Mobile Phones

Can you remember life without a mobile phone? The younger generation won't be able to. I remember watching TV as a child and seeing people with "brick" mobile phones occasionally in films. They weren't however common place, not even on the box and I certainly had never seen anyone in real life using one.

I got my first mobile phone in 1993. At that point they were still pretty "bricklike". Calls cost approximately 50p a minute and there was not a text function. It had an aerial which you had to pull up in order to make calls. It also took 18 hours to charge. The line rental itself cost £50 then calls were on top of that. It was not a cheap means of communication and was definitely for me at least an emergency option. My fiancé had bought me it as a security measure as I did a lot of travelling alone at night. I gradually stopped using it as I felt silly. I was the odd one out. No one else around me had a mobile phone. How times change eh?! Now you are the odd one out if you do not have a phone.

I didn't get another phone until the year 2000 when I became pregnant. It was again a safety measure. However by that time the mobile phone situation had changed a lot. Lots of my students had phones, grownups around me had them. The mobile phone had successfully implanted itself into society. By this time texting had become a feature alongside phone calls but I didn't send my first text for at least a couple of years later.

Jump forward to 2004. I've started to text. I'm learning "txtspk" off my students IYKWIM! At the same time students are starting to write their English essays in "txtspk"!! What about the English language? All I see written in the corridor graffiti is "txtspk".. I h8 u, u r a ****, ROFL @ Amy and so on. We are being taken over by a new language and not the Esperanto that certain people had hoped for.

Jump forward again a couple of years, mobile phones now have internet capabilities, Bluetooth has also arrived. Mobile phones have become smaller and smaller. They take the tiniest amount of time to charge. Prices have hit an all time low. You can easily find a deal for unlimited internet & texts plus 100 minutes per month for around £10 or £15 making mobile phone technology pretty much accessible to everyone. Many people nowadays have opted to disconnect their land line and just use their mobile phone.

But what impact is mobile phone technology having on society? Let's look at how I use my own mobile phone. I have a retro style phone, i.e. it's about five years old now. I've been in the mobile phone rat race, I've had the top of the range phones with every feature possible on them and it brought me down. It made it a really big commitment. I like to honour my commitments so my phone was taking up a lot of my time when I would have much rather have been doing life, so I went retro. I use my mobile to make calls when I am not at home whether that be phoning a service such as the doctors or to phone a friend if I am out of the home and need/want to ring her. I text if I have something small to say or need to give someone a quick reminder without intruding on their time. My mobile phone is not the hub of my social life and you will certainly never, ever see me answering the phone whilst being served in the supermarket etc as that, the way I see it is extremely rude to the check out operator. If I am in the company of someone and the phone rings or beeps then it is left as present company comes first. I can check my phone later. If it's an important call, well, I have voicemail. If it's a text then it will still be there when I have bid adieu to my company.

However, to offer a contrasting view I know of people who only ever communicate with their friends via text. If you ask them when was the last time they actually voice spoke or met up with a friend they would not remember. Mobile phone technology has taken over their lives and is destroying theirs and many other peoples social and communication skills. Some people's idea of a sociable night is sat in front of the TV texting all night. Is that really being sociable?

My mobile phone is not the focal point of my life – life is the focal point of my life!

Can you say the same?