January 16, 2015

Cell Phone Effects

Middle-aged-All-American-father Jim Brown pulls slowly to the sleepy town’s lone stoplight. Squealing delight in the back seat are his lovable twin daughters. Crash! Brown’s neck snaps forward like a whip as the Bugatti Brown worked his whole life for is obliterated. The cause of three deaths that night was a texting driver. Although modern day cell phones are a giant leap forward in technology, they pose many dangers to one’s selfish desires. The effects of cell phones are they make learning and communicating easier,but can also harm one’s life with all the power the pocket-sized computers possess.

Unlike older cell phones, new, popular, and expensive phones have many more forms than just texting and calling. For example, I recently received a new Iphone 5C after two years of a traditional, unbreakable, recognizable shiny red slide phone. On my older phone, I could communicate with friends only through blandly boring text messages and the occasional phone call to a relative. I now have many more tools in my communication arsenal, including popular, free apps like Snapchat and Kik. These apps, found on all smartphones and even computers, affect many teenagers and even adult lives, having over 100 million active users per month, according to expanded ramblings.com. The key to Snapchat’s success providing a fun, easy way for friends to have simple conversations, just by sending a creative picture of themselves and adding a caption. Likewise, cell phones also affect lives by enabling the user to call and text someone from anywhere in the country. For example, Michael’s grandma lives across the country, and not getting to see her but every couple of years, Michael convinced his beloved relative to get a cell phone so they can remain in contact every day. Now, instead of taking an hour to write a letter, all the reminiscent-twelve-year-old has to do is take a short phone call to hear the kind, wise, and soft voice of a loved one. Cell phones affect people by giving them easier ways to communicate with friends and loved ones.

Although cell phones can be very beneficial, there are also many dangers of using such a high-tech device. For example, John needs to listen in his Spanish class in order to pass the upcoming quiz, but he is too busy trying to shoot down evil pigs on Angry Birds. Now, instead of taking detailed notes on infinitive verbs and knowing what to study, John doesn’t have any notes at all, and is very confused come quiz time. Similarly, one can research anything online, without any boundaries. Just like anything in the world, the internet is corrupted by dark, evil messages that can scare anyone who happens to wander across them. Even in perfectly appropriate magazines online, there are many pop-up ads that range from satanic-cult-following to horribly sexual explicit content. Since many children even in the fourth grade to have cell phones, the disgusting possibility of one seeing these ads are very high. Cell phones enable the many distracting opportunities to take focus off what is truly important, such as grades, also presenting the opportunity for inappropriate content to be seen.

Although cell phones offer countless benefits to make communicating easier, they have to be dealt with responsibly. Unlike the drunk driver who killed Jim, it is important for one to be responsible with a cell phone. If used correctly, cell phones affect lives only positively.