Cellular phones are to the new millennium what Vanilla Ice was to the last millennium – a popular item/person on the market that ends up causing more headaches than aspirin can cure.
Cell phone frenzy has completely taken over American society.
Hearing the ring of a cell phone during class or at work is just as common as doing homework or asking a question in class.
With more than 128 million subscribed cell phone users, the average age of a cell phone owner is getting younger and younger.
Cell phone users are even elementary and middle school students, giving up Barbie and G.I. Joe for fancier technology that can actually talk back to them.
Features such as games and personal planners have become so common that they aren’t even optional anymore.
At first color screens amazed me, but with technology moving so fast, even that isn’t creating a stir anymore.
But last week my friend instant messaged me from church.
I didn’t think anything of it when the phrase, “This user is using a mobile device,” popped up in the instant message.
When she told me to hold on so she could pay attention to the sermon, I assumed it was on television.
Upon asking her which channel she was watching, she laughed and told me she was actually at church.
Instead of feeling 19 years old, I felt 90.
Instant messaging someone from church through my cell phone?
I would never have even dreamed that was possible one year ago.
I guess if someone caught her, she could always say she was spreading the word of God.
Although an instant message from church was a shock, I didn’t have to sign online to see signs that cell phones are everywhere.
Working in the fitting room of a pre-teens’ clothing store led me to see as many cell phones as there were clothes in the store.
Ten-year-old girls called their friends across the mall to inform them they had found a cute shirt that would match the jeans they had just bought.
These high-tech walkie-talkies are all over college campuses too.
I am surprised and appalled to see professors leaving classes to answer their phones.
I wonder if the dean puts meetings on hold to answer his phone?
Another cause of frustration is drivers who use cell phones.
Driving while using a cell phone has become more dangerous than drunk driving, with 75 percent of cell phone users calling while on the road.
This “safety hazard” eventually led New York State to ban cell phone use for drivers in June 2001.
Shortly afterward, six other states created cell phone driving regulations such as a “one-hand-on-the-steering-wheel” rule and laws prohibiting school bus drivers from using a phone.
The one-hand rule seems pointless especially for stick shift drivers like myself, who drive with one hand regardless.
However, perhaps legislators should apply the “bus driver law” to other forms of transportation as well.
I am much more afraid of a taxi driver with a cell phone than one without one.
And even my senior prom limo driver talked on the phone the majority of the time and then ended up getting us lost because he missed an exit.
Until the day my cell phone can open my garage and turn my car on for me, I will stick to my discontinued color-less cell phone with the exciting features of three games and a couple ring tones.
Who knows what they’ll come up with next?
Stephanie Young can be reached at temple_news@hotmail.com.
Stephanie Young can be reached at temple_news@hotmail.com.
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