Problems Associated With the Use of Cell Phones, Research Paper Example

Mobile phone use has dramatically increased in most countries around the world in the past decade. The cell phone is one of the most rapidly growing technologies in the world with more than six billion subscribers. Earlier research carried out on mobile use has underscored its positive results. In specific, it has often been claimed that cell phones permit individuals to enter into communication without being constrained by spatial immobility or physical proximity. An increasing number of studies as well as emphasized the efficiency of different types of cell phones for delivering the needed change interventions in health behavior through text messages. Despite its unambiguous advantages, the use of cell phones among the teenagers in the society has been increasingly linked to harmful or potentially disturbing social, behavioral, and effective challenges in the lives of the future teenagers in the society. The teens have become addicted to cell phones, especially when accessing social media sites, such as Facebook or Twitter (Lesitaokana, 2012).

The rapid rise of technological changes has greatly changed the ways in which individuals interact with their environment.Nonetheless, one of the most noteworthy concerns linked to mobile phone use is that it can become uncontrolled or excessive that has an impact upon everyday living among the teenagers. Amongst common negative outcomes resulting from overuse of the mobile phone, one could cite financial challenges or sleep disorder. At the moment, excessive use of cell phone is regularly considered a behavioral addiction, together with other non-chemical addictions, like pathological gambling, video-game, as well as compulsive shopping addictions. Also, cell phone use has been linked to dangerous antisocial behaviors, and uncontrolled use and dependence symptoms. Cell phones not only offer a social outlet; however, are a way to engage oneself in fascinating activities, like internet surfing, carrying out research, playing games, as well as taking and sharing photos.  For instance, it has been established the excessive use of cell phones among the teenagers and adolescents will likely to cause isolation, which becomes an antisocial behavior (Lesitaokana, 2012). Very grave challenges have emerged because of the use of cellular phones by teenagers in the world, which comprise cyber bullying  and sexting. This trend has reduced the element of social interaction among the teenagers because they use most of their time in social media through their phones. The cell phones allow the teenagers to exchange sexual images of minors that cause extreme distress, which affects their social being. Therefore, these teenagers addicted to cell phones will find themselves socially insecure where they will find that it is secure and thus, more desirable to interact with the cell than directly with people in the society (Jenaro et al, 2007).

Furthermore, addiction to cell phones among teenagers has been found to psychological and behavioral problems. The regular use of cell phones among teenagers often suffers from feelings of anxiety, stress, as well as insecurity in the absence of the cell phone. This occurs in cases, like poor network zones, or when unpredictably, the battery or the phone credit runs out. This perspective entails “nomphobia”, which entails fear of being out of cell phone contract. This emanates from an underlying fear of isolation. The other problem that arises due to addiction to cell phones is feelings of depression among teenagers when they are receiving voice calls and text messages regularly where they will feel that they are not loved (Siddiqui, 2011).

The addictive behavior in the use of cell phone is negatively reinforced, which imply that the teenagers mainly use them in hopes of relieving discomfort, but continuous use of this technology will lead to desirable behaviors among the teenagers. The addictive behaviors occur since they do not want to be detached from their friends, as well as family (Lesitaokana, 2012). They need to have their cell phones so they are able to respond, or reach out to people instantly, and impulsively. Moreover, addiction of teenagers with cell phones will make them develop behaviors that will be hard to be controlled by the family, especially parents. This is because the teenage years are challenging for nay family. Classically, teenagers tend to be narrow-minded among their age group whereby they believe they have their life sorted. The addiction may make the teenagers to develop repellant behaviors that will make it hard for the parents to control (Siddiqui, 2011). The teenagers may take most of their time surfing the internet using their cell phones and may not concentrate on their studies; hence, giving much problem to parents trying to convince them to pursue their studies. Also, excessive cell phone use has been linked to certain hallmark patterns of behavior, comprising using something to feel good, building up a tolerance, as well as requiring more of it over time to get a similar feeling, and experiencing withdrawal if denied. This is the widespread behavioral problem among the teenagers where they want to feel like their peers and if denied the cell phone they are upset. Though the withdrawal element has been mainly associated tom a physical response that takes place when there is an absence of chemical in the body, the anxiety teenagers using cell phone feel are a form of withdrawal (Jenaro et al, 2007).

References

Jenaro, C., Flores, N., Gómez-Vela, M., González-Gil, F., & Caballo, C. (2007). Problematic internet and cell-phone use: Psychological, behavioral, and health correlates. Addiction Research & Theory, 15 (3), 309-320.

Lesitaokana, W. (2012). Review of The mobile connection: The cell phone’s impact on society. Journal Of Sociology, 4(3), 326-328.

Siddiqui, K. (2011). Personality influences mobile phone usage. Interdisciplinary Journal Of Contemporary Research In Business, 3(3), 554-563.