Adult Development
Silence That Cellphone!
By Bradley Ann Morgan
Oct 12, 2007

The technology of cell phones has been both a blessing and a curse to consumers and corporate organizations. Cell phones enable us to connect 24x7 globally, locally with our families and offer faster assistance for those that need additional care giving with aging parents or grandparents.

As we were speakers at a recent conference on Aging & Diversity, we observed a dinner confrontation between spouses over the excess use of his cell phone. From their heated discussion, overheard by everyone in the conference lobby, it appeared that the husband had taken every cell phone call he received to the neglect of the spouse’s expectations that he would introduce her to professional contacts at the networking session. What an embarrassment!

Certainly there are work assignments where cell phones, like pagers, are the vehicle where ‘on-call’ tech support personnel are contacted; and, doctors can be updated on patients requiring emergency care.

When does cell phone use become addictive or abusive? ABC News reported that, "The latest studies show that 40 percent of the people surveyed can't cope without a cell phone, 35 percent used cell phones to escape their problems; and, 7 percent blamed their cell phone for losing personal relationships and even their jobs!” Cell phone abuse is becoming a global epidemic affecting millions of men, women and children, with no respite in sight.
For adolescents, parents readily give them access to most new technologies, including cell phones, but little advice about how to use them. A psychologist, Andres Gonzalez, explains, "Mobile phones give young people prestige. The person who gets the most messages is the most valued or the most important." How does this happen? In societies where family ties have worked loose and urban isolation has increased, people become addicted to "long-distance communication because they no longer find human relationships through conventional means.”
As new laws per state are going into effect, Washington, D.C., and New Jersey, has banned the use of handheld cell phones while driving because of the danger. New York state passed a similar law two years ago. Other states are considering the same ruling.
Indicators of cell phone addiction or abuse:
• The need to answer every call regardless of place or company around you
• The feeling of elevated self importance by taking every call
• Feeling that your self worth is diminished if you do not take each call
• Feeling that can be nothing will be accomplished without your instruction or intervention
• Family members complain that there is no balance to your life & theirs around you
• Wishing all others would leave so you can make other calls on your cell phone
Cell phones can be wonderful, convenient and enable all of to be of service at a moment’s notice. Let’s not let them become an impediment to enhancing our community relationships and build community change using their technology advantage.

If you think you are becoming ‘addicted’ to your cell phone, ask yourself:
• How can you design your business calendar that honors your commitments to other social or spiritual commitments without the use of the cell phone?
• What is not being personally fulfilled for you by 24x7 cell phone availability? What feelings manifest from this, resentment, hostility, anger, even resignation?
• What commitments are unmet or compromised by unlimited cell phone access? What relationship will be damaged or scarified in the long run by unrestricted cell phone access?
• What other activities are you not pursuing that can enhance your career, your golf game, deepen the bonds with your children, even your pets?
• Are you trying to fit into a business culture that promotes all time-consuming dedication to cell phone use rather than permitting time for being & outside engagements?
• How can you challenge your teenagers to be fully present at group events by unplugging from the ‘net’ and re-engage in relationship building face to face?
• Unless your profession has contracted you for 24x7 access, why is unlimited cell phone use important to you?
• As a role model for our youth, what values are you demonstrating about being part of larger community by putting down both cell phones & pagers?

“It's a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it.” W. Somerset Maugham