Vero Pepperrell writes...
Let me start by asking a question - How long could you go without your mobile phone?
1. Forever, I don't have one now or barely use the one I have
2. A while, it's not my main means of communication
3. A few days then I'd feel too out of touch
4. After a few hours, I'd start twitching for it
5. If you take it from me even for a minute, I'll bite your head off!
Where do you stand? I'd like to think I could go for a few days, easily floating around phone and fancy-free, but...
...I bet I'd start reaching for it in my pocket within a couple of hours. In fact, I don't even wear a watch since I moved to the UK and started carrying my mobile phone everywhere!
So why, oh why have we become so attached to what's effectively a little hunk of plastic and metal? And should we be getting so attached to them? Talking about little hunks, Richard Hammond's "Should I Worry About..." team has established (very scientimifically) that the frequencies produced by our mobile phones, akin to microwaves, aren't dangerous. So until proven guilty, we won't accuse our phones of causing the funny things that happen in our brains!
Funky toys, not just for boys
They can be big, they can be small, they can be pink or blue, and shiny - That's how we like them! I think the phones section of ShinyShiny speaks volumes for our obsessive need for the gadgets.
We love their cool features and bleeps, but what's the use of a Smartphone when it decides not to be smart?! I own a very funky Nokia N70, but it occasionally prevents me from doing the most basic thing a phone should do - receive a phone call! It seems the most complex a phone gets, the more unreliable it gets!
And let's talk about videophones... I mean, seriously! Who's ever used that front-facing camera? Aside from looking like an idiot for talking to your phone face-to-face, you've got to find someone who's also got a videophone and is available (and is wearing enough clothes, makeup, etc not to mind a video call!) And guess what, the only time I tried it, it didn't work!
Houston, we have a problem!
So it seems funky features aren't the reason there are 90 million mobiles in circulation around Britain. We just love being in touch with each other, using the simplest of features - calling and text messaging.
What's more important than knowing you can get a hold of your family and friends when you need them, or being able to find a way home when your car conks out in the middle of nowhere? Oh yeah, getting out of a bad date with the Popularity Dialer.
At work I'm officially supposed to leave my cellphone in the employee lockers (I work at a bookstore), but really I'm allowed to have it on me if it's either off or on silent.
I keep it in my pocket and on silent just because I never did like wearing watches. My cellphone is now my watch, and on my lunchbreak it's a way to check my email and catch up on the news.
I *can* go for a few days and hardly remember it's there, but that doesn't happen very much anymore. Mainly I remember about it because of the handy dandy clock.
I seriously doubt I could go more than two days without it. It's my main form of communication. If I'm gonna be out and about, not having a mobile phone would be SUCH an inconvenience.
I stumbled across this site whilst making sure i had spelled "shiny" correctly (i had worries that it may be spelled shiney, but who cares cuz i was right anyway ;) the long short is cell phones may or may not cause cancer and just because some guy claims they don't doesn't make it true, it just makes sure the cell phone companies can continue to sell them free of official guilt. I received upwards of 20 calls a day every day for a few years, and when i get a brain tumor i'll come back and say i told you all so =P
My phone is great if I'm lost or late, but I have a message on it that "calls are rarely answered on this phone and messages are returned infrequently." If I like you, I'm going to see you and talk with you in person. If I don't like you enough to see in person, what's the point in wasting time talking to you on the phone when I could be meeting some interesting person sitting next to me?
And Dave, excuse me if I don't take your word as the peer-reviewed truth, but use of "cuz" always tends to kill it for me. And I do suggest you learn stats, and what "valid" and "reliable" mean, and then you can read studies and the data in them and decide whether it makes sense to fear cell phone use. Hello? It's the 21st century. When will people start operating according to reason instead of forwarded fear-mails?
I've known two people who got brain tumors ... and neither one was a cell-phone user. So, clearly, cell phone use *prevents* brain tumors. Case closed!
Probably I am at four. I work all the time and with out it I would be completely out of touch with my family and my friends.