Mobile Phones: A Bane of Society?

When Google announced its new credit card app last May, it buttressed the trend that mobile phones are increasingly becoming more technologically advanced and expanding into other competitive businesses. Iphones, androids, and blackberry phones have become more than modes of communication and are part of the social weave in society's fabric. With more computational power than the previous generation’s advanced computers, smart phones can act as an Internet browsers, maps, social network sites, and games that connect users.

But the increased popularity of mobile phones and text messages has, in many cases, substituted physical communication and face-to-face interactions. For instance, when I was out to dinner with a friend last week, she spent half the time bbm-ing, proving her nickname as a “crackberry addict.” Cell phones are a means to connect with other people, but it can lead to alienation and disconnection from the real world. Mobile phones can also give a false sense of security as people begin to see them as a status symbol for wealth and socializing. Using a phone to text or call amidst a busy street can prevent one from feeling alone in a place of anonymity.

Although mobile phones increase the quantity of communication, this simultaneously leads to a decrease in qualitative aspects of personal, social, and business related conversations. Couples who use the mobile phone as a tool to carry out their relationship can result in misunderstandings. The predominance of texting over talking has become a means to avoid awkward emotional situations. In today’s society, body language and facial expressions have been replaced by texts using smiley faces and abbreviations such as lol, brb, btw, nbd, rofl, etc. Although these shortened phrases are convenient to type, this may potentially result in poor grammar, writing, and in-person communication skills amongst the younger population. 

But, it is impossible to deny that mobile phones hold great promise for the developing and developed world. The social functions mobile phones can become a tool for economic development. For example, ads in smart phones encourage spending and are a means to stimulate the economy. Looking up local businesses and restaurants on a phone can help entrepreneurs flourish and gain publicity through customer reviews. Though many of us use our smart phones to check the weather and go on social networking sites, people in developing countries and rural areas utilize mobile phones to facilitate safe money transfers, organize government protests, and start businesses. Not only are mobile phones a “symbol of economic development or productivity,” but they also represent an outlet for “self-expression, agency, and social connection” (Donner 99). Mobile phones represent one aspect of how the world can truly become inter-connected through telecommunications.

With “commercial wireless signals cover[ing] more than 85 percent of the world” and over 5 billion people owning cell phones today, mobile technology potentially holds the power to prevent people in the developing world from being left behind.

Sources:

Donner, J. (2009). Blurring livelihoods and lives: The social uses of mobile phones and socioeconomic development, Innovations, 4 (1), 91-101.

Hughes, Dana. “How Cell Phones, Mobile Devices, iPhones Save Lives in Poor Countries.” ABC News. 10 June 2011. <http://abcnews.go.com/Health/GlobalHealth/cell-phones-mobile-devices-iphones-save-lives-poor/story?id=13805616>