We live in a society where everyone has some form of a smartphone. How we choose to use it is a whole other story.
I remember when I got my first phone. It was a Kyocera white flip phone powered by Virgin Mobile in the sixth grade. I only had a limited amount of minutes that had to be replenished by buying a minutes card. I could only use it for emergencies like if I missed the bus and I had to someone to come get me. It did nothing but call and text, but I didn’t text very often because it used too many minutes. Before I left the sixth grade, I lost the phone and I didn’t get a new one till the eighth grade.
Today my little sister has an android and her friends have the iPhone4, the iPhone4s, and the iPhone5. These kids have the latest phones; on top of that they also have a laptop, even an iPad or tablet. Today it’s like all the technology has to come in a set. As if having one gadget isn’t enough we need all of them.
Now the big question here is what are we using all these technologies for anyway? I can guarantee that same apps people have downloaded on their phones, the have downloaded on their tablets and on their computers. If you can access it in one place, why do you need to access it in three other places?
People insist on getting the latest update, games, social media, etc. We choose to put unnecessary apps on our phones, tablets and computers because we like having the distraction. One of the running jokes on a social media website is the three things kids are learning today in school are “1: Text without looking, 2: multitasking (playing temple run and taking notes), 3: work as a team on test.” Kids these days have too many distractions in their lives and sometimes having the best phone with the most access and capabilities is more of a nuisance than helpful. Especially in a college setting where you’re surrounding by at least a hundred other students in a crowed auditorium; it’s so easy to lose focus especially if your taking notes on the computer.
My take on this is, I say we go old school and give younger kids a basic phone like I had. That’ll keep them from getting off task especially if they don’t have any minutes to do so.