Cell Phone Addiction

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Cell Phone AddictionThere is no debate about the fact that cell phone usage has increased dramatically over the last few years, in line with the number of functions that we anticipate our cell phone to do. Cell phone owners now have the option of relying on their phone for satellite navigation, radio, web browsing as well as the usual functions of texting and calling (Simmons, 2010). In line with this, there has been an increase in the number of texts sent each day, as well as the use of “free” texting services such as BBM (Hyman, 2013). This has led some people to believe that the U.S. is a nation addicted to their cell phones. However, how do we decide whether our cell phone usage is normal, or if it is a real addiction that needs to be tackled in the same way?There are suggestions that cell phone addiction is an addiction like any other, so we need to apply the same conventions to this as we would for a drug or alcohol abuse problem. “These include increased tolerance (needing more cell phone time to achieve the same result), an inability to cut back on use (an inability to leave the phone at home for a day or to enter a no signal area), and a reduction in competing behaviours” (Hyman, 2013). Arguably, many cell phone users do have a cell phone addiction based on these criteria, because it can be difficult to be without a phone when those around you are consistently using theirs. Additionally, there arennow situations in which we rely on a cell phone for social behaviors, which should be seen as positive.This is not the same negative consequence as would come from reliance upon drugs and alcohol. Cell phones were created to make the communication between people more efficient. The first attempts to achieve this aim were a far cry from what we see nowadays, that is the telegraph, post and the landline phone. Though landline phones and post are still in use they are
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