Putting the “Cell” in Cellphone

A question on the handout we had to do for today caught my attention. In the handout, the second to last question told us to “Pick one of their conclusions (the statements in bold). What do you think of this conclusion? This isn’t something you can “agree” or “disagree” with—they are just reporting facts. But you can have a reaction to it.” So I picked the statement “Americans’ cellphones are generally with them and rarely turned off” (Raine and Zickuher 10).

It was one of those “double-take” statements that you look at, but don’t really notice until you restate it in your mind. For me this statement hit hard, because I realized that the statement is kind of true. Weather we are using our pones for directions, entertainment, or to get connected with each other, they are always on.

Speaking about my own experience with this, the last time I actually turned my phone off, not because it was dead because I’d drained the battery, but consciously turned it off, was maybe two or three months ago. The reason I did this? Because before that I hadn’t turned it off for over four months and I thought turning it off would help it run faster because it froze. Last night I turned it off for the exact same reason. I never have my phone off, even when it’s charging, or when I’m asleep, or when I’m at the cinema (I just turn it on silent).

So with this one headline, I realized that most Americans are like this. And I think maybe it goes back to Turkle’s argument about wanting to be interrupted. We are so obsessed with contacting each other as soon as we can or getting information as fast as we can, that we don’t turn our phones off for months. Months! And when we finally do it’s because it needs to reboot because we’ve had it on so long. We are constantly waiting for that next text, that next update, that next interruption, that we lose sight of the fact that we can do things in other ways. Instead of using GPS, we can use a map. Instead of looking it up on google, we can research in the library. We don’t always have to be reliant upon such a small piece of wires and switchboards. Which leads to the meme that helped inspire this post: