The Mobile Phone (cellphone) and Us

The mobile phone (or cellphone)... now that's a subject and a half! It is today's great totem and a very emotive issue. The mobile phone delights and enrages at the same time. Some people love it and others hate it. Some swear by it and others swear at it. Yet neither can live without it! Or can they?

Well, I am old enough to recall a time when there was no such thing as a mobile phone, when the only phones one had was the landline connected to a socket in the wall or the public phone in a telephone booth. When you were out and about, you were beyond contact unless you chose to use a public phone, whether in a street-located phone booth or in some other location, like a train station for instance. Otherwise, when you were out you were out. Now when you are out you are in, so to speak. You may be in a bank or post office queue, at the pharmacy, in the shopping mall, at the barber's, in a railway station, at the park, or even in a public convenience doing what comes naturally, but none of these is an adequate excuse for not answering the phone when it goes off (I say 'goes off' because few mobile phones nowadays actually ring - they usually start blasting away with some maddening tune or other). And of course every phone call must be answered on pain of failing to save the world if the call is left till later. All calls now are a matter of life and death and must be attended no matter where one is and with whom one is. You may be, say, in a restaurant chatting with a friend, but that won't stop you from breaking off your chat to answer a call that may drag on and on whilst your companion patiently waits for you to come off the blasted phone and give them some attention!

But of course the mobile phone has long ceased to be just a phone... it's become a watch, a calendar, a camera, a calculator, a messaging device, a computer, a music player, a games console, ... and I understand it has also been used as a trigger to detonate a terrorist bomb! It is our constant companion and our link with friends and family. It is also the West's answer to worry beads... now we can fiddle around with our phone when we want to kill time. In short, it is truly a most versatile gadget and comparable to the motor car and the computer in terms of its coverage and utility. The cellphone is one of the twentieth century's greatest success stories and it is still going from strength to strength. And there is already at least one generation of people who neither know nor can conceive of any other world than one with the mobile phone. In the relatively short time that the mobile phone has been with us it has already shaped and coloured our world to such an extent that our way of living has been left changed forever and many of us seem to organise our lives around the mobile phone!

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And of course every new and good thing gives rise to new problems and undesirable consequences. In the case of the mobile phone, it has become so intrusive in our lives that our privacy has been seriously curtailed. As already touched upon above, we can no longer plead unavailability on the grounds that we were out when a call came. After all, is a mobile phone not portable?* And if we protest that we forgot our phone at home, we are regarded as simply lying or as having done it deliberately to avoid calls. We have left ourselves with very little room for manoevre.

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Another problem stems from the very popularity of the mobile phone. With many millions of phones in circulation and with constant upgrades, millions of mobile phones are discarded in the course of a year. All have to be treated and disposed of in some manner or other, whether to be destroyed or recycled. Some are just dumped or binned. But all will end up somewhere and in some form.

The other principal problem created by the widespread use of the mobile phone is the common tendency to use it even when out driving on the public highway. We've all seen drivers with one hand to their ear, holding up their phone, chatting away with a caller, leaving them with just one hand to drive the car. What's more serious than that is the divided concentration which necessarily occurs when a driver has also to conduct a phone conversation as well as drive. This inevitably results in reduced alertness, slower reactions, less accurate driving, and consequently in an increased risk of accident on the road, with all the concomitant dangers of that. And this goes on even though it may be illegal and therefore punishable by law.

Finally, there can be no doubt that a great many people are literally addicted to their mobile phone. It has to be with them every waking moment of their day and in some cases by their bedside when they are asleep. They are constantly using it (even when there's no real need for it), playing with it, fiddling with it and pawing it, presumably to derive comfort and security from it. It has become a sort of mascot, talisman or magic wand for them. This being so, one can imagine the effect on them should they mislay or even lose their trusty telecommunications friend. It is a state not far removed from utter despair and the loss of the will to live!

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And now the inevitable question: Do you recognise yourself in the above description? Are you wedded to your mobile phone? Are you afflicted by a condition known as "cellphonitis" whereby your phone has almost turned into a life support machine for you? Is the company of your cellphone more important to you than the company of human beings? Are you in a state of complete cellphone dependency? Do you break out into a cold sweat at the very idea of losing your phone? Is your worst nightmare the possibility of forgetting your mobile phone at home and being caught out and about without it? If the answer to one or more of these questions is 'yes', then your relationship with your phone is an unhealthy one and you should seek help. Find a good psychiatrist and get treated for cellphonitis!

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* Strictly speaking, a mobile phone is not 'mobile', this is a misnomer, it is 'portable', and this is what it was called when it first came out. A car or a train, for example, is mobile, a phone has to be carried and so is not mobile in the true sense of this word.