cell phone obsession:negative or positive?
All around, you hear ring tones of cell phones,and you see people who are talking on the phone in public or sending text messages. This use of cell phones may signal more than normal communication with friends and family. For some teenagers,this craze may be a sign of unhappiness and anxiety.
Cell phones are definitely part of today's youth culture. Sixty percent of U.S. teens have cell phones, and soon over 50 percent of kids ages 8 to 12 will have them, too.
Students in grades 7 through 12 spend an average of an hour a day talking on their cell phones. That's about the same amount of time that they devote to homework.
The majority of cell phone usage is for text messages, and heavy users check for replies frequently. The heaviest users check their phones approximately every 10 minutes. They often become irritated when other people don't respond to their messages quickly. Heavy reliance on a cell phone can become a problem-and an obsession.
According to the Los Angeles Times, a survey of 575 high school students in the United States showed that two-thirds of the students who use their cell phones more than 90 times a day do so because they are unhappy or bored. They score higher on tests that measure depression and anxiety compared to students who use their phones less. However, when they were examined, the frequent users were not found to be clinically depressed- that is, they were not actually in a state of depression that was severe enough to require medical help. The researcher who conducted the study said, "The young people may be unhappy because of a problem in their lives or anxious about their social status. They are trying to make themselves feel better by reaching out to others. Communicating via cell phone makes the 'addicts' feel popular."
For teenagers, cell phones are not just objects for communication. They are extensions of themselves. They are tools for keeping in touch. Many teenagers don't agree with the study from the United States, and they say that people who are anxious or depressed wouldn't be sending out messages or making calls. For them, a lot of cell phone use shows that a person is popular and has a lot of friends. What do you think?