Smart Phone: a good thing or a bad thing?

Nowadays it seems that smartphones have been considered as an essential element for many people. In addition, this sort of mobile phones have also been estimated as a problem. We can see it in the last news which suggest that many people can run the risk of their physical and mental health when they continue to use their smartphones. In my view, this instrument is not only a needed component but a great resource in our lives because it is part of the human evolution and its new digital era.

First of all, in my opinion, smartphones consist on a system of access to information or many services. Above all they are a social instrument because they are the channel through people socialize. Smartphones have all the capabilities of a small laptop, plus a much higher degree of ability to interact with their environment. They have cameras, GPS, kinesthetic sensors, and Bluetooth capability with their high degree of ability to interact with their physical surroundings. Often when a mobile phone user glances down at the little screen, something has happened. Someone has posted on Facebook, someone has texted them … there are endless possibilities that could greet them. Therefore I think smartphones are a resource to aid people to consort with.

Nevertheless, it could be argued that smartphones isolate or complicate social lives and people are not learning how to interact in real life. Thus it could not be a good way of socializing because it could be interpreted as a fake relationship due not to having a face-to-face conversation. However, I disagree with this; I believe nowadays we are discovering new ways of sociability. The mobile phone provides us with social cohesion to our tightest group of family and friends. We could even say these new methods strengthen the in-person relationship because people focus on finding out the personality before the physical appearance, which they could meet after.

It's not the first time we've seen panic regarding the addictive potential of a new form of media or technology. "There was all that stuff in my childhood about being addicted to television and then in my brother's childhood about being addicted to video games," Bell says. "It lets us play out our anxieties about these technologies." Maybe we will simply settle into a more balanced pattern of usage of smart phone as we have with television. Being obsessed about the next new thing that comes along may leave us free from smartphone.