Cell Phones and The Changing World

Last week I began discussing how cell phones have changed every-day life. In this post, I was focused on the time-biased nature of the cell phone. This week I will be discussing the space-biased nature of the cell phone. Cell phones have not only changed how fast we can communicate, but it has also changed the range of people we are able to communicate with. Sure, before cell phones, there were land lines, but even with land lines, we were only able to communicate with one person at a time, and communcation got much more complicated as our contacts were further and further away from us. Now, using our cell phones, we can be talking to our mom on the phone who is down the street, texting our sister and friend who are attending different universities throughout the country, and emailing back and forth with another friend who is overseas, all with the same ease. Cell phones have made it so easy to communicate with anyone, anywhere, using just one small device.

Along with this, it has become much less important to communicate with people face-to-face. Instead of taking the time to leave our houses to meet someone somewhere to talk to them, we can simply stay right where we are and talk to them over the phone, through texting, through email, or even through Facebook and Twitter. Some people might even say that cell phones have let us become lazy, because it requires so little effort to communicate with others.

As this image represents, society is fully capable of putting forth the effort to engage in face-to-face interpersonal interactions. However, we hide behind excuses such as, "Oh, I am too busy," or "I just don't have time," in order for us to cover up the fact that we are simply too lazy. Like I said, cell phones have made it so easy to communicate with people from right where we are, that we don't feel it necessary to put forth the extra effort to engage in genuine interactions and communication.

Cell phones have changed much more than what it seems on the surface. They have not only changed how quickly we communicate, how many people we can communicate with at once, but they have even eliminated the issue of distance between us and the people we are communicating with.