Mobile phones an affliction on our society?

The majority of people now own a mobile phone and it is rare indeed to find someone aged between 10 and 60 who does not. Improvements in technology over the past decade or two mean that mobiles are increasingly becoming a part of our lives that we cannot easily do without. They play music, send emails, take photos and, of course, text and telephone.

For many of us, they have become a way of life and it is almost unthinkable that anyone would purposefully leave the house without theirs. However, things haven't always been like this. There was a time, not so long ago, that no-one had a phone let alone a mobile phone and the many generations before us appeared to cope adequately without them.

Of course, they couldn't telephone the emergency services if they had an accident nor could they keep in contact with friends with the touch of a button. However, maybe it is time to wonder if modern day society's love of mobile phones is healthy or whether our devotion to this handy technology is going to end up hurting some of us.

What made me wonder this was the story of a young man who very sadly lost his life in a drain whilst he was trying to retrieve his mobile phone. He had been walking along when he fumbled his phone and it fell down a grate. He proceeded to remove the grate and lean down the water-filled drain in an effort to get it back, but unfortunately slipped and got stuck.

How many of us would have taken this obvious risk in order to get back a piece of technology? Quite a few of the younger generation, I would wager, whose mobiles contain valuable information and the contact details of friends. However, it seems that there is something wrong about risking ourselves in order to save something that nobody even needed a few years ago.

The fatal accident in which this young man died isn't the only death that has been linked with mobile phone use. Many hundreds, even thousands, of road accidents in the UK and across the world have been caused by drivers getting distracted by their mobile phone. In the past few years, many countries have been busy banning the use of hand-held mobiles whilst driving because of this car crash risk.

Although most people have adapted to the law by using hands-free kits so that they can keep chattering whilst having both hands on the steering wheel, most scientists are agreed that this isn't a great improvement. Research shows that motorists are still being mentally distracted by their conversations and are still putting themselves and the road users around them at risk of serious personal injury every time they take or make a call.

It isn't just drivers that are affected by mobile phone conversations either. Pedestrians are also being killed and injured in road accidents because they unthinkingly walk out into the road whilst engrossed in a mobile phone conversation. There are a significant number of occasions in which this has happened, both in the UK and abroad, and the numbers are rising.

Australian researchers from the University of New South Wales decided to investigate how the behaviour of pedestrians who are talking on their mobiles differs from those who are not. They found that mobile phone users are less likely to look whether the road is clear before crossing and are less likely to wait for oncoming traffic to stop before stepping out into the road, as well as walking more slowly across the road. The researchers suggest that 'cognitive distraction' is the reason behind this dangerous behaviour.

The possible downsides of mobile phones go further than the distraction they cause, however. With conditions such as "text addiction" being invented to describe the actions of some of the more obsessed mobile phone users, people are being diagnosed with conditions such as repetitive strain injury (RSI) from too much texting. Whilst not likely to have the same serious effects as being in a road accident, RSI can still have a very real impact on someone's life.

Finally, a rather scary suggestion has been that the microwave radiation given off by mobile phones can cause diseases such as leukaemia and brain cancer. Whilst most studies do not substantiate this link, if it turns out that there is such a connection, there could be very serious implications for the global population. It could be a greater scandal than the thousands of people who have contracted asbestos-related diseases after handling the material without protection, and there would certainly be some very expensive compensation claims for the mobile phone manufacturers.

However, despite all these dangers, such is the power of the mobile phone that most people would probably argue that it is one of the most useful inventions of the past century and would still not think twice about walking out the door with their phone in their pocket or handbag.

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