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Lauren Hinkle
Professor Morton
UWRT 1103
18 April, 2016
Anti-Social Networking & Prison Cell Phones

Technology can be our best friend, and technology can also be the biggest party pooper of our
lives. It interrupts our own story, interrupts our ability to have a thought or a daydream, to
imagine something wonderful, because we're too busy bridging the walk from the cafeteria back
to the office on the cell phone. Steven Spielberg

Since the beginning of time, humans have maintained a special skill that has held the
human race together: physical connectivity and togetherness. In earlier times, there were
societies that we now call primitive, that were so much more progressive than we are in the
area of being there for one another. Being there, is something the generation of cell phone
users are struggling to do. Not only do we struggle to connect physically with others, but we
now have studies showing that humans have had their attention span drop from 12 seconds, to a
measly 8 seconds- 1 whole second lower than the attention span of a goldfish (McSpadden).
With this decline in focus, along with the incline of behavioral and development problems, it is
evident that our society must step up to the challenge to create a change. Although cell phones
have opened up so many doors for the world, they need to be refrained from using at the rate
they are today. This is due to the growing absent presence in relationships, the creation of

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behavioral and development issues in children, and the fact that the cell phone has created a
generation that has forgotten how to be alone in silence.
Cell phones have become a giant part of our society ever since they were introduced to
the world in 1973. Since this huge invention, our world has completely changed, from societies,
all the way down to individuals and how they react to one another. We have gone from a society
of mailed letter, to a culture of texters. This has reinvented our speech, our media, and our
interactions with ourselves, and with others. In a Tedtalk done in 2007 called Our Cell Phones,
Ourselves, Jan Chipchase, the speaker, talks about how he has traveled the world searching to
learn what people find are the most important things that they cannot leave the house without.
These three items were unanimously- keys, money, and their cell phone. Chipchase uses the data
he has collected to compare these items to Maslows hierarchy of needs. He places these items
under the first two rungs of the hierarchy; physiological and safety (Chipchase). We can
obviously see the connection between keys and money and the fundamental building blocks of
Maslows pyramid, but it is interesting to label our mobile phones with the same two items that
keep us clothed, fed, and sheltered. This subconscious need for our mobile devices is something
our culture needs to begin to look into further. We all see the positives that cell phones bring us,
if we did not see them, we would not be so attached to them. Aside from the positives, we need
to consider the consequences, especially on our youth, and our families.
In some cases, the more we connect to our phones, the less we connect to our loved ones.
In todays society, it is no surprise that one of the most well-known statistics is that 50% of
marriages end in divorce. That is a pretty big problem in our culture, so it is possible that the
increase of cell phone use has something to do with this. In Nancy K. Bayms work, Personal
Connections in the Digital Age, Baym states on page 140 that mobile media raises fears that

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digital media leads us to substitute shallow empty relationships for authentic personal
connections. This should make us grow more conscious to the growing divorce rate, as well as
that we could be teaching our children to have false relationships that lack depth and curiosity.
In Kenneth J. Gergens chapter called The Challenge of Absent Presence, in the anthology by
Katz and Aakhus, Gergen elaborates on this problem of false relationships. He states that when
people start relying on networking and popularity online, our relationships may begin to shift
from vertical to horizontal (Gergen 233). The vertical relationship carries depth and intimacy
between the two parties involved, while the horizontal relationship creates lots and lots of more
broad, less intimate relationships between parties. For example, when two people distance
themselves from their cell phones, and instead take time to get to know one another with face-toface Gergens topic summary comes from page 236; he states, The erosion of face-to-face
community, a coherent, and centered sense of self, moral bearings, depth of relationship, and the
uprooting of meaning from material context: such are the repercussions of absent presence.
Gergen explains the term absent presence with the definition being, one is physically present
but is absorbed by a technologically mediated world of elsewhere (227). He argues that with
our focus continually diverted, it has taken a toll on our relationships between one another
(Gergen 227). The simple fact is that, connecting with someone over a cell phone with texts
and snaps could lead to a boring relationship that lacks depth. It is so difficult to be excited to
be with someone when you already know everything about them and how their day has gone.
This could be a reason why divorce rates are so high; once you learn every inch of someone,
where is the craving or the curiosity? Not only do cell phones create relationships without depth,
but they sneak in between families and get between parents and their children. The void is in
place because it is just as difficult for spouses to be married to a person who is only physically

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present, but absent in every other regard. This could happen between spouses, or between a
parent and a distant child. Both of which create tension in the modern family.
In addition to the

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Works Cited
Baym, Nancy K. Personal Connections in the Digital Age. Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2010. 122149. Print.
Gergen, Kenneth J. The Challenge of Absent Presence. Perpetual Contact: Mobile
Communication, Private Talk, Public Performance. Eds. Katz, James E, and Mark A.
Aakhus. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002. 227-241. Print.
McSpadden, Kevin. "You Now Have a Shorter Attention Span Than a Goldfish." Time. Time, 14
May 2015. Web. 30 Mar. 2016.