What’s illogical? Yea, we used not to have X. And when we didn’t, things were less convenient.
Whether or not that convenience is worth the cost is up to the individual, of course. Everyone on here seems to have / use the conveniences of electricity / computers / the Internet which make life more convenient than candlelight and carrier pigeons. A cell phone is more convenient than searching for a pay phone and a smartphone is more convenient still. Whether it’s worth $x / month - well, that will differ person to person and budget to budget. I wouldn’t pay $10,000 a month for that convenience but I sure would pay $100 a month. And indeed adding on my kids’ smartphones is cheap on the family plan we have.
I personally don’t feel like a cell phone adds much to my daily life which is why I don’t use one. I’m just surprised that most people have gotten to the point where they think their cell phone is a necessity rather than a convenience.
Your job, your daily actvities may require you to have a cellphone or smartphone. And the service cost for a basic phone and a smartphone is not much different now because the phone companies want to get rid of the basic phones.
“I personally don’t feel like a cell phone adds much to my daily life which is why I don’t use one. I’m just surprised that most people have gotten to the point where they think their cell phone is a necessity rather than a convenience.”
The phone part of the cell phone adds the least to my daily life. It’s the other offerings that a smartphone adds - GPS/maps, internet access, apps, music, my calendar, photos, weather forecasts, all my workout apps, banking apps, podcasts, and ability to make calls overseas for free via Skype/Viber.
Agreed. I don’t use the phone as a phone all the much (but it is the part I want in an emergency!). It’s all the other things I use daily (especially the GPS – sometimes for directions but daily for traffic conditions).-- oh and yes, it’s a great boredom buster while waiting in some line or at a doctor’s office (LOL!).
If you want to drive a nail, a hammer is a necessity (or at least something that can be used as a hammer). If you don’t need or want to drive nails, then you don’t need a hammer.
For some reason, I can’t quite bring myself to get rid of the home phone…At first it was because my cell reception in my house wasn’t so great, but that seems to have improved. I think it’s mostly because I’ve had it so long…
So, while I still have one, I would agree a home phone is not a necessity.
I do think that a smartphone is one of those things you don’t realize how much you could rely on, until you have one. It’s kind of like Post-it notes - you didn’t really know how useful they were, til you had a pack. I know one of my kids didn’t even want a smartphone, but I gave them both iPhones anyway and now they couldn’t live without them. (And of course I"m EXAGGERATING, they could LIVE, lol)
“If you want to drive a nail, a hammer is a necessity (or at least something that can be used as a hammer). If you don’t need or want to drive nails, then you don’t need a hammer.”
But when I do break out the hammer and nails, I now use my smartphone as the carpenter level.
I certainly have not read this entire thread. But I do have a response to the OP: Yes, definitely.
The smart phone is an integral part of daily life now. Naming specific things it would be helpful with, as was done above (boarding passes, access to email on the fly, etc.) doesn’t even begin to explain why a smart phone is a necessity. You can’t just list the pros and cons of the functions to help you decide. It’s not like trying to decide on how an electric can opener might be helpful. A smart phone is just the way we live now, and I would be shocked if less than 98% of college students own one.
Can you find work-arounds? Of course. But why would you want to? You can find work-arounds for electricity and running water as well but you wouldn’t do so because it would be ridiculous, unless you were poverty-stricken and couldn’t afford it. Yes, I am equating the smart phone with these other life essentials because, as with electricity and running water, smart phones are integral to the way we live now. Electronic communication is the electricity and running water of our times. They way people communicate, operate their daily lives, and participate in civil society includes use of a smart phone.
People who are responding that their kids graduated in 2013, or some such year, and never had a smart phone, are already way outdated, irrelevant to this year’s college freshmen going forward. Unless you absolutely cannot afford it under any circumstances, a smart phone is a life staple for a 2015 college student—or any working professional, for that matter.
It’s useful to a certain extent - if your child has a laptop, and the school has decent wifi, then that’s sufficient. I have an iPhone, and it is definitely handy, but it can easily become a distraction.
I was pleasantly surprised that both my kids’ schools had apps for their graduations - so parents could plan their events, get info on parking, be automatically reminded of events (HA! like I needed reminding! LOL), and so forth. Was it necessary? No, but then again Internet access isn’t strictly “necessary” either - you could call the school and find out what you needed to know- but it sure is convenient.
I think what sort of bothers me most about this original question - “Is A Smart Phone Necessary For College” is the fact that I would think that an overwhelming majority of college students would definitely WANT a smartphone - not just for kicks but for good use - but that a parent is holding the control over this happening. I mean, I don’t condone giving kids whatever they want and I realize that affordability can be a problem, but I truly can’t imagine if the means can be there (the student can earn $$ towards the phone costs too!) why as a parent you would want to not provide such a useful tool to your child as they start their college career.
Smartphones can be an amazing organizing tool for daily routines. It can be your planner, your calendar, your alarm clock. It can send you alerts when you need to be someplace or meet a deadline. In your pocket, on campus wireless it allows you to request a journal article from the library with a few clicks.
Remember that most campuses are wireless so that allows you to keep a low(er) data plan as long as you tell/teach your student to ALWAYS take advantage and be set up to access wireless networks.
Arm your students with the tools they need for good success. I think smartphones are one of the most valuable tools for this.
Exactly. If you can’t afford it - then that’s life and you can’t afford it and you can’t squeeze blood from the proverbial turnip - but if you can, it really is about as useful of a tool as one can imagine. More so than a printer, more so than a lot of other stuff that gets sent to college (brand new towels vs mom/dad’s old ones, a laundry basket when a pillowcase will do, etc.). This is just something where there aren’t a lot of work-arounds. It’s like quibbling over the cost of a multi-outlet extension. Sure, it costs $10 for one of those things - and the usefulness goes WAY beyond the $10.