Walking down the street, out of work, to university or just to the shop, I see, without fail, people glued to their mobiles - Tell a lie, that is me as well. As soon as I leave work, I am on my mobile, replying to messages, checking whats going on in the world, through twitter, checking notifications on Facebook and calling anyone back I have missed calls from. To be honest, I'm surprised I get home safely, because the majority of my walk home is spent on my mobile and not paying attention to anything around me, and this forced me to research a bit about about mobile addictions in contemporary society.
We live in a postmodern society whose culture, Hall et al, would say is consumed. Every street we walk along has an advertisement to entice society to buy into an idea or a good and this is what happened in relation to mobile phones. Society has crazes and the mobile phone industry has a smaller version of this. Colour screen phones were once a craze, then camera phones, then BlackBerry's and now everyone seems to have an iPhone, which has crazes in itself through app's, which are downloadable onto individuals phones. For example, the latest most popular iPhone apps are 'SnapChat' and 'Candy Crush.'
These advancements in technology though, has created addictions, which like an article in the telegraph stated can be similar to other addictions, particularly drugs, in the way they ruin relationships.
As ironic as it sounds the addiction of checking your phone for messages, where of course you would be socializing with someone, is ruining real life social skills and making people unsociable because they are used to communicating with others through a mobile. Some sociologists would say therefore that traditional norms and values are fading right in front of our eyes due to the lack of traditional socializing efforts and an advancement of catching up via text or over the phone. This is inevitably why young adults can spend up to seven hours a day interacting over the phone, over-spilling to become an addiction which can be extremely annoying to those around them, making them seem unsociable. In an article in the telegraph, they make the assumption that mobile phones are therefore ruining relationships and to me personally, it seems this could be likely as in contemporary society although for one is being sociable to the person on the other end of the phone, they are at the same time being unsociable to the one they're with.
On reflection, this point of view may not be shared by everyone - what do you think? Are we being socially, unsociable?
These advancements in technology though, has created addictions, which like an article in the telegraph stated can be similar to other addictions, particularly drugs, in the way they ruin relationships.
As ironic as it sounds the addiction of checking your phone for messages, where of course you would be socializing with someone, is ruining real life social skills and making people unsociable because they are used to communicating with others through a mobile. Some sociologists would say therefore that traditional norms and values are fading right in front of our eyes due to the lack of traditional socializing efforts and an advancement of catching up via text or over the phone. This is inevitably why young adults can spend up to seven hours a day interacting over the phone, over-spilling to become an addiction which can be extremely annoying to those around them, making them seem unsociable. In an article in the telegraph, they make the assumption that mobile phones are therefore ruining relationships and to me personally, it seems this could be likely as in contemporary society although for one is being sociable to the person on the other end of the phone, they are at the same time being unsociable to the one they're with.
On reflection, this point of view may not be shared by everyone - what do you think? Are we being socially, unsociable?
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