The Cellphone Plague

You know, generally speaking, I like technology. I really do. I’m not sure how I’d get along without a computer and internet access, but I know I wouldn’t like it very much, at least not until I had gone through a long and potentially painful withdrawal period. However, there are some technologies and gadgets that I’m not too fond of. In particular, I think the whole cellphone “thing” has gotten out of hand. Way out of hand.

There is, of course, nothing wrong with the idea of cellphones. They can be quite handy, and I’ll readily admit it. I have a Tracfone, one of those pay-as-you-go cellphones, which I occasionally put minutes on, particularly when we’re going out of town. However, I’m a bit shocked with just how many people have cellphones, and perhaps more importantly, how much the gadgets are stuck to their ears. It doesn’t seem to matter where I go - the university, out to eat, to the grocery store - some people can’t seem to do anything without a cellphone glued to the side of their head.

I can understand businessmen and women needing to be available at any time; say, CEOs and other “important” folk. I’m sure there are plenty of other professions that require such constant availability, too. But I refuse to believe, for example, that half of my fellow university students are secret millionaires who must monitor their business around the clock, regardless of what they’re doing at the time. They take calls during class, they text message in class. They’re on the phone (or texting) while walking to and from class. They’re on the phone (or, amazingly, texting!) while driving. A few of them have moved up to not even needing to hold their phones; they have those little Bluetooth-powered earphones, so they can take that extremely important phonecall at a moment’s notice. After all, who knows when you’ll need to take a call and not have time to pull the phone out of its holder? And anyway, having a Bluetooth earphone latched onto your ear all day, whether you’re using it or not, holds a message: look at me, please^[1]!

To all of that, I have to ask: don’t these people get tired of being available around the clock? Don’t they get to the point where they just want to turn the little handheld slavemaster off, and go do something in peace and quiet? Do they ever think that maybe they should turn the phone off and pay attention to the human beings all around them? I’ll often walk by the university cafeteria and take a peak in, and while it isn’t always the case, quite often I’ve seen a peculiar sight: a cafeteria full of people, most of them sitting by themselves at their table, all of them eating and talking on a cellphone. All together in the same room, but essentially alone besides the person that’s on the other end of the phone. Strange.

As I said, I don’t have a problem with cellphones per se. Rather, I have a bit of a problem with how people use them. At times, it looks as if the people are being used by the cellphones instead of the other way around. In many situations in which face-to-face interactions should take precedence over a (usually relatively unimportant) phonecall, the reality is, the phonecall wins almost everytime. I wrote before about one of my classmates texting throughout a class, and unfortunately, that and taking phonecalls mid-lecture are extremely common. What is it these people are talking about that it can’t wait until a 50 minute class is over?

I suppose that, if you get right down to it, I just wish that people would use common sense with the things, and show a little more respect for other people. Being in mid-conversation with someone and them taking a phonecall to talk about last night’s football game or something similar… well, to me, there’s something wrong with that. There’s something wrong with so many university students thinking it’s perfectly normal to interrupt a class repeatedly so they can take that call about tonight’s forthcoming drinking binge.

For those who are expecting important phonecalls, fine; leave them on, but set them to vibrate^[2], please. For those who aren’t expecting any important phonecalls - their wife isn’t pregnant and due to give birth at any moment, their father isn’t in the hospital, they’re not waiting on that billion dollar contract to be finalized - I wish they’d consider turning the ringing taskmaster off for a while. It wouldn’t hurt them to go through a class without texting or to have a phoneless meal with their spouse. It really wouldn’t. Those of us around them would appreciate it; at least I would, anyway!

Some people need to remember that they own the phones. Somewhere along the line, the relationship seems to have been turned on its head.

1. If you’re one of the folks who uses the Bluetooth headsets, my apologies - but I really do think they look absurd, particularly when they’re not in use. They make me feel like I’ve fallen into a science fiction movie - which, I suppose, could be interesting, but with fewer Bluetooth headsets and more Wookies. [↩]
2. I commend those who set their phones to vibrate when they’re going to be doing something that they don’t want to interrupt. However, it seems to be a common thing to set the phone to vibrate, and then set it on the table / desk they’re at. As one of my professors commented at the beginning of the spring semester, this is a bad idea; a vibrating phone on a hard surface sounds a bit like machine gun fire. [↩]