Abstract
Until the start of the 20th century, the increase in mobile phones and internet technologies has been noticed. From the perspective of health, it’s not that use of cellphone cause danger to human health but it is the installation of base stations within or near to the human residence (Misra, 2016). The base stations hold very high frequencies around its close diameter, these frequencies are very fatal and dangerous to human health. These frequencies can cause many health issues such as brain cancer, heart diseases and various skin problems. The people residing near to base stations are continuously in danger, too much expose to such rays and frequencies can harm them and their coming generation as well. Mobile companies in order to provide better services are expanding their network area by installing more and more base stations around different areas. However it’s the choice of humans to buy cellphones or not, only that way companies can stop making more and more base stations (Turkle, 2008).
I. Introduction
Now a days around the world there are more cellphones being used than the landline or cordless phones. Mobile phones are thin, portable and light in weight, that they can fit anywhere, even in the pockets and bags (Salehan & Negahban, 2013). There are numerous mobile phone companies that are actively competing to provide the best and latest features in the coming mobile models. Mobile phones have combined so many feature now a days, users can keep photographs, personal information, financial and health relating data and many more. Mobile phones have become the most basic part of telecommunication world. These cellphones allows the users to maintain continuous communication. Smartphones is the latest category of mobile phones which has the most advanced features of all time such as internet connectivity, voice and video calls etc. According to a research it is found that there are almost 7.22 billion of mobile phone devices in the world. This massive increase in the quantity of cellphones has effected human health in many aspects (Sarwar & Soomro, 2013).
II. Literature Review and Research Question
The research has shown that communication and interaction of families are mediated with cell phones instead of traditional meetings. As stated by Jobilal (2015) people prefer having meetings through social media apps such as WhatsApp, and Facebook rather than face to face meeting in a room. Though such activities have helped in saving time, they have reduced the level of interaction or engagement among families hence making families apart instead of bringing them together (Jobilal, 2015). Therefore, cell phone inhibits human connection which results in loneliness. For instance, it is common to find people in a group laughing and smiling as result of charting with people far away. In most occasions, people can stay in a room or a lobby for almost an hour without uttering any word, because of lack of interest created by mobile phones (Nabawy, Ahmed, & Soliman, 2016). Many people prefer charting on social media and reading updates instead of having a serious face to face engagement.
Therefore, the cell phone has reduced the level of face to face engagement which negatively affects the relationship of people in the society. A study for the school community journal has indicated that technology especially cell phone revolution has altered the nature of family engagement or interaction (Elsobeihi & Samy, 2017). It states that parents and children spent the almost entire night awake and engaged with their mobile phones charting and talking to other people rather than talking amongst themselves in the house. This affects the interpersonal relationship and therefore, hurting peer relationship. Instead of face to face engagement family prefer having a group phone meeting and sending messages as minutes for the meeting. A study by Elsobeihi and Samy (2017) showed that this affect self-esteem and therefore has a serious psychological effect on most young people. Elsobeihi and Samy (2017) stated that this is likely to affect them in their marriages and even at the workplace. The study shows that young people who use a mobile phone more often are likely to have poor relationship skills and feel shy due to poor engagement skills which can also affect their self-esteem (Miakotko, 2013).
However, the cell phone has also increased the communication with people far away bringing people together. Research has indicated that social media and other apps which are used to connect with relatives and friends from other countries have made it possible for family living apart to feel connected all the times (Kramer, 2016). Families can now have frequent calls and text to bond together without spending much finance to travel to their home countries. It has helped in building unity and brings lost families and friends together. It is evident that before mobile phone was inverted, it was difficult to communicate effectively with family and friends living outside the country or in other states due to several barriers. Advanced technology has shrunk the world making it possible even to have video calls making people feel togetherness, it, therefore, enhance the relationship and improve connection and understanding among families (Campbell, 2015).
Nevertheless, mobile phone contributes to the majority of breakups or separation in marriages. According to Corbett (2009), mobile phones have increased the level of cheatings in a relationship, and therefore, it contributes significantly to almost 64% of breakups. A study conducted by School community journal regarding youth relationship and mobile usage discovered that nearly 60.9% of college breakup happens has a result of cheating found from a mobile phone (Corbett, 2009).
Although the mobile phone has improved the level of communication, it has divided people and reduces self-esteem of several young people. It has contributed to reducing the level of face to face engagement, therefore, reduced the trust among family members. Corbett (2009) analysis of the effect of cell phone on face to face communication indicates that technology has changed people and many would communicate with strangers far away than people who are closer to them. Corbett went further to state that face to face communication is fading away faster and it is likely to make people lonely and apart if something is not done to limit the usage of mobile young among the young people in the society. One study which was conducted by Kaiser Family Foundation discovered that people aged between 12 years to 24 years spend more in media and therefore, they do not have time to spend with friends and family (Nabawy, Ahmed, & Soliman, 2016). Even when at home they are engaged in social media and other activities which are available on a cell phone. This, therefore, creates a gap in the family and increase the level of misunderstanding among family members since they do not have time for each other as a family. Therefore, my research question is how cell phone use affect people’s life.
Cell phone has really important meaning in people’s life. It is important to better understand the way people use cell phone. Hence, this investigation attempts to answer the following questions: Is cell phone gives negative influence in people’s relationship? Comparing with gender, is there any different way influence female and male?
Research Questions
- How frequently and how long do you use smartphone?
- For what purpose do you use your smartphone? Either texting, calls or entertainment?
- Have you ever experienced shoulder pain or discomfort after prolonged use of smartphone?
- Have you ever experienced tangling sensation in your arms or should after prolonged use of smartphone?
- Have you ever experienced headache or stress after prolonged usage of smartphone?
- Have you ever experienced pain in eyes or tension after more than 2 hours usage of smartphone?
- Do you think usage of smartphones is appropriate for the children below 15 years of age?
- Does use of smartphones or cellphones have an impact on human relationships?
- Do you think using smartphones divert student’s attention?
III. Methodology
The Cross Tabulation of the two variables from above gave me the results that I expected. I am going to use 0.01 as my significance value, however; the p-value of my result is 0.612, which means my result less than the significance value. As the null hypothesis is “Is cell phone gives negative influence in people’s relationship?” it is fall to reject the null hypothesis. The two variables are associated. In this survey, we can say cell phone has negative influence in people’s relationship. In the crosstab, it is pretty clear to see that there are more people prefers to stay with friends without cell phone. The degree of happiness without cell phone is much higher than with phone friendship.
In the ethnographic interviews, I interviewed three different age people to help my research. Each person takes about half hour. There are three topics in my interviews because I want to know different age’s people have various ideas about cell phone use. In the first interview, he is a 23 years old student who study in UCI. In his mind, when people contact with each other, we should have more emotional contact. When people play with phone, it is hard to contact with others emotion. “we emotionally connect to one another and the reason why that happens is because it decreases the amount of eye contact we make when we’re having a face-to-face conversation with someone a lot of times and I’m 100% guilty of this while you’re having a conversation while you’re at dinner” The second interviewer is a 35 years woman who has a kid study in middle school and she talks about cell phone transfer children’s attention. “the first reason being is that they are major distraction instead of focusing on what the teacher is speaking in the class you know those to the attention of the student will be diverted by his or her cell phone and instead of talking you know instead of sharing the difference you know people will be taking selfies and taking pictures of the food.” The third interviewer answered the questions about the idea about face to face talking. “You’re having a meeting at work you will pull out your phone and you’ll take a look to see if you’ve received any new emails or any new text messages and as a result you kind of break this emotional connection that you could be creating with someone that you’re either working with or someone that you’re trying to date”
IV. Data and Analysis
A couple of interviews were conducted from the people of different age groups, each person took about half an hour. There are three topics in my interviews because I wanted to find whether people of different age group have same idea regarding use of cellphones or not. The first interview was conducted by a person of age 23, this person was a student of UCI. According to him when people contact with each other, the contact should be more emotional. The people are always playing with their cellphones which makes it difficult for the other people to develop emotional connection with them. It becomes hard to judge their emotions. The conclusion of the first interview was when we make emotional contact with others we are actually having face to face conversations with someone. These conversations are the best such conversations involve dinner chit chats.
The second interview was conducted by a 35 years old woman who had a kid studying in the middle school. She concluded that cellphones distract students and divert their attention from studying. The main reason of mobile phone use is that it is a major distractions and resist children from putting their attention to the studies. While taking lectures students cannot focus on what is being taught by the teacher. The attention of children will be diverted from the lecture making them not understand the core topic or lecture. Moreover cellphones can also be used by the kids for bad purposes like, they can cheat during the test using cellphones, they can easily get distracted by mobile apps, they may waste their time taking selfies etc. They may not share their feelings with their friends, instead stick to their cellphones.
The third interviewer was also asked about the use of cellphones and its effects on human being. The interviewer answered the questions about the idea about face to face conversation that when you are having a meeting at workplace and you pull your phone out of your pocket and look whether you have got any notifications or not, or have received any email or a text message. As a result you break your connection from all the people attending the meeting your emotional connection is lost.
The interviewer tried collect the data about the use of cellphones from people of different age group asking them different question by creating a different scenario. It was concluded that use of cellphone is effecting human life whether it’s about students, employee or interpersonal communication. Cellphones are putting negative impact on our life, we should restrict the use of cellphones so that we can concentrate on our social lives.
V. Conclusion and limitation
Technology can be our best friend or it can also be our biggest enemy (Arminen et al., 2007). Technology interrupts our story, it also stops our ability to have our own thought. It may also stop us from imagining something different and wonderful, because we’re too busy in using technology that the walk from café back to workplace is spent on the cellphone. Smartphones and cellphones have become an essential part of our lives that we cannot even imagine our life without these devices. Cellphones have influenced so much in our lives that they have started putting bad effect on our daily life, cellphones are continuously effecting human health. There is no opinion that the cellphones bring harm to human health, it’s the base stations or the reliance that put human life to danger. The huge addiction to cellphones has offered numerous risks on human health and development. These risks may include social, psychological, physical as well as emotional factors (Lepp, Barkley & Karpinski, 2014). A smartphone is considered to be an electronic toy that is designed for the inner lonely child of each and every one which had been hiding since birth. With the help of this research, I have tried to bring attention to all the potential risks involved in using smartphones that can cause harm to human and provide some solutions regarding how we can mitigate side effects of cellphones. Limiting the use of cellphones and investing sometime in physical activities can reduce the risk. Given that more studies are required to find solutions regarding cellphones usage and create awareness among cellphone users about the serious consequences of this matter (Ferreira, Dey & Kostakos, 2011)
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