Yamilette Baez
Professor Andrew King
English 101
9 December, 2014 No Cell Phones Nowadays people tend to excessively rely on their cell phones. Unfortunately, a vast majority of them are college students. Cell phones can impact students in ways that lead to negative effects such as their health, grades decreasing, and a lack of social life with their classmates. Cell phones have prevented students from staying involved socially, physically and academically. Cell phones should be turned off and tucked away in college in order to help students be more involved with their peers and focused in classrooms. Cell phones do not influence students socially because they tend to communicate more through social media and text messaging than in person. Texting can cause people to avoid interacting with the people around them. In the essay “Fraternities of Netheads: Internet Addiction on Campus” by Kimberly S. Young, Young talks about social intimidation and alienation on college campus due to the fact that students would rather communicate using their cell phones internet access. The author states that “Lively conversation, juicy gossip, secret romancing, and new bonds with friends from afar- it’s all happening through their individual computer terminals (394).” In 1998, when Kimberly S. Young’s book was written, the way people use the internet has changed. The internet became available in different ways; nowadays, computers are not the only way many people can have access to the internet. Today, people have portable devices that students often use. Students are feeding on to their obsession because they can carry the internet to where ever they go. Young says that people often lack the skills of having conversations in person because they become so used to using their cell phones to communicate. Often time people in a crowd will take out their phone instead of having a conversation with the person that are there with them. Katie Hafners, writing for the New York Times, remarks that with as many 30,000 students on some campuses, students can easily get lost in crowds. But when they join the faceless community of the internet, they find that with little effort they would become popular with new friends throughout the [countries].”(397). Cell phones have changed communication because, instead of friends actually having a face to face conversation, they would rather communicate with an online friend. Students isolating themselves to their cell phones creates a better reason why cells phone should be tucked away.
Texting habits are causing health disadvantages in students' lives. Students that are addicted to their phones can cause new syndromes that would prevent them from staying concentrated in class. In her online article, “Texting Might be taking a Toll on Teenagers” Hafner introduced how texting at night can cause health problems. At an increasingly young age, “They do it late at night when their parents are asleep. They do it in restaurants and while crossing busy streets. They do it in the classroom with their hands behind their back,” (Hafner). She implies that teens are texting everywhere, and that it is becoming a habit that can cause consequences such as sleeping disorder; “you hear that these kids are responding to texts late at night... That's going to cause sleep issues.” If students were sleeping instead of texting maybe they wouldn’t be sleeping in class. Also, if they can turn off their phone use during the night, it can help them sleep better. This can contribute to staying focused and attending class on time. Also according to a study of young adults in the U.K., 84% of those tracked experienced back pain during the last year, mainly due to being hunched over smartphones, tablets, and computers”(Hawkins).
Texting should not be allowed, when done excessively, it can lead to distractions from class work. Hafner adds , “American teenagers sent and received an average of 2,272 text messages per month in the fourth