Walking down the halls at Saint Xavier, there’s no doubt that you’ll see 80% of students and staff with their phone either in their hand or to their ear. Walking through a faceless sea, sometimes you’d wish individuals would take the time to look up from their cell phones, and engage with others around.
Pew Research Center reported 90% of Americans have a cell phone, 44% of them sleep with their cell pones next to their body or bed, and 29% describe their phones as something they can’t live without. Can you relate?
What did you do before cell phones? Go outside, read a book, and go on many adventures with friends and family?
If only we could get back to a time where we could detach from our mobile devices and engage in face-to-face communications, many benefits would be seen.
Every year when returning from summer vacation, many students find it hard to get back in the grove of academic writing because they’ve been restricted by 160 character messages and acronyms.
The problem is that our psychological development is being hindered by the excessive use of modern technology. Critics fear that technologies take over people’s lives, creating social pressure that put people at risk for negative physical and psychological effects.
Think about all the friends you made in grammar school. How did you meet? Did you use face-to-face introduction, or a friend request? Social skills are important to your development and progress on earth, but with cell phones in the middle those techniques aren’t practiced as much.
Spell check, GPS, and calculators are used daily by cell phone users. Because of these apps, they mask our true knowledge. When it comes to written work, I, as well as others around me, reach for the phone to do a double check.
Scientific American podcast expressed how text-messaging leads to sloppiness, masks dyslexia, and depletes the English language. What did you do before cell phones? Grab a dictionary instead to actually challenge your thinking and engage in reading.
Habitual texters should be concerned because it’s cheating our minds. It’s limiting our potential to have an effective conversation, maintain our current relationships and form newer ones.
How does it make you feel being out with friends, but everyone is on their cellular device? Less appreciated?
In general, cell phones make us less of a human. We are consumed by apps such as Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter that limit us to 160 characters of words, and majority photographs that give us a break from reading, or having to think too much.
I’m not saying social media is completely bad, however it has its tendencies to waste 74% of an adult’s life by scrolling through social feeds. According to Morningside Recovery Rehabilitation Center, “the average American spends 144 minutes a day using his or her phone during a 16-hour period.”
As a college student, dependency on modern technology is only natural, however to challenge ourselves, lets take the challenge of no social media, and limited use of cell phones, computers, tablets, etc, for 30 days. Up for the challenge?
Just think, What Did You Do Before Cell Phones?
Nicole Gordon
Features Correspondent
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