  Even more phones lately are being used with new “mobile wallet” apps.  So without your phone you can’t even buy things that you need, say you need to buy gas, but you left your phone at home.. oops.  There are even phone apps that can be linked to your door at home, so you can lock the doors. 

            Society today depends are their phones for a lot of things, to the point that I wonder if convenience has priority over safety?  Say someone steals your phone. They now have access to your wallet, house, kids pictures, family’s contact information, your boss’s email, and many other things that can or should be private.  It may be embarrassing to admit it sometimes but I have felt that feeling of anxiety that I don’t have my phone with me.  But it’s not always a safety issue.  Many people feel the need to have their phones right next to them all the time, always on, always accessible.  In the research done in the Pew Internet & American Life Project (2008) it was discovered that, “81% of users who only own a cell (and not a landline) always keep their phones turned on. In addition, of Americans aged 18 to 29, 31% reported feeling like they have to answer their cell phones even when it interrupts a meal or meeting,”(Pew, 2006).   What do you think this means for our communication with others we are close to? 

            For me, I can see how this can affect the relationships that I am in, for example, if my husband were to answer the phone at dinner all the time, that would really bother me! We are at a stage in our life where we are so busy, that it is a miracle we are eating dinner together in the first place.  It may be the only time during the day that we can catch up with each other before we move on to the next thing which is either me, going to my night job, or cleaning up dinner and getting the kids ready for bed.  Another way always being on my phone could affect me, is when I use it instead of paying attention to my children.  As I mentioned in the “About Me” section, I have a toddler and an infant. If a parent is constantly checking their phone, going through Facebook, texting, etc, it is likely their child is there, getting ignored.  I do not want to seem like I am saying phones are bad for parenting, but there is an extent to which so much phone usage can have an effect on your kids.  They want to spend time playing with their parents, not playing next to their parent who is talking on their phone or texting.  Watch this YouTube video to see how cell phones can affect relationships- its pretty funny I have to admit!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OINa46HeWg8

           

For anyone who knows that feeling that you can’t do anything without your phone maybe just try to decrease your dependence on your phone.  Try to use your memory for important numbers, have a backup (real life, old school) wallet, or just maybe even try to remember that doing something like having a conversation with a person (not Siri), or enjoying the outdoors is more important than using your phone all the time.

            
Pew Internet & American Life Project. (2006, April). PEW Internet Project data memo: Cell phone use [Press Release]. Washington, DC: Author. Retrieved from http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2006/Americans-and-their-cell-phones/1-Data-Memo-Findings/11-Implications-of-these-findings.aspx