| Everything in moderation was my mother's advice. The dangers of OBSESSIVE cellphone use are obvious: a psychological addiction is the first and most obvious danger: believing you HAVE to have a cellphone in hand 24/7 or you might miss something. I have news for you: you arent missing anything except YOUR LIFE! Second, driving while using a cellphone or TEXTING is VERY dangerous. I see it everyday. It makes me angry. Its most often women I see (sorry) and of those, its most often young kids. They have replaced lipstick application while driving with cellphone use. Its wrong and its very dangerous to them and others. Not to say men and boys dont use cellphones too much, I just dont see as many of them doing it while driving. As for health risks, its an unknown, but my inner voice (common sense) says its not very healthy in EXCESS....like talking for more than 5-7 minutes at a time and doing that more than a few times a day. Thus, calling and talking for HOURS, or to numerous callers throughout the day which accumulates to hours of usage is unhealthy. And its really weird. So are computer games. XMan and all that stuff.
I have to tell you, this so called digital age and information age is not all that its cracked up to be. Life in the 70's was better, it seems to me...even though we had slow phones, snail mail, and the only "game" we had was pinball at the bowling alley. Instead people talked to one another in person, wrote letters, READ BOOKS OR MAGAZINES OR NEWSPAPERS to learn something (Lord knows the network news didnt teach us anything and sitcoms were so canned and predictable their "humor" was forced.) It was a pain to type papers on a typewriter in college, but EVERYONE was in the same boat and we did it. We didnt worry about computer viruses, ID theft, or privacy invasion or cookies. We werent "googled" by strangers or ne'er do wells. The phone company didnt give the government MILLIONS of names to peruse and listen to calls or intercept messages like Verizon and ATT have done. We actually went to a library to RESEARCH, had to find the books, READ THEM, and then make notes and THEN write a paper. We all know that is NOT what kids do today when writing papers. I am on a rant, I know. But my point is that the new age is not nearly all that its cracked up to be. Some improved convenience, but at a VERY high cost. Gadgetry runs peoples lives. And who is really benefitting from all of this? Think about that.
Yes, there is added safety and a greater ability to locate family and friends when you are concerned. But how much of that is overblown? How much is really obsessive "have to know?" Social expectations are also infecting our work environment. Used to be your boss would ask for something and with a "sharp pencil" you went to work. It employed a lot of people. Now programs replace people and often those jobs are overseas. Now your boss expects the information yesterday because the customer/client wanted it the day before that. Seems like a treadmill today.
So we are not huge fans of cellphones. |