Everyone has likely experienced the annoyance of someone on a cell phone talking loud or in an inappropriate place. You may have also had a friend using a phone whiole you were eating dinner with them. Anti-social behavior is one thing, but there are worse things that it can cause ---

One is child dependency --- before cell phones children would make decisions on their own. Now they call to get answers whether its shopping or otherwise. Without developing their problem solving and other decisionmaking skills --- they can be at a significant deficit later in life.

UK Govt Warns Over Cellphone Dangers To Kids 05/11/00 - Government Activity

Steve Gold
LONDON, ENGLAND, 2000 MAY 11 (NB) The British government has published a review of mobile phones and their effects on health, warning that kids should take care to avoid lengthy calls and/or continuous use of such devices.

The report, entitled the "Independent Expert Group on Mobile Phones Report - and dubbed the Stewart Inquiry - concluded that, while the use of mobile phones and related technologies will continue to increase for the foreseeable future, no-one truly knows whether cellphones are dangerous to health.

Because of this uncertainty, the report recommends that children's use of mobile phones be restricted until such time that full research into the effects of cellular phones on health is known.

In addition, the report says that the balance of evidence to date does not suggest that emissions from cellular base stations put the health of the UK population at risk.

"There is now some preliminary scientific evidence that exposure to radio frequency (RF) radiation may cause subtle effects on biological functions, including those of the brain," says the report.

The study goes on to say that it does not necessarily mean that health is impacted "but it is not possible to say that exposure to RF radiation, even at levels below national guidelines, is totally without potential adverse health effects."

The report also noted that there has been publicity about the use of devices that seek to reduce exposure and concerns have been expressed about their effectiveness.

The Expert Group is recommending that a national independent system of testing be set up which enables accurate information to be given about the merits of such devices for reducing exposure.

Based on its findings, the Expert Group has recommended that a precautionary approach to the use of mobile phone technologies be adopted until more detailed and scientifically robust information becomes available.

For base station emissions, the report says that exposures of the general population will be to the whole body but normally at levels of intensity many times less than those from handsets.

Despite this, the study says that some people's well-being may be adversely affected by the environmental impact of mobile phone base stations sited next to houses, schools or other buildings, as well as by fear of perceived direct effects.

"For all base stations, including those with masts under 15 meters, permitted development rights should be revoked and the siting of all new base stations should be subject to the normal planning process," says the report.

The most interesting aspect of the report, Newsbytes notes, is that it recommends that the widespread use of mobile phones by children for non-essential calls should be discouraged.

The report by the Expert Group on possible health effects of mobile phones, base stations and transmitters is said to have adopted an evidence-based approach.

In their research, the scientists say they conducted a "comprehensive review" of the literature currently available and has consulted widely with industry experts, calling for written evidence where possible.

Based on this research, the Expert Group concluded that the balance of evidence to date suggests that exposures to RF radiation below guidelines recommended for the UK and those recommended by the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection (ICNIRP) do not cause adverse health effects to the general population.

"There is now scientific evidence, however, which suggests that there may be biological effects occurring at exposures below these guidelines. This does not necessarily mean that these effects lead to disease or injury but it is not possible to say that exposure to RF radiation, even at levels below national guidelines, is totally without potential adverse health effects," says the report.

"In the light of these findings the Expert Group recommends a precautionary approach to the use of mobile phone technologies until more detailed and scientifically robust information on any health effects becomes available," it concluded.

Orange, one of the UK's four cellular networks, has been quick to respond to the report. It says it welcomes the report, which was chaired by Professor Sir William Stewart.

Orange says that, along with the rest of the industry, it recognizes that there is no substantiated evidence to suggest a link between the use of mobile phones and long term public health risks, but the carrier acknowledges public concern on this issue.

The network says it is therefore encouraged by the Expert Group's conclusions that cellphones and base stations do not put health of the general population of the UK at risk.

Because of the recommendations over kids' use of mobile phones, Orange, on behalf of its customers, says it will press all its handset manufacturers and suppliers to comply with the recommendations made by the Expert Group.

"Orange looks forward to reviewing the manufacturers' plans in this regard," said the network's press statement, adding that it supports the Expert Group's recommendation for clearer handset information in mobile phone retail outlets, product literature and other marketing material.

"In view of the precautionary approach recommended by the Expert Group on children's usage of mobile phones, Orange acknowledges public concern and will press its handset manufacturers and suppliers to meet their obligations for clearer information and guidance in this area," the carrier said in its press statement.

Further details of the report can be found on the Expert Group's Web site at http://www.iegmp.org.uk .

Reported by Newsbytes.com, http://www.newsbytes.com .
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0NE..._62061496/print

I wonder why there haven't been such studies in the US --- can anyone say --- cell phone lobby

Article: Cell Phones Endanger Children - by Taraka Serrano

If your child uses a cell phone, take note. A recent news report has prompted renewed concerns about the safety of cell phone use, especially by children.

In January, 2005, The National Radiological Protection Board (NRPB), an independent research organization in the UK, announced that they are now advising parents not to let children under the age of eight use cell phones. Evidence of the potentially harmful effects of cell phone use, the NRPB explained, has become more persuasive over the past five years.

The NRPB's parental warning is based on four recent studies, conducted in Europe, indicating that the potential hazards of cell phone use have been underestimated:
- A ten-year study in Sweden suggests that heavy cell phone users are more prone than non-users to develop non-malignant tumors in the ear and brain
- A Dutch study has suggested impaired cognitive function as a result of cell phone use
- A German study points to a probable increase in cancer around cellular base stations
- A project supported by the EU has shown evidence of cell damage resulting from exposure to electromagnetic fields (EMFs) typical of those of cell phones

MALIGNANT AND NON-MALIGNANT TUMORS

While the tumors linked to cell phone use in the Swedish study were benign, other scientists suggest that the reality could be worse. They are concerned that prolonged contact with the radio waves emitted by cell phones could actually cause malignant tumors.

"Studies show there has been a 40 per cent across-the-board increase in the number of brain tumors in the past 20 years," explains Senator Lyn Allison of Australia, where brain tumor is now the leading cause of death in children under 15. Senator Allison, who spent a year listening to scientists to find out what the risks are, points out, "That 20 years has coincided with the use of mobile phone and many other radio frequencies."

In the U.S., Dr. George Carlo, a leading epidemiologist, was hired by the cell phone industry in 1993 to prove that cell phones are safe. After 6 years of revealing research, however, he found compelling evidence that cell phone use is NOT safe. Following his conscience, Dr. Carlo became a whistleblower.

“One by one, alarming signs appeared in Dr. Carlo’s research: that cell phones interfere with pacemakers, that developing skulls of children are penetrated deeply by the energy emitted from a cell phone, that the blood brain barrier which prevents invasion of the brain from toxins can be compromised by the cell phone radiation and, most startling, that radio frequency radiation creates micronuclei in human blood cells, a type of genetic damage known to be a diagnostic marker for cancer.”
~ from Cell Phones: Invisible Hazards in the Wireless Age by Dr. George Carlo and Martin Schram

Dr. Carlo proved, and shared in his book, that there is a significant risk of brain tumors for those who use cell phones. In many cases doctors who perform surgery on brain tumors and lesions can tell on which side of the head the patient holds his or her cell phone.

Children are more susceptible to cell damage because the tissues in their brains and bodies are still growing and their cells are rapidly dividing. Damage to the genetic material in growing cells can lead to disruption of cellular function, cell death, the development of tumors, and damage to the immune and nervous systems.

But it is not only long term use of cell phones that deserves concern; short-term use has also shown to have immediate adverse effects...

IMPAIRED LEARNING ABILITY

Scientists at the Spanish Neuro Diagnostic Research Institute in Marbella have discovered that a two-minute cell phone call can alter the electrical activity of a child's brain for up to an hour afterwards. This finding has raised fears among doctors that disturbed brain activity in children could lead to psychiatric and behavioral problems and impair learning ability.

As Dr. Gerald Hyland, a government adviser in the UK said, "The results of the Spanish study show that children's brains are affected for long periods even after very short-term use.... This could affect their mood and ability to learn in the classroom if they have been using a phone during break time, for instance. We don't know all the answers yet, but the alteration in brain waves could lead to things like a lack of concentration, memory loss, inability to learn and aggressive behaviour."

The implications are serious; even a slight impairment in learning ability, sustained over years of education, is likely to significantly impact a child's future potential and achievement.

PROTECT YOUR CHILDREN

The reports mentioned here are only the more recent of many years of studies indicating the serious potential health hazards of cell phone use. Numerous clinical studies reveal links between cell phone use and brain tumors, genetic damage, fatigue, asthma, heart disease, depression, impaired learning ability, and cancer. Yet parents are pampering children as young as age four with cell phones. In the U.S., 40 percent of children between the ages of four and eighteen use some kind of wireless device (such as a cell phone, PDA, pocket PC, or pager), and one in three U.S. teenagers uses a cell phone.

It's predicted that by the year 2006 there will be over 2 billion cell phone users in the world... and that 500 million of them will be children.

The dangers of EMF exposure from cell phones and other wireless/electronic devices are very real, yet the government and the cellular industry have been very slow to admit these dangers exist. Given the reluctance of the industry to acknowledge the implications of this research and to initiate improved safety standards, concerned parents are wise to take matters into their own hands.

Fortunately, you don't have to confiscate your child's cell phone. Increasing public awareness of the dangers of cell phone use has spawned a new EMF protection industry. Concerned scientists and experts in the fields of biophysics, bioenergetics, and material science have been developing new technologies and products for the end consumer. Backed by independent clinical testing, these simple high-tech devices offer real protection from these modern-age perils.

For most people, cell phones have become an essential part of daily living. They offer convenience, business and social connectivity, and a lifeline in case of emergencies. While health risks related to its use are a growing issue, with proper education and tools you can ensure safety for yourself and your family. And with that comes peace of mind.

copyright 2005 Taraka Serrano


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Taraka Serrano is a health advocate associated with BIOPRO Technology, a company that provides electromagnetic field (EMF) protection solutions. For more information about the health dangers of EMF exposure and to find out how you can protect yourself and your family, visit: http://www.emf-health.com

http://www.naturalhealthweb.com/articles/Serrano1.html

Cellphones may affect kids more
Jan 13, 2005 8:47 AM

http://tvnz.co.nz/view/news_health_story_s...306?format=html

No hard evidence exists to show mobile phones damage health but users - especially children - should take care, UK scientists say.

Britain's National Radiological Protection Board (NRPB), an independent advisory group, said there have been reports of adverse health effects but some have not yet been independently confirmed and are of variable quality.

"We are still recommending a precautionary approach because there is still no hard evidence that the health of the public in general has been adversely affected by the use of mobile phone technologies," NRPB chairman Sir William Stewart told a news conference.

But Stewart added that he did not think he could put his hand on his heart and say mobile phones are totally safe because the technology is relatively new and is evolving so rapidly it is outstripping the analysis of any potential impact on health.

Some research suggests radio frequency fields could interfere with biological systems but it has not been possible to carry out long-term studies.

The Mobile Operators Association in Britain, which represents operators on health and planning, welcomed the report.

"The key point of the NRPB advice is that there is no hard information linking the use of mobile telephony with adverse health effects," said its executive director Mike Dolan in a statement.

Children may be more vulnerable

Children might be more vulnerable because their nervous system is still developing, they have a greater absorption of energy in the tissues of the head and they would have a longer lifetime exposure than adults, according to the report.

Stewart recommended children use mobiles phones for as short a time as possible. They should text instead and use a phone with a low SARS value. Specific Absorption Rate (SAR) is the measure of the rate of energy absorption in body tissue.

"We have got to be cautious. We can't say there will be no effects," he added.

Mobile phones have become a $100 billion a year industry. About 650 million are expected to be sold to consumers this year and over 1.5 billion people around the world use one.

Third generation, 3G phones, which emit higher rates of radiation than earlier models are now marketed in Britain and elsewhere.

The report also called for the monitoring of base stations, including new 3G stations and Terrestrial Trunked Radio (TETRA), used by police.

Stewart said studies suggesting mobile phones can cause non malignant brain tumours, cognitive impairment or DNA damage should be not be dismissed but more research is needed.

"The general public, the man in the street, must be able to get information easily and he must be able to get it readily," he added.


Source: Reuters

Developing the Child Brain

Children Endangered by Cell Phone Radiation

For news about cell phones and cell phone radiation ratings visit the Cell Phones Radiation News Bureau: a voluntary research & information network. http://www.cprnews.com/

Mobile phone firms cynically target children even though they may be most vulnerable to the effects of radiation, a leading scientist, Sir William Stewart, warned. Stewart chaired the world's largest investigation into mobile phone safety. The $100 billion a year mobile phone industry asserts that there is no conclusive evidence of harmful effects as a result of electromagnetic radiation.

US scientists tested mobile phone-style radiation on more than 10,000 chicken embryos. Pregnant women have been warned to be wary of using mobile phones after it was found radiation produced by the devices caused defects in the chicken embryos. The cell phone industry continues to down-play the risk and defer to more research.

Children using mobile phones absorb as much as double the amount of radiation through their heads as adults. Dr Om Ghandi, a leading scientist and professor of electrical engineering at the University of Utah found that young children under 10 years of age could absorb radiation across their entire brain. He found that more radiation is able to go past the ear and into the head since a child's ear is thinner and the telephone is closer to the head. All it takes is two millimeters difference," Dr Ghandi said.

Until proven otherwise and technology becomes safe, children including teens should not use mobile phones, at all, because they are more at risk from the radiation, and their cell growth and brain wave activity are not yet stable. There is conclusive evidence that the phones have biological effects on humans even where the radio frequency or microwave radiation is emitted at very low levels.

Mobile phones and the new wireless technology could cause a "whole generation" of today's teenagers to go senile in the prime of their lives, research suggests. Professor Leif Salford, who headed the research at Sweden's prestigious Lund University, says "the voluntary exposure of the brain to microwaves from hand-held mobile phones" is "the largest human biological experiment ever".

Professor Salford and his team have spent 15 years investigating microwave radiation. Their studies proved radiation could open the blood-brain barrier, allowing a protein called albumin to pass into the brain. Their latest work shows the process is linked to serious brain damage. Professor Salford said neurons that would normally not become "senile" until people reached their 60s may now do so when they were in their 30s. In addition, research indicates that exposure to cell phones’ radiation causes red blood cells to leak hemoglobin. Scientists exposed samples of blood to microwave radiation and found that even at lower levels than those emitted by cell phones, the blood cells leaked hemoglobin.

Marketing to Children
Cell phones, which are practically standard equipment for teenagers in today’s world, are finding their way into the even smaller hands of preteens. Cell phones designed for preteens have controls that allow parents to limit whom kids can talk to. Preteen cell phones are soon to be marketed nationwide with big expectations that preteen cell phone usage will become a national trend. Paul Saffo of the Institute for the Future in Menlo Park, California says, "It won't be long before no self-respecting kindergartner is going to start school without a cell phone."

The cell-phone industry has continually insisted there is no proven link between cell phones and health problems. But patents for protective devices to reduce the amount of radiation absorbed by the brain suggest that Nokia, Ericsson and Motorola believe otherwise. The big three have come up against multimillion-dollar legal actions by people claiming their health has been damaged.

The $100 billion a year mobile phone industry asserts that there is no conclusive evidence of harmful effects as a result of electromagnetic radiation. The Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association hired Dr. George Carlo to head up a $28 million research program into possible health effects from cellular phones. The research showed an increased rate of brain cancer deaths, development of tumors, and genetic damage among heavy cell phone users. Dr. Carlo has since broken with the cell phone industry to become a vocal critic, and coauthored a book called Cell Phones: Invisible Hazards in the Wireless Age

Radiofrequency electromagnetic radiation researcher at the University of Washington, in Seattle, Dr. Henry Lai, showed microwave radiation from mobiles caused genetic damage similar to that found in Alzheimer's and Parkinson's sufferers. To quote Dr. Lai, “It is difficult to deny that RFR at low intensity can affect the nervous system.”

Dr. Lai submitted his research to the Stewart committee showing that radiofrequency electromagnetic radiation (RFR) can penetrate into organic tissues and be absorbed and converted into heat. The microwave oven is a familiar use of RFR.

Another scientist, Dr. Hyland, who is based in the physics department at Warwick University and at the International Institute of Biophysics, in Neuss-Holzheim, Germany says that the body is an electro-chemical instrument with exquisite sensitivity and the kind of radiation emitted from mobile phones has an impact on the stability of cells in the body.

Children are particularly vulnerable
Referring to the effect of microwaves from a mobile phone, Dr Hyland says, "The main effects are neurological, causing headaches, lack of concentration, memory loss and sleeping disorders. It can also cause epilepsy in children. Children are particularly vulnerable because they are still developing their immune systems and are less robust than adults.

Dr Hyland's research, published in the latest edition of the respected medical publication The Lancet, follows his analysis of more than 100 earlier studies involving tens of thousands of people.

Radio waves from mobile phones harm body cells and damage DNA
A recent study that was conducted by 12 research groups in seven European countries found that in laboratory conditions radio waves from mobile phones harm body cells and damage DNA. The research project, called Reflex study, which took four years and which was coordinated by the German research group Verum, studied the effect of radiation on human and animal cells in a laboratory.

After being exposed to electromagnetic fields that are typical for mobile phones, the cells showed a significant increase in single and double-strand DNA breaks, with damage not always being repaired by the cell. Mutated cells are seen as a possible cause of cancer. DNA carries the genetic material of an organism and its different cells. "There was remaining damage for future generation of cells", said project leader Franz Adlkofer.

In addition, the Swedish Institute of Environmental Medicine found that ten or more years of mobile phone use almost doubles the risk of acoustic neuroma, or benign tumors on the auditory nerve. "When the side of the head on which the phone was usually held was taken into consideration, we found that the risk of acoustic neuroma was almost four times higher on the same side as the phone was held, and virtually normal on the other side," the institute added. While non-cancerous, acoustic neuroma tumors that are not removed can grow to sizes where they put pressure on the brain and become life threatening.

The Cellular Task Force acts as a clearinghouse for information on the health effects, including injury and death, reported world-wide as being caused by radio frequency radiation from digital cellular phones base stations and other wireless facilities. Arthur Firstenberg, president of the Cellular Phone Taskforce has published a book, Microwaving the planet which includes a current literature review of over 200 sources

Estimated deaths: 10,000
Link to The Cellular Phone Task Force.

Cell phone shields
Dr. Neil Cherry, associate professor in environmental health at Lincoln University, Christchurch, stated " Mobile phone manufacturers should take seriously a Swedish finding that their products are dangerous for teenagers and work on developing safer phones”. According to Dr. Cherry numerous patents exist for devices or methods to make phones safer but are not being used by manufacturers.

Dr. Cherry estimates that it is practical to reduce users' exposure by 100 to 1000 times. "The primary methods are to manufacture the handset within a Faraday cage shield," he said.

Alarming claims have surfaced in a research publication in the U.K. that not only are many hands-free devices useless in protecting wireless phone users from radiation that might cause tumors, these products may actually raise the amount of radiation being directed into the head by three times. The earplugs in the hands-free kit acted as aerials and channeled more radiation into the ear model than standard cell phones did. Using a hands-free kit and making a call with a mobile phone clipped to your belt means the phone will generally be working at a higher power level. Using a mobile phone clipped to your waist results in a hotspot of radiation being pumped into the liver and kidneys.

LIFE and CHOICE: International Parenting Association's perspective on life in the womb.
Testimonial: Mother used flashcards. Child remembers what he learned in infancy.

Exposé: Studies prove children are endangered by cell phone radiation and shouldn't use them.

http://www.internationalparentingassociati...cellphones.html

Kids and Cell Phones: Staying Connected
by Anita Gurian, Ph.D.

Do you know where your kids are? For many parents the answer is a resounding yes; they always know where their kids are. Cell phones have changed family life in many ways. They provide parents with peace of mind, and they're great in emergencies. Family members can always reach each other or call 911. Cell phones are also convenient and time-saving. Kids can let parents know where they are, when they need to be picked up, when they'll be late, and just generally what's happening. Parents can let children know if their plans change, whether they'll be late, and where to meet. In many ways, cell phones make life easier and safer.

Marianne, 16, has just earned her driver's license and wants to know she can call for help if her car breaks down.
Sylvan, 14, has several after-school activities and lets his parents know when he's going to be late.
Alana, 10, who just moved to a new neighborhood, calls home when she's not sure about directions.
Josh, 11, whose parents both work, lets them know when he gets home from school.

Estimates of how many middle school students own cell phones range from over 40% to 75%, with even higher rates for high school students.

The downside of cell phones

As with many technological innovations, there are some possible negative aspects of cell phones that parents should be aware of:

Cell phones are not just for talking. As the technology becomes more and more sophisticated, kids can use cell phones to do lots of other things without their parents' knowledge. With some phones kids can take pictures, text message or surf the Web for videos and games. They can also download pictures, videos, and music. Cell phones allow kids to keep their contacts secret and can facilitate contact with bad influences. The Office of National Drug Control Policy has reported that some teens are using technology and the Internet to get drug information, and cell phones provide instant access to information and sources of drugs. According to their report, 60% of teens have their own cell phones and 19 million teens instant message.
New features such as color and added power may provide games and videos of questionable content. Game ratings are not available on cell phones, so parents will have less knowledge or control of their children's activities than they have of children's use of home computers.
Cell phones offer opportunities for undesirable behavior, such as cheating on tests or teen dating abuse. Teens have reported that they have been called names, harassed, put down by their partner, or asked to engage in sex through cell phones and texting. They have also reported that boyfriends/girlfriends sharing private or embarrassing pictures/videos on cell phones and computers is a serious problem.
Since parents have demonstrated that they're willing to pay for the peace of mind that comes with knowing where their kids are, cell phone plans, particularly family plans, are proliferating. Preteens and teens represent a significant source of revenue for phone manufacturers, and younger children are also being targeted with the marketing of simple entry level phones. Industry spending on advertising to children has increased during the last decade from $100 million in 1990 to more than $2 billion in 2000.
The issue of safety and the impact of cell phones on the developing brain is still unresolved. The FDA has taken the position that there is no evidence that cell phones can cause harm. The use of headsets is recommended, however.
When is a child ready for a cell phone?

Cell phones have become a status symbol, and even young children are clamoring for them. The decision to give a child a cell phone should depend not only on need but also on whether or not s/he can be responsible for taking care of it. Children have been known to lose the phone, bury it in a backpack, forget to turn it on, lend it to a friend, etc. Several cell phones are specifically designed for younger children; they have no frills and have built-in parental controls, such as limits on who can call and who can be called, lack of internet access or text messaging capability, and plans with prepaid minutes that can't be exceeded.

School policy

Believing that phones interfere with academic productivity and concentration, most schools have policies about their use, such as not allowing cell phones to be used in class, no cell phone rings at school, and vibrate-only calls in an emergency. Some schools permit the use of phones only in the parking lots and bus and parent pickup spots.

Guidelines for parents

Monitor your children's use of all technological devices.

Take precautions with your children's use of cell phones. Text messaging enables children and adolescents to be in touch with and to make plans with people without parental knowledge. Know your children's cell phone contact list.

Be specific about cell phone use and set up specific rules about how and when the phone will be used. Set a limit on how much time children can use each month and how many text messages they can send and receive.

Plan for cell phone costs. Together with teenagers, investigate all options, such as the possible advantages of adding a line to a parent's phone. Monitor the monthly cell phone bill to see how children are spending their minutes and discuss the results with them. Keep track of additional service costs, such as ring tones, photos and text messages.
Determine how teenagers will contribute to the costs.

Emphasize and enforce the rule that teens should never use a cell phone while driving.

Establish rules of etiquette, such as never using a cell phone within 20 feet of another person, phones should be turned off in places where they might disturb other people, private conversations should not take place in public places.

While cell phones have many advantages for parents and children, it is important to keep in mind the changing needs of children at different ages to insure their healthy development.
http://www.aboutourkids.org/aboutour/artic...ell_phones.html

The Cell Phone and Male Infertility
By Cheryl Carpenter
Published Jul 18, 2007

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/3....html</a>

Cell phones are here to stay and many times leave us wondering what we would do without them. Women traditionally have felt like something was missing if they didn't have their purses with them at all times. However, the cell phone has rapidly developed this same type of dependency for both woman and men. You may have heard of studies which suggest that the use of cell phones may put some people at risk for brain tumors; however, cell phones may also be a cause for male infertility.

Nothing can be much more upsetting and stressful for a couple who wishes to have a child then finds that they have a fertility problem. Many times the female has a problem which is preventing the couple from conceiving. However, about 30 percent of the time the male has infertility issues. One of the most common infertility issues a man may have is a low sperm count or slow swimmers. For young men today who would like to have children in now or in the future, it would be advised to consider the amount of time they are spending on their cell phone each day and how this may affect their ability to father children.

It is true and a bit frightening that time will only tell what we as a society may be facing where our health is concerned as a direct result of our cell phone usage. Cell phones send out radiation and this radiation may be capable in reducing a man's sperm count up to 30 percent.

Studies suggest that the risk of low sperm count increases with the amount of time one spends on their cell phones each day. Men who spend as much as four hours a day on their cell phones are at the highest risk than others. While studies are inconclusive they suggest that the cell phones may be damaging DNA which is responsible for the development of the male hormone testosterone. Cell phones may also increase temperatures in the groin area if a man carries the phone on his belt or in his pocket according to research. Increased temperatures in the groin area have long been known to cause fertility problems in men. As a result men should consider finding alternate means of carrying their cell phones.

While infertility in within the male population is increasing it is expected to continue to increase dramatically over the next few years. This prediction is based partially on the ever increasing use of cell phones.

Our Cell Phones, Ourselves

Christine Rosen

http://www.thenewatlantis.com/archive/6/rosen.htm

"Hell is other people,” Sartre observed, but you need not be a misanthrope or a diminutive French existentialist to have experienced similar feelings during the course of a day. No matter where you live or what you do, in all likelihood you will eventually find yourself participating in that most familiar and exasperating of modern rituals: unwillingly listening to someone else’s cell phone conversation. Like the switchboard operators of times past, we are now all privy to calls being put through, to the details of loved ones contacted, appointments made, arguments aired, and gossip exchanged.

Today, more people have cell phones than fixed telephone lines, both in the United States and internationally. There are more than one billion cell phone users worldwide, and as one wireless industry analyst recently told Slate, “some time between 2010 and 2020, everyone who wants and can afford a cell phone will have one.” Americans spend, on average, about seven hours a month talking on their cell phones. Wireless phones have become such an important part of our everyday lives that in July, the country’s major wireless industry organization featured the following “quick poll” on its website: “If you were stranded on a desert island and could have one thing with you, what would it be?” The choices: “Matches/Lighter,” “Food/Water,” “Another Person,” “Wireless Phone.” The World Health Organization has even launched an “International EMF Project” to study the possible health effects of the electromagnetic fields created by wireless technologies.

But if this ubiquitous technology is now a normal part of life, our adjustment to it has not been without consequences. Especially in the United States, where cell phone use still remains low compared to other countries, we are rapidly approaching a tipping point with this technology. How has it changed our behavior, and how might it continue to do so? What new rules ought we to impose on its use? Most importantly, how has the wireless telephone encouraged us to connect individually but disconnect socially, ceding, in the process, much that was civil and civilized about the use of public space?

Untethered

Connection has long served as a potent sign of power. In the era before cell phones, popular culture served up presidents, tin-pot dictators, and crime bosses who were never far from a prominently placed row of phones, demonstrating their importance at the hub of a vast nexus. Similarly, superheroes always owned special communications devices: Batman had the Batphone, Dick Tracy his wrist-phone, Maxwell Smart his shoe spy phone. (In the Flash comics of the 1940s, the hero simply outraces phone calls as they are made, avoiding altogether the need for special communication devices.) To be able to talk to anyone, at any time, without the mediator of the human messenger and without the messenger’s attendant delays, is a thoroughly modern triumph of human engineering.

In 1983, Motorola introduced DynaTAC, now considered the first truly mobile telephone, and by the end of that year, the first commercial cellular phone systems were being used in Chicago and in the Baltimore/Washington, D.C. area. Nokia launched its own mobile phone, the cumbersome Cityman, in 1987. Americans were introduced to the glamour of mobile telephone communication that same year in a scene from the movie Wall Street. In it, the ruthless Gordon Gekko (played by Michael Douglas) self-importantly conducts his business on the beach using a large portable phone. These first-generation cell phones were hardly elegant—many people called them “luggables” rather than “portables,” and as one reporter noted in The Guardian, “mobiles of that era are often compared to bricks, but this is unfair. Bricks are quite attractive and relatively light.” But they made up in symbolic importance what they lacked in style; only the most powerful and wealthiest people owned them. Indeed, in the 1980s, the only other people besides the elite and medical professionals who had mobile technologies at all (such as pagers) were presumed to be using them for nefarious reasons. Who else but a roving drug dealer or prostitute would need to be accessible at all times?

This changed in the 1990s, when cell phones became cheaper, smaller, and more readily available. The technology spread rapidly, as did the various names given to it: in Japan it is keitai, in China it’s sho ji, Germans call their cell phones handy, in France it is le portable or le G, and in Arabic, el mobile, telephone makhmul, or telephone gowal. In countries where cell phone use is still limited to the elite—such as Bulgaria, where only 2.5 percent of the population can afford a cell phone—its power as a symbol of wealth and prestige remains high. But in the rest of the world, it has become a technology for the masses. There were approximately 340,000 wireless subscribers in the United States in 1985, according to the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Associate (CTIA); by 1995, that number had increased to more than 33 million, and by 2003, more than 158 million people in the country had gone wireless.

Why do people use cell phones? The most frequently cited reason is convenience, which can cover a rather wide range of behaviors. Writing in the Wall Street Journal this spring, an executive for a wireless company noted that “in Slovakia, people are using mobile phones to remotely switch on the heat before they return home,” and in Norway, “1.5 million people can confirm their tax returns” using cell phone short text messaging services. Paramedics use camera phones to send ahead to hospitals pictures of the incoming injuries; “in Britain, it is now commonplace for wireless technology to allow companies to remotely access meters or gather diagnostic information.” Construction workers on-site can use cell phones to send pictures to contractors off-site. Combined with the individual use of cell phones—to make appointments, locate a friend, check voicemail messages, or simply to check in at work—cell phones offer people a heretofore unknown level of convenience.

More than ninety percent of cell phone users also report that owning a cell phone makes them feel safer. The CTIA noted that in 2001, nearly 156,000 wireless emergency service calls were made every day—about 108 calls per minute. Technological Good Samaritans place calls to emergency personnel when they see traffic accidents or crimes-in-progress; individuals use their cell phones to call for assistance when a car breaks down or plans go awry. The safety rationale carries a particular poignancy after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. On that day, many men and women used cell phones to speak their final words to family and loved ones. Passengers on hijacked airplanes called wives and husbands; rescue workers on the ground phoned in to report their whereabouts. As land lines in New York and Washington, D.C., became clogged, many of us made or received frantic phone calls on cell phones—to reassure others that we were safe or to make sure that our friends and family were accounted for. Many people who had never considered owning a cell phone bought one after September 11th. If the cultural image we had of the earliest cell phones was of a technology glamorously deployed by the elite, then the image of cell phones today has to include people using them for this final act of communication, as well as terrorists who used cell phones as detonators in the bombing of trains in Madrid.

Of course, the perceived need for a technological safety device can encourage distinctly irrational behavior and create new anxieties. Recently, when a professor at Rutgers University asked his students to experiment with turning off their cell phones for 48 hours, one young woman told University Wire, “I felt like I was going to get raped if I didn’t have my cell phone in my hand. I carry it in case I need to call someone for help.” Popular culture endorses this image of cell-phone-as-life-line. The trailer for a new suspense movie, Cellular, is currently making the rounds in theaters nationwide. In it, an attractive young man is shown doing what young men apparently do with their camera-enabled cell phones: taking pictures of women in bikinis and e-mailing the images to himself. When he receives a random but desperate phone call from a woman who claims to be the victim of a kidnapping, he finds himself drawn into a race to find and save her, all the while trying to maintain that tenuous cell phone connection. It is indicative of our near-fetishistic attachment to our cell phones that we can relate (and treat as a serious moment of suspense) a scene in the movie where the protagonist, desperately trying to locate a cell phone charger before his battery runs out, holds the patrons of an electronics store at gunpoint until the battery is rejuvenated. After scenes of high-speed car chases and large explosions, the trailer closes with a disembodied voice asking the hero, “How did you get involved?” His response? “I just answered my phone.”

Many parents have responded to this perceived need for personal security by purchasing cell phones for their children, but this, too, has had some unintended consequences. One sociologist has noted that parents who do this are implicitly commenting on their own sense of security or insecurity in society. “Claiming to care about their children’s safety,” Chantal de Gournay writes, “parents develop a ‘paranoiac’ vision of the community, reflecting a lack of trust in social institutions and in any environment other than the family.” As a result, they choose surveillance technologies, such as cell phones, to monitor their children, rather than teaching them (and trusting them) to behave appropriately. James E. Katz, a communications professor at Rutgers who has written extensively about wireless communication, argues that parents who give children cell phones are actually weakening the traditional bonds of authority; “parents think they can reach kids any time they want, and thus are more indulgent of their children’s wanderings,” Katz notes. Not surprisingly, “my cell phone battery died” has become a popular excuse among teenagers for failure to check in with their parents. And I suspect nearly everyone, at some point, has suffered hours of panic when a loved one who was supposed to be “reachable” failed to answer the cell phone.

Although cell phones are a technology with broad appeal, we do not all use our cell phones in the same way. In June 2004, Cingular announced that “for the fourth year in a row, men prove to be the more talkative sex in the wireless world,” talking 16 percent more on their phones than women. Women, however, are more likely to use a cell phone “to talk to friends and family” while men use theirs for business—including, evidently, the business of mating. Researchers found that “men are using their mobile phones as peacocks use their immobilizing feathers and male bullfrogs use their immoderate croaks: To advertise to females their worth, status, and desirability,” reported the New York Times. The researchers also discovered that many of the men they observed in pubs and nightclubs carried fake cell phones, likely one of the reasons they titled their paper “Mobile Phones as Lekking Devices Among Human Males,” a lek being a “communal mating area where males gather to engage in flamboyant courtship displays.” Or, as another observer of cell phone behavior succinctly put it: “the mobile is widely used for psychosexual purposes of performance and display.”

The increasingly sophisticated accessories available on cell phones encourage such displays. One new phone hitting the market boasts video capture and playback, a 1.2 megapixel camera, a 256 color screen, speakerphone, removable memory, mp3 player, Internet access, and a global positioning system. The Wall Street Journal recently reported on cell phones that will feature radios, calculators, alarm clocks, flashlights, and mirrored compacts. Phones are “becoming your Swiss army knife,” one product developer enthused. Hyperactive peacocking will also be abetted by the new walkie-talkie function available on many phones, which draws further attention to the user by broadcasting to anyone within hearing distance the conversation of the person on the other end of the phone.

With all these accoutrements, it is not surprising that one contributor to a discussion list about wireless technology recently compared cell phones and BlackBerrys to “electronic pets.” Speaking to a group of business people, he reported, “you constantly see people taking their little pets out and stroking the scroll wheel, coddling them, basically ‘petting’ them.” When confined to a basement conference room, he found that participants “were compelled to ‘walk’ their electronic pets on breaks” to check their messages. In parts of Asia, young women carry their phones in decorated pouches, worn like necklaces, or in pants with specially designed pockets that keep the phone within easy reach. We have become thigmophilic with our technology—touch-loving—a trait we share with rats, as it happens. We are constantly taking them out, fiddling with them, putting them away, taking them out again, reprogramming their directories, text messaging. And cell phone makers are always searching for new ways to exploit our attachments. Nokia offers “expression” phones that allow customization of faceplates and ring tones. Many companies, such as Modtones, sell song samples for cell phone ringers. In Asia, where cell phone use among the young is especially high, companies offer popular anime and manga cartoons as downloadable “wallpaper” for cell phones.

Cell phone technology is also creating new forms of social and political networking. “Moblogging,” or mobile web logging, allows cell phone users to publish and update content to the World Wide Web. An increasing number of companies are offering cell phones with WiFi capability, and as Sadie Plant noted recently in a report she prepared for Motorola, “On the Mobile,” “today, the smallest Motorola phone has as much computing power in it as the largest, most expensive computer did less than a generation ago.” In his Forbes “Wireless Outlook” newsletter, Andrew Seybold predicted, “in twenty five years there aren’t going to be any wired phones left and I think it might happen even much sooner than that—ten to fifteen years.” As well, “the phone will be tied much more closely to the person. Since the phone is the person, the person will be the number.” It isn’t surprising that one of Seybold’s favorite movies is the James Coburn paranoid comedy, The President’s Analyst (1967), whose premise “centered on attempts by the phone company to capture the president’s psychoanalyst in order to further a plot to have phone devices implanted in people’s brains at birth.” Ma Bell meets The Manchurian Candidate.

Dodgeball.com, a new social-networking service, applies the principles of websites such as Friendster to cell phones. “Tell us where you are and we’ll tell you who and what is around you,” Dodgeball promises. “We’ll ping your friends with your whereabouts, let you know when friends-of-friends are within ten blocks, allow you to broadcast content to anyone within ten blocks of you or blast messages to your groups of friends.” The service is now available in fifteen cities in the U.S., enabling a form of friendly pseudo-stalking. “I was at Welcome to the Johnson’s and a girl came up behind me and gave a tap on the shoulder,” one recent testimonial noted. “‘Are you this guy?’ she inquired while holding up her cell phone to show my Dodgeball photo. I was indeed.”

Political organizers have also found cell phone technology to be a valuable tool. Throughout 2000 in the Philippines, the country’s many cell phone users were text-messaging derogatory slogans and commentary about then-President Joseph Estrada. With pressure on the Estrada administration mounting, activists organized large demonstrations against the president by activating cell phone “trees” to summon protesters to particular locations and to outmaneuver riot police. Estrada was forced from office in January 2001. Anti-globalization protesters in Seattle and elsewhere (using only non-corporate cell phones, surely) have employed the technology to stage and control movements during demonstrations.

Communication Delinquents

The ease of mobile communication does not guarantee positive results for all those who use it, of course, and the list of unintended negative consequences from cell phone use continues to grow. The BBC world service reported in 2001, “senior Islamic figures in Singapore have ruled that Muslim men cannot divorce their wives by sending text messages over their mobile phones.” (Muslims can divorce their wives by saying the word “talaq,” which means “I divorce you,” three times).

Concerns about the dangers of cell phone use while driving have dominated public discussion of cell phone risks. A 2001 study by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimated that “54 percent of drivers ‘usually’ have some type of wireless phone in their vehicle with them” and that this translates into approximately 600,000 drivers “actively using cell phones at any one time” on the road. Women and drivers in the suburbs were found to talk and drive more often, and “the highest national use rates were observed for drivers of vans and sport utility vehicles.” New York, New Jersey, and Washington, D.C. all require drivers to use hands-free technology (headsets or speakerphones) when talking on the cell.

Cell phones can also play host to viruses, real and virtual. A 2003 study presented at the American Society for Microbiology’s conference on infectious disease found that twelve percent of the cell phones used by medical personnel in an Israeli hospital were contaminated with bacteria. (Another recent cell phone-related health research result, purporting a link between cell phone use and decreased sperm counts, has been deemed inconclusive.) The first computer virus specifically targeting cell phones was found in late June. As The Guardian reported recently, anti-virus manufacturers believe that “the mobile phone now mirrors how the Net has developed over the past two or three years—blighted with viruses as people got faster connections and downloaded more information.”

With technology comes addiction, and applicable neologisms have entered the lexicon—such as “crackberry,” which describes the dependence exhibited by some BlackBerry wireless users. In a 2001 article in New York magazine about feuding couples, one dueling duo, Dave and Brooke, traded barbs about her wireless addictions. “I use it when I’m walking down the street,” Brooke said proudly. “She was checking her voice mail in the middle of a Seder!” was Dave’s exasperated response. “Under the table!” Brooke clarified. A recent survey conducted by the Hospital of Seoul National University found that “3 out of 10 Korean high school students who carry mobile phones are reported to be addicted” to them. Many reported feeling anxious without their phones and many displayed symptoms of repetitive stress injury from obsessive text messaging.

The cell phone has also proven effective as a facilitator and alibi for adulterous behavior. “I heard someone (honest) talking about their ‘shag phone’ the other day,” a visitor to a wireless technology blog recently noted. “He was a married man having an affair with a lady who was also married. It seems that one of the first heady rituals of the affair was to purchase a ‘his and her’ pair of pre-pay shag phones.” A recent story in the New York Times documented the use of cell phone “alibi and excuse clubs” that function as an ethically challenged form of networking—Dodgeball for the delinquent. “Cell phone-based alibi clubs, which have sprung up in the United States, Europe, and Asia, allow people to send out mass text messages to thousands of potential collaborators asking for help. When a willing helper responds, the sender and the helper devise a lie, and the helper then calls the victim with the excuse,” the report noted. One woman who started her own alibi club, which has helped spouses cheat on each other and workers mislead their bosses, “said she was not terribly concerned about lying,” although she did concede: “You wouldn’t really want your friends to know you’re sparing people’s feelings with these white lies.” Websites such as Kargo offer features like “Soundster,” which allows users to “insert sounds into your call and control your environment.” Car horns, sirens, the coughs and sniffles of the sick room—all can be simulated in order to fool the listener on the other end of the call. Technology, it seems, is allowing people to make instrumental use of anonymous strangers while maintaining the appearance of trustworthiness within their own social group.

Technology has also led to further incursions on personal privacy. Several websites now offer “candid pornography,” peeping-Tom pictures taken in locker rooms, bathrooms, and dressing rooms by unscrupulous owners of cell phone cameras. Camera phones pose a potentially daunting challenge to privacy and security; unlike old-fashioned cameras, which could be confiscated and the film destroyed, digital cameras, including those on cell phones, allow users to send images instantaneously to any e-mail address. The images can be stored indefinitely, and the evidence that a picture was ever taken can be destroyed.

Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?

Certain public interactions carry with them certain unspoken rules of behavior. When approaching a grocery store checkout line, you queue behind the last person in line and wait your turn. On the subway, you make way for passengers entering and exiting the cars. Riding on the train, you expect the interruptions of the ticket taker and the periodic crackling blare of station announcements. What you never used to expect, but must now endure, is the auditory abrasion of a stranger arguing about how much he does, indeed, owe to his landlord. I’ve heard business deals, lovers’ quarrels, and the most unsavory gossip. I’ve listened to strangers discuss in excruciating detail their own and others’ embarrassing medical conditions; I’ve heard the details of recent real estate purchases, job triumphs, and awful dates. (The only thing I haven’t heard is phone sex, but perhaps it is only a matter of time.) We are no longer overhearing, which implies accidentally stumbling upon a situation where two people are talking in presumed privacy. Now we are all simply hearing. The result is a world where social space is overtaken by anonymous, unavoidable background noise—a quotidian narration that even in its more interesting moments rarely rises above the tone of a penny dreadful. It seems almost cruel, in this context, that Motorola’s trademarked slogan for its wireless products is “Intelligence Everywhere.”

Why do these cell phone conversations bother us more than listening to two strangers chatter in person about their evening plans or listening to a parent scold a recalcitrant child? Those conversations are quantitatively greater, since we hear both sides of the discussion—so why are they nevertheless experienced as qualitatively different? Perhaps it is because cell phone users harbor illusions about being alone or assume a degree of privacy that the circumstances don’t actually allow. Because cell phone talkers are not interacting with the world around them, they come to believe that the world around them isn’t really there and surely shouldn’t intrude. And when the cell phone user commandeers the space by talking, he or she sends a very clear message to others that they are powerless to insist on their own use of the space. It is a passive-aggressive but extremely effective tactic.

Such encounters can sometimes escalate into rude intransigence or even violence. In the past few years alone, men and women have been stabbed, escorted off of airplanes by federal marshals, pepper-sprayed in movie theaters, ejected from concert halls, and deliberately rammed with cars as a result of their bad behavior on their cell phones. The Zagat restaurant guide reports that cell phone rudeness is now the number one complaint of diners, and USA Today notes that “fifty-nine percent of people would rather visit the dentist than sit next to someone using a cell phone.”

The etiquette challenges posed by cell phones are universal, although different countries have responded in slightly different ways. Writing about the impact of cell phone technology in The Guardian in 2002, James Meek noted, with moderate horror, that cell phones now encourage British people to do what “British people aren’t supposed to do: invite strangers, spontaneously, into our personal worlds. We let everyone know what our accent is, what we do for a living, what kind of stuff we do in our non-working hours.” In France, cell phone companies were pressured by the public to censor the last four digits of phone numbers appearing on monthly statements, because so many French men and women were using them to confirm that their significant other was having an affair.

In Israel, where the average person is on a cell phone four times as much as the average American, and where cell phone technology boasts an impressive 76 percent penetration rate (the United States isn’t projected to reach that level until 2009), the incursion of cell phones into daily life is even more dramatic. As sociologists Amit Schejter and Akiba Cohen found, there were no less than ten cell phone interruptions during a recent staging of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest at Israel’s National Theater, and “there has even been an anecdote reported of an undertaker’s phone ringing inside a grave as the deceased was being put to rest.” The authors explain this state of affairs with reference to the Israeli personality, which they judge to be more enthusiastic about technology and more forceful in exerting itself in public; the subtitle of their article is “chutzpah and chatter in the Holy Land.”

In the U.S., mild regional differences in the use of cell phones are evident. Reporting on a survey by Cingular wireless, CNN noted that cell phone users in the South “are more likely to silence their phones in church,” while Westerners “are most likely to turn a phone off in libraries, theaters, restaurants, and schools.” But nationwide, cell phones still frequently interrupt movie screenings, theater performances, and concerts. Audience members are not the sole offenders, either. My sister, a professional musician, told me that during one performance, in the midst of a slow and quiet passage of Verdi’s Requiem, the cell phone of one of the string players in the orchestra began ringing, much to the horror of his fellow musicians.

We cannot simply banish to Tartarus—the section of Hades reserved for punishment of the worst offenders—all those who violate the rules of social space. And the noise pollution generated by rude cell phone users is hardly the worst violation of social order; it is not the same as defacing a statue, for example. Other countries offer some reason for optimism: In societies that maintain more formality, such as Japan, loud public conversation is considered rude, and Japanese people will often cover their mouths and hide their phones from view when speaking into them.

Not surprisingly, Americans have turned to that most hallowed but least effective solution to social problems: public education. Cingular Wireless, for example, has launched a public awareness campaign whose slogan is “Be Sensible.” The program includes an advertisement shown in movie theaters about “Inconsiderate Cell Phone Guy,” a parody of bad behavior that shows a man talking loudly into his cell phone at inappropriate times: during a date, in a movie, at a wedding, in the middle of a group therapy session. It is a miniature manners nickelodeon for the wireless age. July is now officially National Cell Phone Courtesy Month, and etiquette experts such as Jacqueline Whitmore of the Protocol School of Palm Beach advise companies such as Sprint about how to encourage better behavior in their subscribers. Whitmore is relentlessly positive: “Wireless technology is booming so quickly and wireless phones have become so popular, the rules on wireless etiquette are still evolving,” she notes on her website. She cites hopeful statistics culled from public opinion surveys that say “98 percent of Americans say they move away from others when talking on a wireless phone in public” and “the vast majority (86 percent) say they ‘never’ or ‘rarely’ speak on wireless phones while conducting an entire public transaction with someone else such as a sales clerk or bank teller.” If you are wondering where these examples of wireless rectitude reside, you might find them in the land of wishful thinking. There appears to be a rather large disconnect between people’s actual behavior and their reports of their behavior.

Whitmore is correct to suggest that we are in the midst of a period of adjustment. We still have the memory of the old social rules, which remind us to be courteous towards others, especially in confined environments such as trains and elevators. But it is becoming increasingly clear that cell phone technology itself has disrupted our ability to insist on the enforcement of social rules. Etiquette experts urge us to adjust—be polite, don’t return boorish behavior with boorish behavior, set a standard of probity in your own use of cell phones. But in doing so these experts tacitly concede that every conversation is important, and that we need only learn how and when to have them. This elides an older rule: when a conversation takes place in public, its merit must be judged in part by the standards of the other participants in the social situation. By relying solely on self-discipline and public education (or that ubiquitous modern state of “awareness”), the etiquette experts have given us a doomed manual. Human nature being what it is, individuals will spend more time rationalizing their own need to make cell phone calls than thinking about how that need might affect others. Worse, the etiquette experts offer diversions rather than standards, encouraging alternatives to calling that nevertheless still succeed in removing people from the social space. “Use text messaging,” is number 7 on Whitmore’s Ten Tips for the Cell Phone Savvy.

These attempts at etiquette training also evade another reality: the decline of accepted standards for social behavior. In each of us lurks the possibility of a Jekyll-and-Hyde-like transformation, its trigger the imposition of some arbitrary rule. The problem is that, in the twenty-first century, with the breakdown of hierarchies and manners, all social rules are arbitrary. “I don’t think we have to worry about people being rude intentionally,” Whitmore told Wireless Week. “Most of us simply haven’t come to grips with the new responsibilities wireless technologies demand.” But this seems foolishly optimistic. A psychologist quoted in a story by UPI recently noted the “baffling sense of entitlement” demonstrated by citizens in the wireless world. “They don’t get sheepish when shushed,” he marveled. “You’re the rude one.” And contra Ms. Whitmore, there is intention at work in this behavior, even if it is not intentional rudeness. It is the intentional removal of oneself from the social situation in public space. This removal, as sociologists have long shown, is something more serious than a mere manners lapse. It amounts to a radical disengagement from the public sphere.

Spectator Sport

We know that the reasons people give for owning cell phones are largely practical—convenience and safety. But the reason we answer them whenever they ring is a question better left to sociology and psychology. In works such as Behavior in Public Spaces, Relations in Public, and Interaction Ritual, the great sociologist Erving Goffman mapped the myriad possibilities of human interaction in social space, and his observations take on a new relevance in our cell phone world. Crucial to Goffman’s analysis was the notion that in social situations where strangers must interact, “the individual is obliged to ‘come into play’ upon entering the situation and to stay ‘in play’ while in the situation.” Failure to demonstrate this presence sends a clear message to others of one’s hostility or disrespect for the social gathering. It effectively turns them into “non-persons.” Like the piqued lover who rebuffs her partner’s attempt to caress her, the person who removes himself from the social situation is sending a clear message to those around him: I don’t need you.

Although Goffman wrote in the era before cell phones, he might have judged their use as a “subordinate activity,” a way to pass the time such as reading or doodling that could and should be set aside when the dominant activity resumes. Within social space, we are allowed to perform a range of these secondary activities, but they must not impose upon the social group as a whole or require so much attention that they remove us from the social situation altogether. The opposite appears to be true today. The group is expected never to impinge upon—indeed, it is expected to tacitly endorse by enduring—the individual’s right to withdraw from social space by whatever means he or she chooses: cell phones, BlackBerrys, iPods, DVDs screened on laptop computers. These devices are all used as a means to refuse to be “in” the social space; they are technological cold shoulders that are worse than older forms of subordinate activity in that they impose visually and auditorily on others. Cell phones are not the only culprits here. A member of my family, traveling recently on the Amtrak train from New York, was shocked to realize that the man sitting in front of her was watching a pornographic movie on his laptop computer—a movie whose raunchy scenes were reflected in the train window and thus clearly visible to her. We have allowed what should be subordinate activities in social space to become dominant.

One of the groups Goffman studied keenly were mental patients, many of them residents at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Washington, D.C., and his comparisons often draw on the remarkable disconnect between the behavior of people in normal society and those who had been institutionalized for mental illness. It is striking in revisiting Goffman’s work how often people who use cell phones seem to be acting more like the people in the asylum than the ones in respectable society. Goffman describes “occult involvements,” for example, as any activity that undermines others’ ability to feel engaged in social space. “When an individual is perceived in an occult involvement, observers may not only sense that they are not able to claim him at the moment,” Goffman notes, “but also feel that the offender’s complete activity up till then has been falsely taken as a sign of participation with them, that all along he has been alienated from their world.” Who hasn’t observed someone sitting quietly, apparently observing the rules of social space, only to launch into loud conversation as soon as the cell phone rings? This is the pretense of social participation Goffman observed in patients at St. Elizabeth’s.

Goffman called those who declined to respond to social overtures as being “out of contact,” and said “this state is often felt to be full evidence that he is very sick indeed, that he is, in fact, cut off from all contact with the world around him.” To be accessible meant to be available in the particular social setting and to act appropriately. Today, of course, being accessible means answering your cell phone, which brings you in contact with your caller, but “out of contact” in the physical social situation, be it a crosstown bus, a train, an airplane, or simply walking down the street.

In terms of the rules of social space, cell phone use is a form of communications panhandling—forcing our conversations on others without first gaining their tacit approval. “The force that keeps people in their communication place in our middle-class society,” Goffman observed, “seems to be the fear of being thought forward and pushy, or odd, the fear of forcing a relationship where none is desired.” But middle class society itself has decided to upend such conventions in the service of greater accessibility and convenience. This is a dramatic shift that took place in a very short span of time, and it is worth at least considering the long-term implications of this subversion of norms. The behavioral rules Goffman so effectively mapped exist to protect everyone, even if we don’t, individually, always need them. They are the social equivalent of fire extinguishers placed throughout public buildings. You hope not to have to use them too often, but they can ensure that a mere spark does not become an embarrassing conflagration. In a world that eschews such norms, we find ourselves plagued by the behavior that Goffman used to witness only among the denizens of the asylum: disembodied talk that renders all of us unwilling listeners.

We also use our cell phones to exert our status in social space, like the remnants of the entourage or train, which “led a worthy to demonstrate his status by the cluster of dependent supporters that accompanied him through a town or a house of parliament.” Modern celebrities still have such escorts (a new cable television series, Entourage, tracks a fictional celebrity posse). But cell phones give all of us the unusual ability to simulate an entourage. My mother-in-law recently found herself sharing an elevator (in the apartment building she’s lived in for forty years) with a man who was speaking very loudly into his cell phone. When she asked him to keep his voice down, he became enraged and began yelling at her; he was, he said, in the midst of an “important” conversation with his secretary. He acted, in other words, as if she’d trounced on the hem of his royal train. She might have had a secretary too, of course—for all he knew she might have a fleet of assistants at her disposal—but because she wasn’t communicating with someone at that moment and he, thanks to his cell phone, was, her status in the social space was, in effect, demoted.

The language of wireless technology itself suggests its selfishness as a medium. One of the latest advances is the “Personal Area Network,” a Bluetooth technology used in Palm Pilots and other personal digital assistants. The network is individualized, closed to unwelcome intruders, and totally dependent on the choices of the user. We now have our own technological assistants and networks, quite an impressive kingdom for ordinary mortals. In this kingdom, our cell phones reassure us by providing constant contact, and we become much like a child with a security blanket or Dumbo with his feather. Like a security blanket, which is also visible to observers, cell phones provide the “‘publicization’ of emotional fulfillment,” as French sociologist Chantal de Gournay has argued. “At work, in town, while traveling—every call on the mobile phone secretly expresses a message to the public: ‘Look how much I’m in demand, how full my life is.’” Unlike those transitional objects of childhood, however, few of us are eager to shed our cell phones.

Absent Without Leave

Our daily interactions with cell phone users often prompt heated exchanges and promises of furious retribution. When New York Times columnist Joe Sharkey asked readers to send in their cell phone horror stories, he was deluged with responses: “There is not enough time in the day to relay the daily torment I must endure from these cell-yellers,” one woman said. “There’s always some self-important jerk who must holler his business all the way into Manhattan,” another commuter wearily noted. Rarely does one find a positive story about cell phone users who behaved politely, observing the common social space.

Then again, we all apparently have a cell phone alter idem, a second self that we endlessly excuse for making just such annoying cell phone calls. As a society, we are endlessly forgiving of our own personal “emergencies” that require cell phone conversation and easily apoplectic about having to listen to others’. At my local grocery store around 6:30 in the evening, it is not an uncommon sight to see a man in business attire, wandering the frozen food aisle, phone in hand, shouting, “Bird’s Eye or Jolly Green Giant? What? Yes, I got the coffee filters already!” How rude, you think, until you remember that you left your own grocery list on the kitchen counter; in a split second you are fishing for your phone so that you can call home and get its particulars. This is the quintessential actor-observer paradox: as actors, we are always politely exercising our right to be connected, but as observers we are perpetually victimized by the boorish bad manners of other cell phone users.

A new generation of sociologists has begun to apply Goffman’s insights to our use of cell phones in public. Kenneth J. Gergen, for example, has argued that one reason cell phones allow a peculiar form of diversion in public spaces is that they encourage “absent presence,” a state where “one is physically present but is absorbed by a technologically mediated world of elsewhere.” You can witness examples of absent presence everywhere: people in line at the bank or a retail store, phones to ear and deep into their own conversations—so unavailable they do not offer the most basic pleasantries to the salesperson or cashier. At my local playground, women deep in cell phone conversations are scattered on benches or distractedly pushing a child on a swing—physically present, to be sure, but “away” in their conversations, not fully engaged with those around them.

The first time you saw a person walking down the street having a conversation using a hands-free cell phone device you intuitively grasped this state. Wildly gesticulating, laughing, mumbling—to the person on the other end of the telephone, their street-walking conversation partner is engaged in normal conversation. To the outside observer, however, he looks like a deranged or slightly addled escapee from a psychiatric ward. Engaged with the ether, hooked up to an earpiece and dangling microphone, his animated voice and gestures are an anomaly in the social space. They violate our everyday sense of normal behavior.

The difficulty of harmonizing real and virtual presence isn’t new. As Mark Caldwell noted in A Short History of Rudeness about the first telephones, “many early phone stories involved a bumpkin who nods silently in reply to a caller’s increasingly agitated, ‘Are you there?’” Even young children know Goffman’s rules. When a parent is in front of a child but on the telephone (physically present but mentally “away”), a child will frequently protest—grabbing for the phone or vocalizing loudly to retrieve the parent’s attention. They are expressing a need for recognition that, in a less direct and individualized way, we all require from strangers in public space. But the challenge is greater given the sheer number of wireless users, a reality that is prompting a new form of social criticism. As a “commentary on the potential of the mobile phone for disrupting and disturbing social interactions,” the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea recently sponsored a project called “Mass Distraction.” The project featured jackets and cell phones that only allowed participants to talk on their phones if the large hood of the jacket was closed completely over their head or if they continued to insert coins into the pocket of the jacket like an old fashioned pay phone. “In order to remain connected,” the project notes, “the mobile phone user multitasks between the two communication channels. Whether disguised or not, this practice degrades the quality of the interaction with the people in his immediate presence.”

Cocooned within our “Personal Area Networks” and wirelessly transported to other spaces, we are becoming increasingly immune to the boundaries and realities of physical space. As one reporter for the Los Angeles Times said, in exasperation, “Go ahead, floss in the elevator. You’re busy; you can’t be expected to wait until you can find a bathroom.… [T]he world out there? It’s just a backdrop, as movable and transient as a fake skyline on a studio lot.” No one is an outsider with a cell phone—that is why foreign cab drivers in places like New York and Washington are openly willing to ignore laws against driving-and-talking. Beyond the psychic benefits cell phone calls provide (cab driving is a lonely occupation), their use signals the cab driver’s membership in a community apart from the ever-changing society that frequents his taxi. Our cell phones become our talismans against being perceived as (or feeling ourselves to be) outsiders.

Talk and Conversation

Recently, on a trip to China, I found myself standing on the Great Wall. One of the members of our small group had hiked ahead, and since the rest of us had decided it was time to get back down the mountain, we realized we would need to find him. Despite being in a remote location at high altitude, and having completely lost sight of him in the hazy late morning air, this proved to be the easiest of logistical tasks. One man pulled out his cell phone, called his wife back in the United States, and had her send an e-mail to the man who had walked ahead. Knowing that our lost companion religiously checked his BlackBerry wireless, we reasoned that he would surely notice an incoming message. Soon enough he reappeared, our wireless plea for his return having successfully traveled from China to Washington and back again to the Wall in mere minutes.

At the time, we were all caught up in the James Bond-like excitement of our mission. Would the cell phone work? (It did.) Would the wife’s e-mail get through to our companion’s BlackBerry? (No problem.) Only later, as we drove back to Beijing, did I experience a pang of doubt about our small communications triumph. There, at one of the Great Wonders of the World, a centuries-old example of human triumph over nature, we didn’t hesitate to do something as mundane as make a cell phone call. It is surely true that wireless communication is its own wondrous triumph over nature. But cell phone conversation somehow inspires less awe than standing atop the Great Wall, perhaps because atop the Great Wall we are still rooted in the natural world that we have conquered. Or perhaps it is simply because cell phones have become everyday wonders—as unremarkable to us as the Great Wall is to those who see it everyday.

Christian Licoppe and Jean-Philippe Heurtin have argued that cell phone use must be understood in a broader context; they note that the central feature of the modern experience is the “deinstitutionalization of personal bonds.” Deinstitutionalization spawns anxiety, and as a result we find ourselves working harder to build trust relationships. Cell phone calls “create a web of short, content-poor interactions through which bonds can be built and strengthened in an ongoing process.”

But as trust is being built and bolstered moment by moment between individuals, public trust among strangers in social settings is eroding. We are strengthening and increasing our interactions with the people we already know at the expense of those who we do not. The result, according to Kenneth Gergen, is “the erosion of face-to-face community, a coherent and centered sense of self, moral bearings, depth of relationship, and the uprooting of meaning from material context: such are the dangers of absent presence.”

No term captures this paradoxical state more ably than the word “roam,” which appears on your phone when you leave an area bristling with wireless towers and go into the wilds of the less well connected. The word appears when your cell phone is looking for a way to connect you, but the real definition of roam is “to go from place to place without purpose or direction,” which has more suggestive implications. It suggests that we have allowed our phones to become the link to our purpose and the symbol of our status—without its signal we lack direction. Roaming was a word whose previous use was largely confined to describing the activities of herds of cattle. In her report on the use of mobile phones throughout the world, Sadie Plant noted, “according to the Oxford English Dictionary, one of the earliest uses of the word ‘mobile’ was in association with the Latin phrase mobile vulgus, the excitable crowd,” whence comes our word “mob.”

Convenience and safety—the two reasons people give for why they have (or “need”) cell phones—are legitimate reasons for using wireless technology; but they are not neutral. Convenience is the major justification for fast food, but its overzealous consumption has something to do with our national obesity “epidemic.” Safety spawned a bewildering range of anti-bacterial products and the overzealous prescription of antibiotics—which in turn led to disease-resistant bacteria.

One possible solution would be to treat cell phone use the way we now treat tobacco use. Public spaces in America were once littered with spittoons and the residue of the chewing tobacco that filled them, despite the disgust the practice fostered. Social norms eventually rendered public spitting déclassé. Similarly, it was not so long ago that cigarette smoking was something people did everywhere—in movie theaters, restaurants, trains, and airplanes. Non-smokers often had a hard time finding refuge from the clouds of nicotine. Today, we ban smoking in all but designated areas. Currently, cell phone users enjoy the same privileges smokers once enjoyed, but there is no reason we cannot reverse the trend. Yale University bans cell phones in some of its libraries, and Amtrak’s introduction of “quiet cars” on some of its routes has been eagerly embraced by commuters. Perhaps one day we will exchange quiet cars for wireless cars, and the majority of public space will revert to the quietly disconnected. In doing so, we might partially reclaim something higher even than healthy lungs: civility.

This reclaiming of social space could have considerable consequences. As sociologist de Gournay has noted, “the telephone is a device ill suited to listening…it is more appropriate for exchanging information.” Considering Americans’ obsession with information—we are, after all, the “information society”—it is useful to draw the distinction. Just as there is a distinction between information and knowledge, there is a vast difference between conversation and talk.

Conversation (as opposed to “talk”) is to genuine sociability what courtship (as opposed to “hooking up”) is to romance. And the technologies that mediate these distinctions are important: the cell phone exchange of information is a distant relative of formal conversation, just as the Internet chat room is a far less compelling place to become intimate with another person than a formal date. In both cases, however, we have convinced ourselves as a culture that these alternatives are just as good as the formalities—that they are, in fact, improvements upon them.

“A conversation has a life of its own and makes demands on its own behalf,” Goffman wrote. “It is a little social system with its own boundary-making tendencies; it is a little patch of commitment and loyalty with its own heroes and its own villains.” According to census data, the percentage of Americans who live alone is the highest it has ever been in our country’s history, making a return to genuine sociability and conversation more important than ever. Cell phones provide us with a new, but not necessarily superior means of communicating with each other. They encourage talk, not conversation. They link us to those we know, but remove us from the strangers who surround us in public space. Our constant accessibility and frequent exchange of information is undeniably useful. But it would be a terrible irony if “being connected” required or encouraged a disconnection from community life—an erosion of the spontaneous encounters and everyday decencies that make society both civilized and tolerable.


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Christine Rosen is a senior editor of The New Atlantis and resident fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Her book Preaching Eugenics: Religious Leaders and the American Eugenics Movement was just published by Oxford University Press.

Our Cell Phones, Ourselves

Christine Rosen

http://www.thenewatlantis.com/archive/6/rosen.htm

"Hell is other people,” Sartre observed, but you need not be a misanthrope or a diminutive French existentialist to have experienced similar feelings during the course of a day. No matter where you live or what you do, in all likelihood you will eventually find yourself participating in that most familiar and exasperating of modern rituals: unwillingly listening to someone else’s cell phone conversation. Like the switchboard operators of times past, we are now all privy to calls being put through, to the details of loved ones contacted, appointments made, arguments aired, and gossip exchanged.

Today, more people have cell phones than fixed telephone lines, both in the United States and internationally. There are more than one billion cell phone users worldwide, and as one wireless industry analyst recently told Slate, “some time between 2010 and 2020, everyone who wants and can afford a cell phone will have one.” Americans spend, on average, about seven hours a month talking on their cell phones. Wireless phones have become such an important part of our everyday lives that in July, the country’s major wireless industry organization featured the following “quick poll” on its website: “If you were stranded on a desert island and could have one thing with you, what would it be?” The choices: “Matches/Lighter,” “Food/Water,” “Another Person,” “Wireless Phone.” The World Health Organization has even launched an “International EMF Project” to study the possible health effects of the electromagnetic fields created by wireless technologies.

But if this ubiquitous technology is now a normal part of life, our adjustment to it has not been without consequences. Especially in the United States, where cell phone use still remains low compared to other countries, we are rapidly approaching a tipping point with this technology. How has it changed our behavior, and how might it continue to do so? What new rules ought we to impose on its use? Most importantly, how has the wireless telephone encouraged us to connect individually but disconnect socially, ceding, in the process, much that was civil and civilized about the use of public space?

Untethered

Connection has long served as a potent sign of power. In the era before cell phones, popular culture served up presidents, tin-pot dictators, and crime bosses who were never far from a prominently placed row of phones, demonstrating their importance at the hub of a vast nexus. Similarly, superheroes always owned special communications devices: Batman had the Batphone, Dick Tracy his wrist-phone, Maxwell Smart his shoe spy phone. (In the Flash comics of the 1940s, the hero simply outraces phone calls as they are made, avoiding altogether the need for special communication devices.) To be able to talk to anyone, at any time, without the mediator of the human messenger and without the messenger’s attendant delays, is a thoroughly modern triumph of human engineering.

In 1983, Motorola introduced DynaTAC, now considered the first truly mobile telephone, and by the end of that year, the first commercial cellular phone systems were being used in Chicago and in the Baltimore/Washington, D.C. area. Nokia launched its own mobile phone, the cumbersome Cityman, in 1987. Americans were introduced to the glamour of mobile telephone communication that same year in a scene from the movie Wall Street. In it, the ruthless Gordon Gekko (played by Michael Douglas) self-importantly conducts his business on the beach using a large portable phone. These first-generation cell phones were hardly elegant—many people called them “luggables” rather than “portables,” and as one reporter noted in The Guardian, “mobiles of that era are often compared to bricks, but this is unfair. Bricks are quite attractive and relatively light.” But they made up in symbolic importance what they lacked in style; only the most powerful and wealthiest people owned them. Indeed, in the 1980s, the only other people besides the elite and medical professionals who had mobile technologies at all (such as pagers) were presumed to be using them for nefarious reasons. Who else but a roving drug dealer or prostitute would need to be accessible at all times?

This changed in the 1990s, when cell phones became cheaper, smaller, and more readily available. The technology spread rapidly, as did the various names given to it: in Japan it is keitai, in China it’s sho ji, Germans call their cell phones handy, in France it is le portable or le G, and in Arabic, el mobile, telephone makhmul, or telephone gowal. In countries where cell phone use is still limited to the elite—such as Bulgaria, where only 2.5 percent of the population can afford a cell phone—its power as a symbol of wealth and prestige remains high. But in the rest of the world, it has become a technology for the masses. There were approximately 340,000 wireless subscribers in the United States in 1985, according to the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Associate (CTIA); by 1995, that number had increased to more than 33 million, and by 2003, more than 158 million people in the country had gone wireless.

Why do people use cell phones? The most frequently cited reason is convenience, which can cover a rather wide range of behaviors. Writing in the Wall Street Journal this spring, an executive for a wireless company noted that “in Slovakia, people are using mobile phones to remotely switch on the heat before they return home,” and in Norway, “1.5 million people can confirm their tax returns” using cell phone short text messaging services. Paramedics use camera phones to send ahead to hospitals pictures of the incoming injuries; “in Britain, it is now commonplace for wireless technology to allow companies to remotely access meters or gather diagnostic information.” Construction workers on-site can use cell phones to send pictures to contractors off-site. Combined with the individual use of cell phones—to make appointments, locate a friend, check voicemail messages, or simply to check in at work—cell phones offer people a heretofore unknown level of convenience.

More than ninety percent of cell phone users also report that owning a cell phone makes them feel safer. The CTIA noted that in 2001, nearly 156,000 wireless emergency service calls were made every day—about 108 calls per minute. Technological Good Samaritans place calls to emergency personnel when they see traffic accidents or crimes-in-progress; individuals use their cell phones to call for assistance when a car breaks down or plans go awry. The safety rationale carries a particular poignancy after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. On that day, many men and women used cell phones to speak their final words to family and loved ones. Passengers on hijacked airplanes called wives and husbands; rescue workers on the ground phoned in to report their whereabouts. As land lines in New York and Washington, D.C., became clogged, many of us made or received frantic phone calls on cell phones—to reassure others that we were safe or to make sure that our friends and family were accounted for. Many people who had never considered owning a cell phone bought one after September 11th. If the cultural image we had of the earliest cell phones was of a technology glamorously deployed by the elite, then the image of cell phones today has to include people using them for this final act of communication, as well as terrorists who used cell phones as detonators in the bombing of trains in Madrid.

Of course, the perceived need for a technological safety device can encourage distinctly irrational behavior and create new anxieties. Recently, when a professor at Rutgers University asked his students to experiment with turning off their cell phones for 48 hours, one young woman told University Wire, “I felt like I was going to get raped if I didn’t have my cell phone in my hand. I carry it in case I need to call someone for help.” Popular culture endorses this image of cell-phone-as-life-line. The trailer for a new suspense movie, Cellular, is currently making the rounds in theaters nationwide. In it, an attractive young man is shown doing what young men apparently do with their camera-enabled cell phones: taking pictures of women in bikinis and e-mailing the images to himself. When he receives a random but desperate phone call from a woman who claims to be the victim of a kidnapping, he finds himself drawn into a race to find and save her, all the while trying to maintain that tenuous cell phone connection. It is indicative of our near-fetishistic attachment to our cell phones that we can relate (and treat as a serious moment of suspense) a scene in the movie where the protagonist, desperately trying to locate a cell phone charger before his battery runs out, holds the patrons of an electronics store at gunpoint until the battery is rejuvenated. After scenes of high-speed car chases and large explosions, the trailer closes with a disembodied voice asking the hero, “How did you get involved?” His response? “I just answered my phone.”

Many parents have responded to this perceived need for personal security by purchasing cell phones for their children, but this, too, has had some unintended consequences. One sociologist has noted that parents who do this are implicitly commenting on their own sense of security or insecurity in society. “Claiming to care about their children’s safety,” Chantal de Gournay writes, “parents develop a ‘paranoiac’ vision of the community, reflecting a lack of trust in social institutions and in any environment other than the family.” As a result, they choose surveillance technologies, such as cell phones, to monitor their children, rather than teaching them (and trusting them) to behave appropriately. James E. Katz, a communications professor at Rutgers who has written extensively about wireless communication, argues that parents who give children cell phones are actually weakening the traditional bonds of authority; “parents think they can reach kids any time they want, and thus are more indulgent of their children’s wanderings,” Katz notes. Not surprisingly, “my cell phone battery died” has become a popular excuse among teenagers for failure to check in with their parents. And I suspect nearly everyone, at some point, has suffered hours of panic when a loved one who was supposed to be “reachable” failed to answer the cell phone.

Although cell phones are a technology with broad appeal, we do not all use our cell phones in the same way. In June 2004, Cingular announced that “for the fourth year in a row, men prove to be the more talkative sex in the wireless world,” talking 16 percent more on their phones than women. Women, however, are more likely to use a cell phone “to talk to friends and family” while men use theirs for business—including, evidently, the business of mating. Researchers found that “men are using their mobile phones as peacocks use their immobilizing feathers and male bullfrogs use their immoderate croaks: To advertise to females their worth, status, and desirability,” reported the New York Times. The researchers also discovered that many of the men they observed in pubs and nightclubs carried fake cell phones, likely one of the reasons they titled their paper “Mobile Phones as Lekking Devices Among Human Males,” a lek being a “communal mating area where males gather to engage in flamboyant courtship displays.” Or, as another observer of cell phone behavior succinctly put it: “the mobile is widely used for psychosexual purposes of performance and display.”

The increasingly sophisticated accessories available on cell phones encourage such displays. One new phone hitting the market boasts video capture and playback, a 1.2 megapixel camera, a 256 color screen, speakerphone, removable memory, mp3 player, Internet access, and a global positioning system. The Wall Street Journal recently reported on cell phones that will feature radios, calculators, alarm clocks, flashlights, and mirrored compacts. Phones are “becoming your Swiss army knife,” one product developer enthused. Hyperactive peacocking will also be abetted by the new walkie-talkie function available on many phones, which draws further attention to the user by broadcasting to anyone within hearing distance the conversation of the person on the other end of the phone.

With all these accoutrements, it is not surprising that one contributor to a discussion list about wireless technology recently compared cell phones and BlackBerrys to “electronic pets.” Speaking to a group of business people, he reported, “you constantly see people taking their little pets out and stroking the scroll wheel, coddling them, basically ‘petting’ them.” When confined to a basement conference room, he found that participants “were compelled to ‘walk’ their electronic pets on breaks” to check their messages. In parts of Asia, young women carry their phones in decorated pouches, worn like necklaces, or in pants with specially designed pockets that keep the phone within easy reach. We have become thigmophilic with our technology—touch-loving—a trait we share with rats, as it happens. We are constantly taking them out, fiddling with them, putting them away, taking them out again, reprogramming their directories, text messaging. And cell phone makers are always searching for new ways to exploit our attachments. Nokia offers “expression” phones that allow customization of faceplates and ring tones. Many companies, such as Modtones, sell song samples for cell phone ringers. In Asia, where cell phone use among the young is especially high, companies offer popular anime and manga cartoons as downloadable “wallpaper” for cell phones.

Cell phone technology is also creating new forms of social and political networking. “Moblogging,” or mobile web logging, allows cell phone users to publish and update content to the World Wide Web. An increasing number of companies are offering cell phones with WiFi capability, and as Sadie Plant noted recently in a report she prepared for Motorola, “On the Mobile,” “today, the smallest Motorola phone has as much computing power in it as the largest, most expensive computer did less than a generation ago.” In his Forbes “Wireless Outlook” newsletter, Andrew Seybold predicted, “in twenty five years there aren’t going to be any wired phones left and I think it might happen even much sooner than that—ten to fifteen years.” As well, “the phone will be tied much more closely to the person. Since the phone is the person, the person will be the number.” It isn’t surprising that one of Seybold’s favorite movies is the James Coburn paranoid comedy, The President’s Analyst (1967), whose premise “centered on attempts by the phone company to capture the president’s psychoanalyst in order to further a plot to have phone devices implanted in people’s brains at birth.” Ma Bell meets The Manchurian Candidate.

Dodgeball.com, a new social-networking service, applies the principles of websites such as Friendster to cell phones. “Tell us where you are and we’ll tell you who and what is around you,” Dodgeball promises. “We’ll ping your friends with your whereabouts, let you know when friends-of-friends are within ten blocks, allow you to broadcast content to anyone within ten blocks of you or blast messages to your groups of friends.” The service is now available in fifteen cities in the U.S., enabling a form of friendly pseudo-stalking. “I was at Welcome to the Johnson’s and a girl came up behind me and gave a tap on the shoulder,” one recent testimonial noted. “‘Are you this guy?’ she inquired while holding up her cell phone to show my Dodgeball photo. I was indeed.”

Political organizers have also found cell phone technology to be a valuable tool. Throughout 2000 in the Philippines, the country’s many cell phone users were text-messaging derogatory slogans and commentary about then-President Joseph Estrada. With pressure on the Estrada administration mounting, activists organized large demonstrations against the president by activating cell phone “trees” to summon protesters to particular locations and to outmaneuver riot police. Estrada was forced from office in January 2001. Anti-globalization protesters in Seattle and elsewhere (using only non-corporate cell phones, surely) have employed the technology to stage and control movements during demonstrations.

Communication Delinquents

The ease of mobile communication does not guarantee positive results for all those who use it, of course, and the list of unintended negative consequences from cell phone use continues to grow. The BBC world service reported in 2001, “senior Islamic figures in Singapore have ruled that Muslim men cannot divorce their wives by sending text messages over their mobile phones.” (Muslims can divorce their wives by saying the word “talaq,” which means “I divorce you,” three times).

Concerns about the dangers of cell phone use while driving have dominated public discussion of cell phone risks. A 2001 study by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimated that “54 percent of drivers ‘usually’ have some type of wireless phone in their vehicle with them” and that this translates into approximately 600,000 drivers “actively using cell phones at any one time” on the road. Women and drivers in the suburbs were found to talk and drive more often, and “the highest national use rates were observed for drivers of vans and sport utility vehicles.” New York, New Jersey, and Washington, D.C. all require drivers to use hands-free technology (headsets or speakerphones) when talking on the cell.

Cell phones can also play host to viruses, real and virtual. A 2003 study presented at the American Society for Microbiology’s conference on infectious disease found that twelve percent of the cell phones used by medical personnel in an Israeli hospital were contaminated with bacteria. (Another recent cell phone-related health research result, purporting a link between cell phone use and decreased sperm counts, has been deemed inconclusive.) The first computer virus specifically targeting cell phones was found in late June. As The Guardian reported recently, anti-virus manufacturers believe that “the mobile phone now mirrors how the Net has developed over the past two or three years—blighted with viruses as people got faster connections and downloaded more information.”

With technology comes addiction, and applicable neologisms have entered the lexicon—such as “crackberry,” which describes the dependence exhibited by some BlackBerry wireless users. In a 2001 article in New York magazine about feuding couples, one dueling duo, Dave and Brooke, traded barbs about her wireless addictions. “I use it when I’m walking down the street,” Brooke said proudly. “She was checking her voice mail in the middle of a Seder!” was Dave’s exasperated response. “Under the table!” Brooke clarified. A recent survey conducted by the Hospital of Seoul National University found that “3 out of 10 Korean high school students who carry mobile phones are reported to be addicted” to them. Many reported feeling anxious without their phones and many displayed symptoms of repetitive stress injury from obsessive text messaging.

The cell phone has also proven effective as a facilitator and alibi for adulterous behavior. “I heard someone (honest) talking about their ‘shag phone’ the other day,” a visitor to a wireless technology blog recently noted. “He was a married man having an affair with a lady who was also married. It seems that one of the first heady rituals of the affair was to purchase a ‘his and her’ pair of pre-pay shag phones.” A recent story in the New York Times documented the use of cell phone “alibi and excuse clubs” that function as an ethically challenged form of networking—Dodgeball for the delinquent. “Cell phone-based alibi clubs, which have sprung up in the United States, Europe, and Asia, allow people to send out mass text messages to thousands of potential collaborators asking for help. When a willing helper responds, the sender and the helper devise a lie, and the helper then calls the victim with the excuse,” the report noted. One woman who started her own alibi club, which has helped spouses cheat on each other and workers mislead their bosses, “said she was not terribly concerned about lying,” although she did concede: “You wouldn’t really want your friends to know you’re sparing people’s feelings with these white lies.” Websites such as Kargo offer features like “Soundster,” which allows users to “insert sounds into your call and control your environment.” Car horns, sirens, the coughs and sniffles of the sick room—all can be simulated in order to fool the listener on the other end of the call. Technology, it seems, is allowing people to make instrumental use of anonymous strangers while maintaining the appearance of trustworthiness within their own social group.

Technology has also led to further incursions on personal privacy. Several websites now offer “candid pornography,” peeping-Tom pictures taken in locker rooms, bathrooms, and dressing rooms by unscrupulous owners of cell phone cameras. Camera phones pose a potentially daunting challenge to privacy and security; unlike old-fashioned cameras, which could be confiscated and the film destroyed, digital cameras, including those on cell phones, allow users to send images instantaneously to any e-mail address. The images can be stored indefinitely, and the evidence that a picture was ever taken can be destroyed.

Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?

Certain public interactions carry with them certain unspoken rules of behavior. When approaching a grocery store checkout line, you queue behind the last person in line and wait your turn. On the subway, you make way for passengers entering and exiting the cars. Riding on the train, you expect the interruptions of the ticket taker and the periodic crackling blare of station announcements. What you never used to expect, but must now endure, is the auditory abrasion of a stranger arguing about how much he does, indeed, owe to his landlord. I’ve heard business deals, lovers’ quarrels, and the most unsavory gossip. I’ve listened to strangers discuss in excruciating detail their own and others’ embarrassing medical conditions; I’ve heard the details of recent real estate purchases, job triumphs, and awful dates. (The only thing I haven’t heard is phone sex, but perhaps it is only a matter of time.) We are no longer overhearing, which implies accidentally stumbling upon a situation where two people are talking in presumed privacy. Now we are all simply hearing. The result is a world where social space is overtaken by anonymous, unavoidable background noise—a quotidian narration that even in its more interesting moments rarely rises above the tone of a penny dreadful. It seems almost cruel, in this context, that Motorola’s trademarked slogan for its wireless products is “Intelligence Everywhere.”

Why do these cell phone conversations bother us more than listening to two strangers chatter in person about their evening plans or listening to a parent scold a recalcitrant child? Those conversations are quantitatively greater, since we hear both sides of the discussion—so why are they nevertheless experienced as qualitatively different? Perhaps it is because cell phone users harbor illusions about being alone or assume a degree of privacy that the circumstances don’t actually allow. Because cell phone talkers are not interacting with the world around them, they come to believe that the world around them isn’t really there and surely shouldn’t intrude. And when the cell phone user commandeers the space by talking, he or she sends a very clear message to others that they are powerless to insist on their own use of the space. It is a passive-aggressive but extremely effective tactic.

Such encounters can sometimes escalate into rude intransigence or even violence. In the past few years alone, men and women have been stabbed, escorted off of airplanes by federal marshals, pepper-sprayed in movie theaters, ejected from concert halls, and deliberately rammed with cars as a result of their bad behavior on their cell phones. The Zagat restaurant guide reports that cell phone rudeness is now the number one complaint of diners, and USA Today notes that “fifty-nine percent of people would rather visit the dentist than sit next to someone using a cell phone.”

The etiquette challenges posed by cell phones are universal, although different countries have responded in slightly different ways. Writing about the impact of cell phone technology in The Guardian in 2002, James Meek noted, with moderate horror, that cell phones now encourage British people to do what “British people aren’t supposed to do: invite strangers, spontaneously, into our personal worlds. We let everyone know what our accent is, what we do for a living, what kind of stuff we do in our non-working hours.” In France, cell phone companies were pressured by the public to censor the last four digits of phone numbers appearing on monthly statements, because so many French men and women were using them to confirm that their significant other was having an affair.

In Israel, where the average person is on a cell phone four times as much as the average American, and where cell phone technology boasts an impressive 76 percent penetration rate (the United States isn’t projected to reach that level until 2009), the incursion of cell phones into daily life is even more dramatic. As sociologists Amit Schejter and Akiba Cohen found, there were no less than ten cell phone interruptions during a recent staging of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest at Israel’s National Theater, and “there has even been an anecdote reported of an undertaker’s phone ringing inside a grave as the deceased was being put to rest.” The authors explain this state of affairs with reference to the Israeli personality, which they judge to be more enthusiastic about technology and more forceful in exerting itself in public; the subtitle of their article is “chutzpah and chatter in the Holy Land.”

In the U.S., mild regional differences in the use of cell phones are evident. Reporting on a survey by Cingular wireless, CNN noted that cell phone users in the South “are more likely to silence their phones in church,” while Westerners “are most likely to turn a phone off in libraries, theaters, restaurants, and schools.” But nationwide, cell phones still frequently interrupt movie screenings, theater performances, and concerts. Audience members are not the sole offenders, either. My sister, a professional musician, told me that during one performance, in the midst of a slow and quiet passage of Verdi’s Requiem, the cell phone of one of the string players in the orchestra began ringing, much to the horror of his fellow musicians.

We cannot simply banish to Tartarus—the section of Hades reserved for punishment of the worst offenders—all those who violate the rules of social space. And the noise pollution generated by rude cell phone users is hardly the worst violation of social order; it is not the same as defacing a statue, for example. Other countries offer some reason for optimism: In societies that maintain more formality, such as Japan, loud public conversation is considered rude, and Japanese people will often cover their mouths and hide their phones from view when speaking into them.

Not surprisingly, Americans have turned to that most hallowed but least effective solution to social problems: public education. Cingular Wireless, for example, has launched a public awareness campaign whose slogan is “Be Sensible.” The program includes an advertisement shown in movie theaters about “Inconsiderate Cell Phone Guy,” a parody of bad behavior that shows a man talking loudly into his cell phone at inappropriate times: during a date, in a movie, at a wedding, in the middle of a group therapy session. It is a miniature manners nickelodeon for the wireless age. July is now officially National Cell Phone Courtesy Month, and etiquette experts such as Jacqueline Whitmore of the Protocol School of Palm Beach advise companies such as Sprint about how to encourage better behavior in their subscribers. Whitmore is relentlessly positive: “Wireless technology is booming so quickly and wireless phones have become so popular, the rules on wireless etiquette are still evolving,” she notes on her website. She cites hopeful statistics culled from public opinion surveys that say “98 percent of Americans say they move away from others when talking on a wireless phone in public” and “the vast majority (86 percent) say they ‘never’ or ‘rarely’ speak on wireless phones while conducting an entire public transaction with someone else such as a sales clerk or bank teller.” If you are wondering where these examples of wireless rectitude reside, you might find them in the land of wishful thinking. There appears to be a rather large disconnect between people’s actual behavior and their reports of their behavior.

Whitmore is correct to suggest that we are in the midst of a period of adjustment. We still have the memory of the old social rules, which remind us to be courteous towards others, especially in confined environments such as trains and elevators. But it is becoming increasingly clear that cell phone technology itself has disrupted our ability to insist on the enforcement of social rules. Etiquette experts urge us to adjust—be polite, don’t return boorish behavior with boorish behavior, set a standard of probity in your own use of cell phones. But in doing so these experts tacitly concede that every conversation is important, and that we need only learn how and when to have them. This elides an older rule: when a conversation takes place in public, its merit must be judged in part by the standards of the other participants in the social situation. By relying solely on self-discipline and public education (or that ubiquitous modern state of “awareness”), the etiquette experts have given us a doomed manual. Human nature being what it is, individuals will spend more time rationalizing their own need to make cell phone calls than thinking about how that need might affect others. Worse, the etiquette experts offer diversions rather than standards, encouraging alternatives to calling that nevertheless still succeed in removing people from the social space. “Use text messaging,” is number 7 on Whitmore’s Ten Tips for the Cell Phone Savvy.

These attempts at etiquette training also evade another reality: the decline of accepted standards for social behavior. In each of us lurks the possibility of a Jekyll-and-Hyde-like transformation, its trigger the imposition of some arbitrary rule. The problem is that, in the twenty-first century, with the breakdown of hierarchies and manners, all social rules are arbitrary. “I don’t think we have to worry about people being rude intentionally,” Whitmore told Wireless Week. “Most of us simply haven’t come to grips with the new responsibilities wireless technologies demand.” But this seems foolishly optimistic. A psychologist quoted in a story by UPI recently noted the “baffling sense of entitlement” demonstrated by citizens in the wireless world. “They don’t get sheepish when shushed,” he marveled. “You’re the rude one.” And contra Ms. Whitmore, there is intention at work in this behavior, even if it is not intentional rudeness. It is the intentional removal of oneself from the social situation in public space. This removal, as sociologists have long shown, is something more serious than a mere manners lapse. It amounts to a radical disengagement from the public sphere.

Spectator Sport

We know that the reasons people give for owning cell phones are largely practical—convenience and safety. But the reason we answer them whenever they ring is a question better left to sociology and psychology. In works such as Behavior in Public Spaces, Relations in Public, and Interaction Ritual, the great sociologist Erving Goffman mapped the myriad possibilities of human interaction in social space, and his observations take on a new relevance in our cell phone world. Crucial to Goffman’s analysis was the notion that in social situations where strangers must interact, “the individual is obliged to ‘come into play’ upon entering the situation and to stay ‘in play’ while in the situation.” Failure to demonstrate this presence sends a clear message to others of one’s hostility or disrespect for the social gathering. It effectively turns them into “non-persons.” Like the piqued lover who rebuffs her partner’s attempt to caress her, the person who removes himself from the social situation is sending a clear message to those around him: I don’t need you.

Although Goffman wrote in the era before cell phones, he might have judged their use as a “subordinate activity,” a way to pass the time such as reading or doodling that could and should be set aside when the dominant activity resumes. Within social space, we are allowed to perform a range of these secondary activities, but they must not impose upon the social group as a whole or require so much attention that they remove us from the social situation altogether. The opposite appears to be true today. The group is expected never to impinge upon—indeed, it is expected to tacitly endorse by enduring—the individual’s right to withdraw from social space by whatever means he or she chooses: cell phones, BlackBerrys, iPods, DVDs screened on laptop computers. These devices are all used as a means to refuse to be “in” the social space; they are technological cold shoulders that are worse than older forms of subordinate activity in that they impose visually and auditorily on others. Cell phones are not the only culprits here. A member of my family, traveling recently on the Amtrak train from New York, was shocked to realize that the man sitting in front of her was watching a pornographic movie on his laptop computer—a movie whose raunchy scenes were reflected in the train window and thus clearly visible to her. We have allowed what should be subordinate activities in social space to become dominant.

One of the groups Goffman studied keenly were mental patients, many of them residents at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Washington, D.C., and his comparisons often draw on the remarkable disconnect between the behavior of people in normal society and those who had been institutionalized for mental illness. It is striking in revisiting Goffman’s work how often people who use cell phones seem to be acting more like the people in the asylum than the ones in respectable society. Goffman describes “occult involvements,” for example, as any activity that undermines others’ ability to feel engaged in social space. “When an individual is perceived in an occult involvement, observers may not only sense that they are not able to claim him at the moment,” Goffman notes, “but also feel that the offender’s complete activity up till then has been falsely taken as a sign of participation with them, that all along he has been alienated from their world.” Who hasn’t observed someone sitting quietly, apparently observing the rules of social space, only to launch into loud conversation as soon as the cell phone rings? This is the pretense of social participation Goffman observed in patients at St. Elizabeth’s.

Goffman called those who declined to respond to social overtures as being “out of contact,” and said “this state is often felt to be full evidence that he is very sick indeed, that he is, in fact, cut off from all contact with the world around him.” To be accessible meant to be available in the particular social setting and to act appropriately. Today, of course, being accessible means answering your cell phone, which brings you in contact with your caller, but “out of contact” in the physical social situation, be it a crosstown bus, a train, an airplane, or simply walking down the street.

In terms of the rules of social space, cell phone use is a form of communications panhandling—forcing our conversations on others without first gaining their tacit approval. “The force that keeps people in their communication place in our middle-class society,” Goffman observed, “seems to be the fear of being thought forward and pushy, or odd, the fear of forcing a relationship where none is desired.” But middle class society itself has decided to upend such conventions in the service of greater accessibility and convenience. This is a dramatic shift that took place in a very short span of time, and it is worth at least considering the long-term implications of this subversion of norms. The behavioral rules Goffman so effectively mapped exist to protect everyone, even if we don’t, individually, always need them. They are the social equivalent of fire extinguishers placed throughout public buildings. You hope not to have to use them too often, but they can ensure that a mere spark does not become an embarrassing conflagration. In a world that eschews such norms, we find ourselves plagued by the behavior that Goffman used to witness only among the denizens of the asylum: disembodied talk that renders all of us unwilling listeners.

We also use our cell phones to exert our status in social space, like the remnants of the entourage or train, which “led a worthy to demonstrate his status by the cluster of dependent supporters that accompanied him through a town or a house of parliament.” Modern celebrities still have such escorts (a new cable television series, Entourage, tracks a fictional celebrity posse). But cell phones give all of us the unusual ability to simulate an entourage. My mother-in-law recently found herself sharing an elevator (in the apartment building she’s lived in for forty years) with a man who was speaking very loudly into his cell phone. When she asked him to keep his voice down, he became enraged and began yelling at her; he was, he said, in the midst of an “important” conversation with his secretary. He acted, in other words, as if she’d trounced on the hem of his royal train. She might have had a secretary too, of course—for all he knew she might have a fleet of assistants at her disposal—but because she wasn’t communicating with someone at that moment and he, thanks to his cell phone, was, her status in the social space was, in effect, demoted.

The language of wireless technology itself suggests its selfishness as a medium. One of the latest advances is the “Personal Area Network,” a Bluetooth technology used in Palm Pilots and other personal digital assistants. The network is individualized, closed to unwelcome intruders, and totally dependent on the choices of the user. We now have our own technological assistants and networks, quite an impressive kingdom for ordinary mortals. In this kingdom, our cell phones reassure us by providing constant contact, and we become much like a child with a security blanket or Dumbo with his feather. Like a security blanket, which is also visible to observers, cell phones provide the “‘publicization’ of emotional fulfillment,” as French sociologist Chantal de Gournay has argued. “At work, in town, while traveling—every call on the mobile phone secretly expresses a message to the public: ‘Look how much I’m in demand, how full my life is.’” Unlike those transitional objects of childhood, however, few of us are eager to shed our cell phones.

Absent Without Leave

Our daily interactions with cell phone users often prompt heated exchanges and promises of furious retribution. When New York Times columnist Joe Sharkey asked readers to send in their cell phone horror stories, he was deluged with responses: “There is not enough time in the day to relay the daily torment I must endure from these cell-yellers,” one woman said. “There’s always some self-important jerk who must holler his business all the way into Manhattan,” another commuter wearily noted. Rarely does one find a positive story about cell phone users who behaved politely, observing the common social space.

Then again, we all apparently have a cell phone alter idem, a second self that we endlessly excuse for making just such annoying cell phone calls. As a society, we are endlessly forgiving of our own personal “emergencies” that require cell phone conversation and easily apoplectic about having to listen to others’. At my local grocery store around 6:30 in the evening, it is not an uncommon sight to see a man in business attire, wandering the frozen food aisle, phone in hand, shouting, “Bird’s Eye or Jolly Green Giant? What? Yes, I got the coffee filters already!” How rude, you think, until you remember that you left your own grocery list on the kitchen counter; in a split second you are fishing for your phone so that you can call home and get its particulars. This is the quintessential actor-observer paradox: as actors, we are always politely exercising our right to be connected, but as observers we are perpetually victimized by the boorish bad manners of other cell phone users.

A new generation of sociologists has begun to apply Goffman’s insights to our use of cell phones in public. Kenneth J. Gergen, for example, has argued that one reason cell phones allow a peculiar form of diversion in public spaces is that they encourage “absent presence,” a state where “one is physically present but is absorbed by a technologically mediated world of elsewhere.” You can witness examples of absent presence everywhere: people in line at the bank or a retail store, phones to ear and deep into their own conversations—so unavailable they do not offer the most basic pleasantries to the salesperson or cashier. At my local playground, women deep in cell phone conversations are scattered on benches or distractedly pushing a child on a swing—physically present, to be sure, but “away” in their conversations, not fully engaged with those around them.

The first time you saw a person walking down the street having a conversation using a hands-free cell phone device you intuitively grasped this state. Wildly gesticulating, laughing, mumbling—to the person on the other end of the telephone, their street-walking conversation partner is engaged in normal conversation. To the outside observer, however, he looks like a deranged or slightly addled escapee from a psychiatric ward. Engaged with the ether, hooked up to an earpiece and dangling microphone, his animated voice and gestures are an anomaly in the social space. They violate our everyday sense of normal behavior.

The difficulty of harmonizing real and virtual presence isn’t new. As Mark Caldwell noted in A Short History of Rudeness about the first telephones, “many early phone stories involved a bumpkin who nods silently in reply to a caller’s increasingly agitated, ‘Are you there?’” Even young children know Goffman’s rules. When a parent is in front of a child but on the telephone (physically present but mentally “away”), a child will frequently protest—grabbing for the phone or vocalizing loudly to retrieve the parent’s attention. They are expressing a need for recognition that, in a less direct and individualized way, we all require from strangers in public space. But the challenge is greater given the sheer number of wireless users, a reality that is prompting a new form of social criticism. As a “commentary on the potential of the mobile phone for disrupting and disturbing social interactions,” the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea recently sponsored a project called “Mass Distraction.” The project featured jackets and cell phones that only allowed participants to talk on their phones if the large hood of the jacket was closed completely over their head or if they continued to insert coins into the pocket of the jacket like an old fashioned pay phone. “In order to remain connected,” the project notes, “the mobile phone user multitasks between the two communication channels. Whether disguised or not, this practice degrades the quality of the interaction with the people in his immediate presence.”

Cocooned within our “Personal Area Networks” and wirelessly transported to other spaces, we are becoming increasingly immune to the boundaries and realities of physical space. As one reporter for the Los Angeles Times said, in exasperation, “Go ahead, floss in the elevator. You’re busy; you can’t be expected to wait until you can find a bathroom.… [T]he world out there? It’s just a backdrop, as movable and transient as a fake skyline on a studio lot.” No one is an outsider with a cell phone—that is why foreign cab drivers in places like New York and Washington are openly willing to ignore laws against driving-and-talking. Beyond the psychic benefits cell phone calls provide (cab driving is a lonely occupation), their use signals the cab driver’s membership in a community apart from the ever-changing society that frequents his taxi. Our cell phones become our talismans against being perceived as (or feeling ourselves to be) outsiders.

Talk and Conversation

Recently, on a trip to China, I found myself standing on the Great Wall. One of the members of our small group had hiked ahead, and since the rest of us had decided it was time to get back down the mountain, we realized we would need to find him. Despite being in a remote location at high altitude, and having completely lost sight of him in the hazy late morning air, this proved to be the easiest of logistical tasks. One man pulled out his cell phone, called his wife back in the United States, and had her send an e-mail to the man who had walked ahead. Knowing that our lost companion religiously checked his BlackBerry wireless, we reasoned that he would surely notice an incoming message. Soon enough he reappeared, our wireless plea for his return having successfully traveled from China to Washington and back again to the Wall in mere minutes.

At the time, we were all caught up in the James Bond-like excitement of our mission. Would the cell phone work? (It did.) Would the wife’s e-mail get through to our companion’s BlackBerry? (No problem.) Only later, as we drove back to Beijing, did I experience a pang of doubt about our small communications triumph. There, at one of the Great Wonders of the World, a centuries-old example of human triumph over nature, we didn’t hesitate to do something as mundane as make a cell phone call. It is surely true that wireless communication is its own wondrous triumph over nature. But cell phone conversation somehow inspires less awe than standing atop the Great Wall, perhaps because atop the Great Wall we are still rooted in the natural world that we have conquered. Or perhaps it is simply because cell phones have become everyday wonders—as unremarkable to us as the Great Wall is to those who see it everyday.

Christian Licoppe and Jean-Philippe Heurtin have argued that cell phone use must be understood in a broader context; they note that the central feature of the modern experience is the “deinstitutionalization of personal bonds.” Deinstitutionalization spawns anxiety, and as a result we find ourselves working harder to build trust relationships. Cell phone calls “create a web of short, content-poor interactions through which bonds can be built and strengthened in an ongoing process.”

But as trust is being built and bolstered moment by moment between individuals, public trust among strangers in social settings is eroding. We are strengthening and increasing our interactions with the people we already know at the expense of those who we do not. The result, according to Kenneth Gergen, is “the erosion of face-to-face community, a coherent and centered sense of self, moral bearings, depth of relationship, and the uprooting of meaning from material context: such are the dangers of absent presence.”

No term captures this paradoxical state more ably than the word “roam,” which appears on your phone when you leave an area bristling with wireless towers and go into the wilds of the less well connected. The word appears when your cell phone is looking for a way to connect you, but the real definition of roam is “to go from place to place without purpose or direction,” which has more suggestive implications. It suggests that we have allowed our phones to become the link to our purpose and the symbol of our status—without its signal we lack direction. Roaming was a word whose previous use was largely confined to describing the activities of herds of cattle. In her report on the use of mobile phones throughout the world, Sadie Plant noted, “according to the Oxford English Dictionary, one of the earliest uses of the word ‘mobile’ was in association with the Latin phrase mobile vulgus, the excitable crowd,” whence comes our word “mob.”

Convenience and safety—the two reasons people give for why they have (or “need”) cell phones—are legitimate reasons for using wireless technology; but they are not neutral. Convenience is the major justification for fast food, but its overzealous consumption has something to do with our national obesity “epidemic.” Safety spawned a bewildering range of anti-bacterial products and the overzealous prescription of antibiotics—which in turn led to disease-resistant bacteria.

One possible solution would be to treat cell phone use the way we now treat tobacco use. Public spaces in America were once littered with spittoons and the residue of the chewing tobacco that filled them, despite the disgust the practice fostered. Social norms eventually rendered public spitting déclassé. Similarly, it was not so long ago that cigarette smoking was something people did everywhere—in movie theaters, restaurants, trains, and airplanes. Non-smokers often had a hard time finding refuge from the clouds of nicotine. Today, we ban smoking in all but designated areas. Currently, cell phone users enjoy the same privileges smokers once enjoyed, but there is no reason we cannot reverse the trend. Yale University bans cell phones in some of its libraries, and Amtrak’s introduction of “quiet cars” on some of its routes has been eagerly embraced by commuters. Perhaps one day we will exchange quiet cars for wireless cars, and the majority of public space will revert to the quietly disconnected. In doing so, we might partially reclaim something higher even than healthy lungs: civility.

This reclaiming of social space could have considerable consequences. As sociologist de Gournay has noted, “the telephone is a device ill suited to listening…it is more appropriate for exchanging information.” Considering Americans’ obsession with information—we are, after all, the “information society”—it is useful to draw the distinction. Just as there is a distinction between information and knowledge, there is a vast difference between conversation and talk.

Conversation (as opposed to “talk”) is to genuine sociability what courtship (as opposed to “hooking up”) is to romance. And the technologies that mediate these distinctions are important: the cell phone exchange of information is a distant relative of formal conversation, just as the Internet chat room is a far less compelling place to become intimate with another person than a formal date. In both cases, however, we have convinced ourselves as a culture that these alternatives are just as good as the formalities—that they are, in fact, improvements upon them.

“A conversation has a life of its own and makes demands on its own behalf,” Goffman wrote. “It is a little social system with its own boundary-making tendencies; it is a little patch of commitment and loyalty with its own heroes and its own villains.” According to census data, the percentage of Americans who live alone is the highest it has ever been in our country’s history, making a return to genuine sociability and conversation more important than ever. Cell phones provide us with a new, but not necessarily superior means of communicating with each other. They encourage talk, not conversation. They link us to those we know, but remove us from the strangers who surround us in public space. Our constant accessibility and frequent exchange of information is undeniably useful. But it would be a terrible irony if “being connected” required or encouraged a disconnection from community life—an erosion of the spontaneous encounters and everyday decencies that make society both civilized and tolerable.


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Christine Rosen is a senior editor of The New Atlantis and resident fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Her book Preaching Eugenics: Religious Leaders and the American Eugenics Movement was just published by Oxford University Press.

October 10, 2004
Saved, and Enslaved, by the Cell
By KEN BELSON

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/10/weekinre...t&position=

IRST in phone-company marketing, and now in popular culture, the cellular phone has taken on the aura of an amulet of safety, an indispensable lifeline: wherever you are, you can always reach help.

The new movie "Cellular" is all about the cellphone as savior. Kim Basinger plays a woman who is abducted and taken to an attic, where there is an old rotary-dial phone that her captor proceeds to smash with a bat. Luckily, Ms. Basinger's character is a science teacher, and manages to piece the debris together into a makeshift communication device. Attempting to use it, she is connected at random to the cellphone of a handsome surfer played by Chris Evans, who spends the rest of the movie saving the day while keeping her on the line.

Though the surfer must overcome weak cellular signals and dying batteries along with the more generic sorts of movie-plot crises, the mobile phone is clearly meant to be the hero of the piece, trumping fusty old fixed-line telephony in nearly every way.

But the notion is stretched so far in the film that it raises some contrarian questions: Is the sense of security engendered by a cellphone as much illusion as reality? Does carrying one make people better at coping with the world, or worse? Is it a lifeline or an apron string?

There is no question that instant access to a phone can save lives. People report fires and robberies, heart attacks and car crashes; parents keep tabs on children; grown children stay in touch with elderly parents. Knowing that you can always call for help in an emergency makes people feel safer.

But they also tether people more closely and constantly to others, and in recent months a growing number of experts have identified and begun to study a distinct downside in that: cellphone use may be making us less autonomous and less capable of solving problems on our own, even when the answers are right in front of us.

According to Christine Rosen, a senior editor at the journal New Atlantis and the author of "Our Cellphones, Ourselves," a recent article exploring the social effects of the mobile phone, the ease of obtaining instant advice encourages cellphone users to respond to any uncertainty, crucial or trivial, by dialing instead of deciding. The green sweater or the blue, pizza or Chinese, the bridge or the tunnel - why take responsibility for making up your own mind when you can convene a meeting in a minute?

"Cellphones foster a curious dependency," Ms. Rosen said. "The cellphone erodes something that is being obliterated in American society: self-reliance."

She offered an example. "I was taught how to change a tire so I can get a spare on and get to a garage," she said. "But who changes a tire now? You just call AAA."

Oddly, being able to keep constant track of friends and family can introduce a whole new kind of insecurity. For a parent, a call to a cellphone-carrying child may bring reassurance, but when the child doesn't answer the phone, the parent starts thinking the worst.

"The more available you are, the more worrisome it is when you can't reach people," Ms. Rosen said.

That situation also illustrates how the cellphone has become a tool for manipulating relationships. Children may use the phone as a technological alibi, claiming that their battery was dead or that they must have been in a signal dead spot, when in fact they saw it was Mom calling - again - and chose not to pick up.

The protector-enslaver duality of the cellphone is especially apparent in places like national parks, where millions of Americans test their mettle in the wild. Not surprisingly, the National Park Service sees plenty of hikers and campers carrying cellphones these days, and sometimes saving lives with them.

But they can also encourage park visitors to take bigger chances and do more dangerous things than they might otherwise, in the often-false belief that in case of trouble, help will be a call away. It never occurs to some that signal coverage out in the wilderness may be poor or nonexistent, or that park rangers are not AAA.

"We've rescued a few people on Denali and Mount Rainier with cellphones," said David Barna, a spokesman for the Park Service. "But you don't necessarily want calls from people who stub their toes. And one of our worries is that people will take their cellphones as security blankets, and travel alone in parks."

Wilderness rescue aside, there are experts who say that the discussion of cellphones and autonomy has gotten the cause-and-effect backwards. Autonomy was already an illusion, they say, in a world built on instant communication, whether by telegraph or telephone or fax or e-mail or whatever. Cellphones just add more convenience.

"We are less self-reliant than ever, not because we are less independent, but because we are so much more connected," said Mark Federman, chief strategist at the McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology at the University of Toronto.

That cellphones help "reverse independence into dependence" is neither good nor bad, Mr. Federman said, just a natural outgrowth of technological innovation. Reflection, introspection, thinking for yourself - these tools of the mind, he said, exist separately from any technology.

There are also those who argue that cellphones ultimately empower rather than debilitate. We can make more intelligent choices and avoid more mistakes, they say, when we can quickly gather information and consult others.

"If you are left to your own, what would you think about?" said Kenneth J. Gergen, a professor of psychology at Swarthmore College, and author of "The Saturated Self." "You have to have other voices, reports and news. The best decisions are made in a whole set of dialogues."

Another growing addiction
By Steve Gillespie / managing editor


— A carload of four young people went by me on Eighth Street in downtown Meridian one early evening recently. They looked like they were high school aged kids. One was driving, one was in the front passenger seat, two were seated in the back seat of the car and all four of them were talking on their cell phones.
I guess I’m an old fuddy duddy. Whenever I have a chance to get away from phones, I take it.
Research published earlier this year from the University of Florida tells us there really appears to be such a thing as cell phone addiction, as well as addiction to other technologies.
Lisa Merlo, an assistant professor of psychiatry in the university’s College of Medicine was quoted in the report saying: “It’s not so much talking on the phone that’s typically the problem although that can have consequences too. (It’s) this need to be connected, to know what’s going on and be available to other people. That’s one of the hallmarks of cell phone addiction.”
She went on to say that unlike addictions to alcohol, other drugs or gambling, it can be be harder to pinpoint the problem cell phone user.
But, she said, if someone can’t get through dinner without sending text messages or typing on a personal digital assistant during a meeting, it could be serious.
I’ve seen it in my own house — a young person eating, while chatting online, while talking on a cell phone AND the regular land line phone all at the same time. The advantage is that kids today have more dexterity in their toes than people of my generation. You can’t do all that without using your feet a little.
We talked all the time, too, people my age did, and we were on the phone too much, and kids before us did it, too, but we got run off the phone eventually because someone else had to use it or didn’t want it tied up.
When I was 9 years old in 1972 we had one, ugly tan phone that hung on the kitchen wall. It had a rotary dial and a party line. I used to listen to other people’s conversations all the time. I really wasn’t so interested in the conversations strangers were having, but, there were some young girls who used to call each other and play the newest records they’d bought over the phone. That’s what I eavesdropped on. Our radio, a big boxy thing that sat on the kitchen counter, that was the same color as that ugly phone, was always tuned to country. These girls were listening to stuff like Stax Records and Motown releases. It was a little variety.
I can’t remember having withdrawal symptoms after hanging up, though. That UF study also said how people react to being separated from the cell phones or digital assistants was another clue of being a full-blown addict.
The article said frequent users often become anxious without their phones or PDAs and they find it hard to enjoy whatever it is they’re suppose to be doing without their gadgets.
Many times cell phone addicts can be seen compulsively checking their voice mails and text messages and it’s worse when those people are already suffering from some degree of anxiety or depression.
It’s a world-wide problem if that makes you feel any better.
A Japanese study found that children with cell phones don’t get to know other kids who aren’t techno-geeks like them. In Hungary a study showed that three-fourths of their children had cell phones. One-quarter of Italian adolescents own more than one phone and claim to be somewhat addicted to them. And, 36 percent of British college students say they couldn’t get by without cell phones, whatever that means.
Seven percent of those British students admitted that their mobile phone use had caused them to lose a relationship or a job according to David Sheffield, a psychologist at Staffordshire University in England. So that really does sound like a problem as serious as alcohol or some other substance abuse, doesn’t it?
It’s not just kids that are showing signs of gadget addiction, Lord knows! But it’s the youngest cell phone users who don’t know what they are missing being one-on-one, face-to-face with a friend in a quiet place. They miss other things, too. I’ve seen them at concerts, movies, festival-type gatherings, restaurants — heads down, furiously texting, missing everything there is to be seen or heard around them.
For those who think they have a problem or who have children you think are obsessed with their cell phones, Merlo suggests downgrading to a basic phone with fewer features and setting limits about where and when to use the phone.
“Cell phones are a great technology,” Merlo said in the UF article published in January. “They’re useful in a lot of situations. (But) one of the most important things is making sure you have some cell phone free time in your day. It’s OK to turn it off. Focus on family, homework, knowing that cell phone message will still be there.”
If you know someone who can’t do that, it may be time for an intervention with family and friends. Just be sure you have everyone’s phone numbers to set up the conference call.

http://www.meridianstar.com/opinion/local_...rces_printstory

As an Electronic Technician and someone who once held a First Class FCC License. And knowing that the frequencies involved are in the microwave range. Even though the wattage is low I beleive it is dangerous to your health to hold such a transmitter close to your brian. I myself can "feel" a slight pain at the side of my head when I use my Cell Phone. I rarely use it, and when I do I keep it short. I highly recommend that anyone who needs to use a cell frequently get a blue tooth or some other headset device to distance their brain from the transmitting antenna.

Cell phone studies shed light on how officers’ memories work in shootings

[From Force Science News provided by The Force Science Research Center.
Register here for a free subscription to Force Science News e-mailed to you twice per month.]

Are there similarities between a driver on a cell phone and an officer in a shooting?

You bet! claims Dr. Bill Lewinski, executive director of the Force Science Research Center at Minnesota State University-Mankato. And 2 independent studies offer fresh insights into the parallels, which may help officers defend themselves in controversial force encounters.

Lewinski has long maintained that in any life-threatening confrontation an officer's perceptions and memories are influenced more by what his attention is focused on during the conflict than by what actually passes before his eyes. Investigators, review boards, prosecutors and others assessing the officer's decision making and later recollections need to take this into account, Lewinski insists, rather than expect infallible judgment and comprehensive recall and then suspect criminal culpability when shortcomings emerge.

Research findings reported recently at a meeting of the American Psychological Assn. in New Orleans support this position. "The fact that the studies involve drivers using cell phones is not what's important here," Lewinski stresses. "What matters most are the principles involved, and those can reasonably be applied to officers in shooting situations."

One study involves a series of experiments conducted by psychologist David Strayer and others at the University of Utah, who sought to learn more about the relationship between cell phone conversations and the phenomenon called "inattention blindness"--not seeing things you look at because your brain is more intensely focused on something else.

Strayer and teammates monitored male and females subjects in a sophisticated driving simulator and recorded how their performance while engaged in conversation on a cell phone compared to their "driving" without any cell-phone distraction.

First let's look at the findings, then we'll relate them to a shooting situation.

Among other things, Strayer's research confirms:

• Drivers are much more likely to rear-end the car in front of them when talking or listening on a cell phone in heavy-traffic situations. This is because their perception of and reaction to vehicles braking in front of them are slowed when they're on the phone. Drivers in the study tended "sluggishly" to hit the brakes later and, if a collision was avoided, to hold the brake pedal longer than they did when not occupied with a cell conversation. Indeed, a twenty-something's reactions when engaged with the phone equated to what would normally be expected of a 70 year old.

"...imagine the distraction potential of suddenly being confronted with a situation in which your life is in jeopardy, as an officer in a shooting would be.”

• Cell phone use significantly impairs memory. As the subjects "drove," digital billboards appeared beside the simulated roadway. In a surprise quiz afterwards, drivers were able to recall more thoroughly and accurately those signs they had passed while they were not having a phone conversation. As the researchers put it, cell phone chatting induced "failures of visual attention"--that is, inattention blindness--to objects encountered in the driving scene.

• This is true not only for what passed in the subjects' peripheral vision. Cell phone conversations "reduce attention to objects even when drivers look directly at them," the researchers found. Billboards seen when the subjects were engaged in phone conversation were less than half as likely to be remembered than those that appeared when the drivers were not on the phone.

Because the cell phone involved in the Strayer experiments was a hands-free model, the documented interference with perception and memory could not have been caused by manual manipulation of the phone itself.

Instead, the researchers concluded, the significant "disruptive effects of cell phone conversations...are due...to the diversion of attention from driving to the phone." That is, the brain makes a shift away from an external, visual focus related to driving to an internal cognitive concentration required for the phone conversation, with the result that much of what was "seen" did not actually register.

The brain has a limited capacity for attention, Strayer explained, so whatever is siphoned off by the cell phone is subtracted from attention to driving. He says that being engaged on the phone cuts in half a driver's measurable brain activity in a key area of the brain needed for tracking traffic conditions.

While on a cell phone, drivers can be "as blind to a child running across the street as to a Dumpster beside the road," Strayer says.

If a cell phone conversation is distracting enough to induce significant inattention-blindness, Lewinski observes, "imagine the distraction potential of suddenly being confronted with a situation in which your life is in jeopardy, as an officer in a shooting would be. If you are in that kind of emotionally driven scenario, focused on the threat and on saving your life, you will necessarily have a diminished capacity to take in and remember other details about the scene."

Psychologist Paul Atchley of the University of Kansas, coauthor of the second study, agrees.

Atchley's team is conducting a series of experiments designed to gauge how the emotional content of cell phone messages impacts on attention. In an early phase of this research, reported in New Orleans, subjects heard and responded to sets of words with positive connotations ("joy," for example) as well as those with negative associations ("cancer" and "terrorist," for instance).

Both word-sets caused distraction and a decrease in attention, Atchley told Force Science News, but a decidedly greater impact was caused by the negative words. He plans next to test the effect of full emotion-laden conversations. But his findings to date suggest that "threatening associations" take the most pronounced toll on perception and memory.

"If mere exposure to negative words produce this effect," Atchley says, "without question law enforcement officers in a life-threatening situation will find their ability to attend to peripheral information to be significantly reduced.

"Officers have a tough situation in trying to grasp and retain everything that is happening" in a shooting situation because "when something doesn't grab your attention you won't have a memory for it. It simply is not in your brain at all.

"This issue of what officers are able to report on and testify to keeps surfacing over and over...people are astounded by what officers insist they can't recall."

"People think that when you have your eyes open, you see the whole world around you. But in fact the brain has the capacity to process only a limited amount of information from the environment." In stress situations, the "window of attention" may be only about the size of your fist, or less.

Lewinski cites a case he was involved in as an expert witness in which an officer was struggling on the ground to control the hand of an offender that was digging into his waistband--going for a gun, in the officer's snap judgment. A videotape of the incident revealed later that the officer's partner at that moment seemed to be beating the suspect with a flashlight.

The first officer claimed he was unaware of this, and was fired for "lying." From interviewing the officer, Lewinski contends that in reality he experienced inattention-blindness and legitimately could not report on his partner's actions because he was so intensely riveted on controlling the perceived threat to his own life that his brain screened out whatever else was occurring.

"This issue of what officers are able to report on and testify to keeps surfacing over and over," Lewinski says. "People are astounded by what officers insist they can't recall.

"Investigators need to do everything they can to properly mine an officer's memory after a high-intensity encounter. But they also need to realize that human memory has its shortcomings. It is unconscionable to hold officers accountable without taking science into consideration.

"Yet the disturbing truth is that cops are being charged, sued and fired because they can't 'see' things their attention is not focused on. In other words, because they can't do the impossible."

The studies by Strayer and Atchley, he hopes, will help skeptics see the light.

[For more information on the cell phone experiments, consult the paper "Cell Phone-Induced Failures of Visual Attention During Simulated Driving" by David Strayer, Frank Drews and William Johnston. (Read the article).

Atchley's study has not yet been published. ]






--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The FSRC was launched in 2004 by Executive Director Bill Lewinski, PhD. - a specialist in police psychology -- to conduct unique lethal-force experiments. The non-profit FSRC, based at Minnesota State University-Mankato, uses sophisticated time-and-motion measurements to document-for the first time-critical hidden truths about the physical and mental dynamics of life-threatening events, particularly officer-involved shootings. Its startling findings profoundly impact on officer training and safety and on the public's naive perceptions.

For more information, visit www.forcescience.org or e-mail info@forcescience.org. If you would benefit from receiving updates on the FSRC's findings as well as a variety of other use-of-force related articles, please visit www.forcesciencenews.com and click on the "Please sign up for our newsletter" link at the front of the site. Subscriptions are free.

http://www.policeone.com/writers/columnist...ticles/1182769/

You might gather that I am not a fan of cell phones.

I am not.

I think they are annoying.

I think they promote antisocial and anti-family behavior.

I think they damage the ability of humans, and particularly children to think for themselves which is a valuable and necessary step in child development.

I think they are dangerous if used when driving.

I think they harm us, as humans, because they eliminate any time with self --- by always being connected.

Connectedness is a good thing in moderation.

However, the cell phone is not being used in moderation.

It is a good thing to have for emergencies and to keep track of children and to be used during the business day.

Other than that it is a nemesis and it will only get worse.

Thanks TROU....

I put this in the education section because I think that the cell phone threatens our learning abilities as a society ---

I agree with your stance on cell phones. Maybe I'm a "luddite", but I believe they should only be used very sparingly, such as in emergencies. I know they are a slippery slope type of convienience, but I discipline myself, and because I know about the effect of mircowave electrostatic and electromagnetic fields. I know I don't want my brain irradiated with them. The fact that I can feel the field at the side of my head reminds me all the time about what I am doing.

Thanks Taz for reviewing the literature in this area. It is something I am relative ignorant
about. The main thing I took away from the discussion is how our education system lags
20 or 30 years behind the development of technology.

rla:

I agree.

I also think that cell phones contribute to a retardation of education.

Cell Phones Are the Latest 'Addiction'
Tuesday , July 18, 2006


By Michael Y. Park
ADVERTISEMENTget_a(300,250,"frame1"); http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,204046,00.html

The United States is in the midst of an epidemic of (Excuse me, I have to take this call.)

Sorry about that. Let's get back to the story.

Americans from all walks of life are jonesing for the latest (Hold on just one sec. I've been trying to get this guy on the line all day. I'll be right back.)

There we go. OK, let's try this again.

America's love affair with cellular phones — 212 million carried them as of April 2006 — may have blossomed into a full-fledged addiction, with the devices interfering with personal relationships, classroom lectures, businesses and, yes, journalists' deadlines.

Some have even called cell phones "the new cigarettes," seeing as how people fiddle with them in elevators, whip them out as soon as they leave the office, take "cell phone breaks" on the job and chat away while walking, driving, etc.

And when your phone isn't ringing, your brain sometimes tricks you into thinking that it is — a phenomenon that has been dubbed "phantom ringing."

"I’m never without my cell phone,” Courtney Tompkins, spokeswoman for the medical school at Des Moines University and owner of a small business, wrote in an e-mail.

“When we go to bed, we have one cell phone on each side of the bed. I use it as an alarm throughout the day; I text- and picture-message constantly. I can send a text message while driving or talking on another phone. I hear phantom ringing often. I’ve been teased at the gym for keeping my phone in hand while walking and next to me while I work out. Yes, I’m a cell phone junkie!”

Karen Gail Lewis, a therapist in Cincinnati, says she has even seen clients break out their phones in the middle of a counseling session.

“I have even had couples in my office for couples therapy where one takes the call,” she said.

In 2003, information-science professor Sergio Chaparro wanted to test out just how deeply cell phones had insinuated themselves into the lives of his students at Rutgers University in New Jersey.

He gave them a seemingly simple homework assignment: to turn off their cell phones for 72 hours. Of 220 students with cell phones, only three could bring themselves to complete the assignment.

“They were afraid. They were truly afraid,” said Chaparro, now a professor at the Simmons Graduate School for Library and Information Science, in Boston.

“What I found was basically a high level of dependence on cell phones. Most students were particularly, I would say, scared of the experience.”

As part of the experiment, the students were required to keep logs of their thoughts and feelings while going without their mobile phones. The responses were telling, he said.

“They had high levels of anxiety, high levels of stress, high levels of insecurity,” he said. “Some of them also told me personal stories. One student told me that the year before she went on a spring-break trip for a week, and the minute she got on the plane, she realized she had forgotten her cell phone. So her mom had to FedEx her the cell phone because she couldn't be without her cell phone for a few days. She was afraid of even driving without her cell phone.”

But as bad as it seems, the obsession with cell phones for the most part doesn't qualify as a genuine addiction, many experts say. And you'd hard-pressed to find someone to take you in as a patient suffering from a pure case of “the talkies.”

“I firmly believe that cell-phone use, as with anything that's a behavior in life, can turn into an addiction, and the way I would define addiction in a clinical sense is any behavior in which a person becomes dependent to the detriment of an important part of their lives,” said Christopher Knippers, who holds a doctorate in clinical psychology and is an assessment specialist at the Betty Ford Center in Rancho Mirage, Calif.

“Quite frankly, the average person doesn't have to really worry about becoming addicted. A glass of wine can be a wonderful accompaniment to a meal, but most people aren't going to become alcoholics. If you already have a certain set of personality traits or biological traits in yourself, you're going to become addicted to something anyway.”

Andrea Macari, an instructor of psychology at Suffolk County Community College with a doctorate in clinical and school psychology, said it could be a long time before a cell-phone addiction might be recognized as a genuine mental disorder, if ever. Nevertheless, it can definitely qualify as maladaptive behavior.

“The symptoms are similar to the symptoms we see with other types of addictions,” she wrote in an e-mail. “The following are some common symptoms: The person feels uncomfortable when not using a cell phone; their cell-phone use has increased significantly; their need to talk on the phone is insatiable; their cell-phone bill is causing financial distress; they are having problems at school and work because they are constantly using their cell phone; they are having interpersonal problems because they are constantly using their cell phone; they are endangering their health because they use their cell phone during inappropriate times (driving, etc.).”

And it's not just a matter of etiquette. Knippers offered one example that he himself witnessed of cell phones hurting personal relationships.

“The other night, I went out to a relatively casual-dining restaurant, and we were watching this man with his young children at another table,” he said. “And from the time before he ordered until the time that he was walking out the restaurant, he had a cell phone to his ear. And his little kids were sitting there in silence, just munching away on their food. He was ignoring his little kids, which doesn't sound like a crime, but is a case where the cell phone was interfering with an important aspect of his life.”

And though Knippers still said that most people who casually toss off jokes about being addicted to their mobile telephones probably aren't, more and more Americans will be making that claim for real.

“It's real rare at this point, but I think we'll see more and more of it,” he said.

Whether or not cell phones can cause real addictions, Macari said that it's a good idea to look to cognitive behavioral therapy if you want to wean yourself off the gadgets.

“Create cell phone times that specifically define the times that you are able to use the phone. For instance, I will only use the phone from 6 to 8 p.m. I would also recommend buying a cell phone that works with a prepaid calling card so that when the minutes are up, that is it," she said.

Macari also said cellular "addicts" should explore the reasons why they need to talk on the phone.

"Do they feel insecure in life, but important when on the phone? Are they uncomfortable when by themselves? Are they running from loneliness?” she said.

But in this 21st-century world of instant results, it's nearly impossible to go cold turkey when many businesses almost demand that their workers carry cells.

“You can't outright ban your own cell-phone use, but when you start to catch yourself using a cell phone instead of dealing with a problem at work or in a relationship, you need to limit yourself as to when and where you use a cell phone,” Knippers said — by cell phone at the beach.

Of course, for every person who kicks a cell-phone dependence, there always seem to be four more who are just starting to get the taste.

Take 39-year-old Chaparro, for instance. When he first conducted his casual study at Rutgers, he was one of only four people in the room who didn't own a cell phone.

“I refused to have a cell phone,” he said, laughing. “I got one a year later. And now I find myself replicating my students' behavior.”

February 2, 2009



Cell phone dependence results in rude behavior

Lisa See Is there such a thing as cell phone etiquette?

I was tickled at the opinion piece on Jan. 12 by Greg Bock regarding how his movie viewing pleasure was disrupted at Hollywood Theaters due to teenage boys texting and playing games on their cell phones.

I could not agree more that people use their cell phones at socially inappropriate times. In this case, movie theater management should have stepped in. He says he told an usher, so what did the usher do?

And by the way, when did it become appropriate for store clerks to yak on their cell phones while exchanging money with customers? What ever happened to "Have a good day?" This happens all the time at gas stations. And no, the customer is not always right. If you are on your cell phone while you are placing an order at a sit-down restaurant then you are being rude to the server. Very rude.

I have a rising sense of disgust at our growing dependency on cell phones. I even get annoyed with myself at times. I guess this is the price we pay for having cell phones, the so-called "convenience" factor, but we really should have more boundaries on where we use them.

There is nothing more annoying than having your cell phone go off as you are working, checking out to buy groceries (I do not answer at these times) or just busy living life. Especially when we are confronted by people who think our cell phones are attached to our ... backsides and question us on why we didn't answer our phone at the very exact minute it rang.

I would like to encourage everyone that when you are using your cell phone to be aware of those around you. Set your phone to silent if you do not want to be disturbed. And callers, if someone does not answer their cell phone it probably means that they are busy. That is what voicemail is for.

Thanks to Greg Brock for echoing what so many of us already think.

Parents should set some basic ground rules for their children's use of their cell phones and take away their cell phones at the movies. There are previews with the no cell phone use picture, but obviously this rule is ignored by many.

People should really think twice about using their cell phones in stores where I can hear all of their personal business. Respect your privacy and mine.

http://www.news-leader.com/article/2009020...24/0/OPINIONS06

Mobile phone addiction: Clinic treats children

Two children are learning to live without their mobile phones after becoming so badly addicted to the technology they were admitted to a mental health clinic.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/...s-children.htmlBy Graham Tibbetts
Last Updated: 2:30PM BST 13 Jun 2008

The children, aged 12 and 13, were treated for mobile phone addiction Photo: PA They were brought in after spending an average of six hours a day on their phones, talking, texting or playing games.

Their parents became concerned that the children, aged 12 and 13, were unable to carry out normal activities without their handsets. They were failing at school and deceiving relatives in an attempt to obtain more money for phone cards.

However, it may take a year to wean them off the "drug", said Dr Maite Utgès, director of the Child and Youth Mental Health Centre in Lleida, north-east Spain, where they have been treated for the past three months."It is the first time we have used a specific treatment to cure a dependence on the mobile phone," she said.

"They both showed disturbed behaviour and this exhibited itself in failure at school. They both had serious difficulties leading normal lives."

Both children had had their own phones for 18 months and were not controlled by their parents.

"One paid for their phone by getting money from the grandmother and other family members, without explaining what they were going to do with it," said Dr Utgès.

At least two cases of phone addiction have been reported in Britain where young people who were obsessed with their phones and became depressed when the number of incoming calls or messages dropped

CyberPsychology & BehaviorFactors Associated with Cell Phone Use in Adolescents in the Community of Madrid (Spain)To cite this paper:
Mercedes Sánchez-Martínez, Angel Otero. CyberPsychology & Behavior. -Not available-, ahead of print. doi:10.1089/cpb.2008.0164. Full Text: • PDF for printing (91.1 KB) • PDF w/ links (102.7 KB)

Mercedes Sánchez-Martínez, M.D. Department of Preventive Medicine and Public Health, Medical School of Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain.Angel Otero, M.D., Ph.D. Department of Preventive Medicine and Public Health, Medical School of Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain.Abstract

The purpose of this research is to measure cell phone use among high school adolescents and the factors associated with intensive cell phone use (depressive symptoms, social isolation, drug and alcohol use, school failure, and cell phone dependence). We conducted a cross-sectional survey study of 1,328 adolescents aged 13 to 20 years in nine secondary schools of the Community of Madrid between January to April 2007. The mean age of sample participants was 15.7 years. Almost all (96.5%) had their own cell phone (80.5% had one, and 15.9% had two or more). Some 54.8% take it to school and 46.1% keep it on during class; 41.7% use it intensively. The estimated prevalence of cell phone dependence was 20% (26.1% in females, 13% in males). Intensive cell phone use was associated with female sex, rural school location, good family economy, smoking tobacco, excessive alcohol consumption, depression, cell phone dependence, and school failure. More health education is needed to promote correct and effective cell phone use among adolescents. Factors associated with intensive use and dependence should be considered for possible intervention activities.

http://www.liebertonline.com/doi/abs/10.1089/cpb.2008.0164

<H3 class=post-title>Cell Phone Addiction </H3>
Photo by imcuckoo2

There are a couple of issues here:

1) The average adult and their increasing dependence on cell phones

2) Someone with an emotional dependence on staying connected with their friends at all times

3) Gadget lust, consumerism and materialism (having to have the latest and greatest phone)

Let’s examine the levels of cellular dependence. First, let’s look at the big picture; at everybody. We’ve all heard and read various rants about cell phones by now. People who use them in inappropriate places, drivers who are talking and not paying attention, and all the other moaning that we tend to do about this invasive technology. And all the while, we continue to use the devices ourselves, and increasingly notice our own dependence on the infernal things. I’m talking about the majority here, about the average cell phone user. Take the following situation:

A trip to the grocery store. You’re halfway there. You realize you forgot your cell phone.

We’ve all been there. We either:

A) Turn around and go get the stupid thing, or

Go on without it, and expend a tremendous amount of mental energy and obsession over the fact that we do not have the stupid thing.

This is madness.

I’ve noticed this tendency towards cell phone dependence in myself, and I’ve discussed the phenomenon with others. There are plenty of other people out there (who are not recovering drug addicts necessarily) who have noticed this dependence in their own lives as well. And I’m not necessarily saying that it is such a bad thing…not for sure anyway. Technology can empower our lives, connect us, bring us together, and all that jazz. But the level of dependence, in the case of the cell phone, is a bit disturbing. Certainly there is the potential to move from cell phone dependence to full blown cell phone addiction. How would you know when you’ve crossed the line? Let’s examine what that might entail:

1) Financial

Many addictions can be measured in terms of dollars. It is valid to do so, in most cases, because most of us have a life and have obligations and bills to pay. This makes it easier to spot a potential addiction or dependency when it creeps into our life, especially if that behavior costs a lot of money. Cell phone use is no exception.

We’re all aware of the various cell phone plans and how they limit our “minutes.” Going over these limits costs big money, and there are several people out there who have incurred very large debts as a result of overuse. But this is a tricky slope, because some people (such as business people) might have legitimate reasons to talk for several hours each day on their cell phone, and this doesn’t necessarily imply addiction or even dependence. Plus, there are no unlimited minute plans starting to trickle into the market, so the cost of overages might very well become a mute point. On the other hand, a young teenager that needs an unlimited minutes plan that costs 100 bucks a month might still indicate a real problem. But it’s clear that the money spent for cell phone service is not the only way to judge a person’s level of dependence, and indeed is only a small indicator that their might be a potential problem. This leads us to the next idea, which is really the heart of the issue: time.

2) Time

How much time does the person spend using the device? This is a critical question to ask yourself. Our lives our ticking away, one second at a time…..do you really want to spend your life talking on the phone? Here is an example that shows the depth of lost time: when I quit smoking cigarettes, a program on my computer calculated the amount of time I used to spend actually smoking, and told me that it added up to over 1 month of continuous smoking out of each year! I double checked these figures and was astounded to see that they were correct. Now apply the same idea to the cell phone: anyone talking on the phone for just under 2 hours a day is wasting an entire month out of each year! Now what’s critical is that the person must be honest with themselves and decide if that time spent on the phone is actually productive, having a positive impact on their life, or if it is simply endless conversation and meaningless drivel. So the question becomes: how do I want to spend my time? What do I want out of life? And then realize that in some cases, the hour or two each day of cell phone use is directly costing you your dreams.

3) Emotional crutch

For some, gabbing and gossiping for hours each day is an emotional dependency, an escape from self. In the case of the cell phone, it is not so much that the technology itself leads to dependence–it is merely a tool, and the way we use it can create problems. The same problem still exists for many using other communication devices, such as the regular land line phone, or instant messaging, or email, and so on. This is really defined as the need for constant communication. A cell phone merely makes this emotional crutch more convenient to access. Typically, this would refer to the younger generation that might get home from school and then have a need to spend several hours recapping the days events and gossiping–but it could just as easily apply to adults with an emotional need to be constantly connected with others.

4) Gadget lust

Finally, there is something to be said for the gadget freak that always has to have the latest phone out there. However, this is not necessarily a dependence on cell phones, but rather a tendency towards materialism/consumerism. Not as big a red flag as the other points, but still a potential indicator.


So what can you do?

Photo by mil8

1) Raise your self awareness

This is a necessary first step if you want to change: you have to become aware of the problem as it’s happening. Addictions can be powerful and difficult to overcome because we engage in them mindlessly over time; the behavior becomes automatic for us. If you want to change a behavior like this, you need to first become conscious of it. You need to learn to “catch yourself.” In this case, you want to identify what is “healthy” cell phone use for you and what is not. Then you need to analyze your phone use while it’s happening. Increase your awareness. You start watching yourself as an observer.

This is really the essence of how to change a behavior. This would apply to nearly anything you’re trying to change, such as trying to complain less and be more positive, spend less time text messaging, or anything else for that matter. The first key, in all cases, is to become hyper-aware of the problem as you are doing it (or about to do it).

2) Curtail your use

Obviously, if you want to cut down, you have to cut down. No rocket science here. Be honest with yourself and evaluate how much time you spend on the phone versus how much of your life you really want to waste. If you’re not happy with the way you’re spending your time, the only thing to do is to change it.

There are a number of tactics and strategies that you might employ to do this. The main idea is going to be a commitment to personal change, and probably communicating this resolve to others (the people you tend to gab with on the phone). You could try blocking certain numbers or limiting your minutes or even going cold turkey, but those are not realistic strategies. You will either make the decision to cut back….or you won’t.

3) Set limits

If it’s your children that are suffering from cell phone over-use and abuse, then you might want to put your foot down and set some limits. For instance, at what age do you even allow your child to have a cell phone? No doubt this argument is heard in households every day: “But my friend so-and-so has a cell phone!” Getting your 10 year old daughter a cell phone just to “keep up with Joneses” is a really, really bad idea.

What do you think? Is the average adult user in danger of being addicted to their cell phone? Does a mere dependence on these devices lead us towards possible addiction? Do you experience withdrawal symptoms when you forget to bring your cell phone along with you? Should parents ever foot the bill for their young children to have a cell phone?

http://www.spiritualriver.com/cell-phone-addiction/

Teen Cell Phone Use: Friend or Foe?

It's frustrating to friends, family, teachers, coworkers, customer service workers, police officers, government officials, and many others, yet we just can't get enough of it: talking on a cell phone. American teens have managed to squeeze talk, text, and photo-message time into every minute of their days - they're on the phone at Starbucks, when they order at restaurants, in line at the supermarket, at the gym, and on the road.

Today's teens are accustomed to constant contact and information at their fingertips. A teenager without a cell phone is seen as a flashback to the Stone Age, as rare these days as a person with a cell phone just 10 years ago. In 2000, just 5 percent of 13- to 17-year olds had cell phones, compared to 56 percent today, according to Linda Barrabee, wireless market analyst for The Yankee Group. Most teens have their first cell phones by the age of 15, and in many cases as young as 13. Teens are particularly vulnerable to the cell phone craze because they are hypersensitive to the opinions of their peers and want desperately to fit in. And fitting in now requires teens to be instantly available to their friends.

The Potential for Abuse
Surveys by telephone service providers indicate that the vast majority (over 94 percent) of parents agree that cellular phones are good for teens. The peace of mind in knowing that your child is just a phone call away is priceless to most parents. But embracing the benefits of cell phones requires an awareness of the dangers that go along with it.

For example, recent reports suggest some teens are using camera phones to share nude photos or bully other students. In addition, teens frequently put themselves and others at risk by talking and driving without a hands-free headset. Despite laws in many states making it illegal to use cell phones while driving, a study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety found that teenagers have been largely indifferent to these preventative measures.

Worse yet, evidence suggests many teens are becoming "addicted" to their cell phones. As pay phones and land lines become a thing of the past, millions of teens are becoming completely reliant on cell phones. Because most of us carry cell phones wherever we go, the potential for overuse is extremely high.

To many teens, cell phones are a multi-tasker's paradise. They can talk on the phone during their commute home from work or school or do homework or watch television while catching up on the latest gossip. But multi-tasking can be distracting and often results in doing a poor job of completing all tasks. It also can make people feel anxious, stressed, and overwhelmed.

In 2003, Rutgers University professor Sergio Chaparro tested his students' dependence on cell phones by asking them to turn off their cell phones for 72 hours. Of 220 students with cell phones, only three could bring themselves to complete the assignment. Of those that completed the assignment, many reported feeling anxious, stressed, and insecure without their mobile phones.

Worldwide, three billion people have mobile service. In Japan, the government has started a program warning parents and schools to limit cell phone use among children. An education reform panel has requested that Japanese cell phone manufacturers develop cell phones with only the talking function and GPS, which would help ensure children's safety, without the additional features like high-speed Internet that make cell phones so addictive.

Sleep Disturbances and Insomnia
In addition to problems in school, at work, and in interpersonal relationships, teens that are hooked on mobile phones tend to experience disrupted sleep, restlessness, insomnia stress, and fatigue, according to recent studies.

Researchers at the Sahlgren's Academy in Gothenburg, Sweden, found that teens who excessively use their cell phones (more than 15 calls and/or text messages a day) experienced increased restlessness, more careless lifestyles, more consumption of stimulating beverages, and more trouble falling and staying asleep than teens restricted to five calls or text messages a day. Gaby Badre, who led the study, also warned that "There seems to be a connection between intensive use of cell phones and health compromising behaviour such as smoking, snuffing and use of alcohol."

Although highly debated, it also appears that cell phone use can be detrimental to the human body. According to a report in the British newspaper The Independent, research from the Karolinska Institute and Uppsala University in Sweden and from Wayne State University in Michigan has linked the radiation emitted by mobile phones to sleep problems, confusion, and chronic headaches. Using phones before bed appears to delay and shorten the deep stages of sleep that help us feel rejuvenated and rested. In children and teens, the study found that the sleep disturbances caused by the radiation can trigger depression, mood swings, ADHD-like symptoms, and personality changes, and can impair concentration and academic performance.

Proper use of cell phones is difficult to monitor since they are small and portable and designed to be by our sides at all times. But the damage cell phones can cause, both physically and mentally, requires that parents remain vigilant in educating themselves and monitoring their children's cell phone use. Setting and enforcing limits around talk time, monitoring usage and monthly bills, and purchasing a service plan that limits the number of text messages and minutes available are all great ways to prevent cell phone abuse.

http://www.4troubledteens.com/teen-cell-phone-use.html

Cell Phone Dependency Causes Disconnection
by Nicole Richards
Sometime in the middle of fall quarter my cell phone screen stopped working. For a week, I couldn't see my texts, screen my calls, or call my friends. I am sure there are other people out there who can relate with my frustration. When it happened to me, you would have thought the world was nearly ending. I felt completely disconnected.

When I look back on that week in my life I am embarrassed by how upset it made me, and even more so by how dependent I had become on my cell phone.

In society today, cell phones are more than a luxury—they are a necessity. They are so popular that cell phone companies even make special cell phones for children. Although I believe cell phones can be helpful in emergencies, making it easy to get in touch with someone for help, a part of me also feels that we may have taken this technology too far. As a society we have become dependent on, and attached to, our cell phones. At what point does a cell phone stop being a convenience to get through our day, and become our life?

I was given my first cell phone when I was in the ninth grade. I was ecstatic when my parents handed it over. Most of my friends had one already—I felt out of the loop. I loved the freedom my cell phone gave me. I could call and text anyone, anywhere. It felt liberating because it opened up a whole new world of communication. With my cell phone, I was always reachable. Always.

Yet, lately I have felt that always being connected to the people around me is not entirely a good thing. I have become dependent. Whenever I have a problem or question I tend to call or text someone who could help. I have forgotten to look first at myself for a solution; I have forgotten that I have the ability to help myself. With cell phones, we have no reason to break free, to become independent individuals, because we know we can rely on someone answering our call.

What we need, what I need, is a break from technology. We need to put down our cell phones, iPods, laptops, and turn off the television, so that we can take a minute to breathe in the silence. A solitary moment so we can see that life goes on without the technology, a moment to see that our minds can think for themselves.
With so much going on in our hectic schedules, it is hard to remember that it is okay to take a minute to relax, to not be plugged in all the time. Some time to disconnect with the world, and reconnect with ourselves.

I know this is not how it is for all of you out there. For those of you who have not succumbed to the cell phone cult, I applaud you. And for those of you who have, I am right there with you. Although it may be hard, remember, you can always turn it off.

http://thebottomline.as.ucsb.edu/2008/05/c...nicole-richards

I still have not found the problems I previously identified outlined...

Granted it promotes rudeness, disconnectedness, and can be addictive...but my fear is that it eliminates self reliance in decision making which I see as the biggest problem of all...and to date have not been able to back this hypothesis up with any support...