EFFECTS OF SMARTPHONES

Effects Of Smartphones

Effects Of Smartphones on the Social Lives of People

Introduction

Smartphones are part cellphone, part computer, part digital assistant, and part portable entertainment device. These advanced phones allow users to make phone calls, check emails and calendar appointments, surf the Internet, access multimedia, get driving directions, and more. The market for these devices has exploded in the last several years with the introduction of revolutionary devices like the Apple iPhone and Google's Android operating system. This report discusses some of the market leading smartphones in North America, including devices powered by Apple, Palm, Research in Motion, and Google.

The signs are all around us—smartphones, laptops, iPods and MP3 players, and hot spots. This is the age of the mobile learner. In The World Is Flat, Friedman talks about the upwardly mobile youth in India who walk with a “zip in their step.” Sure sounds mobile to me! They are described as quite young—often ages fifteen to twenty-five. They are also confident, creative, and seeking professional challenges. The Zippies are destination driven or goal oriented, and, therefore, feel little guilt or remorse about making money or taking someone's job. Given that half of the population of India was under age twenty-five at the time of Friedman's writing, this is a huge trend that cannot be ignored. This paper discusses the effects of Smartphones on the social lives of people.

Discussion

Smartphones are wireless telephones that offer a number of additional features that used to be only found on computers, allowing people to get driving directions, check email, surf the Internet, take photographs, and more. According to information gathered published by Neilsen Company in November 2010, 28 percent of all wireless subscribers in the United States had a smartphone, and 41 percent of all wireless phones purchased over the previous six months were smartphones. This trend extends to Canada as well.

Mobile phone numbers attest to the ongoing transformation in India today. In 1980, India had seven hundred million people and only 2.5 million telephones. Most people, in fact, had to wait years to get one, if ever. Fast forward three or four decades and India is the fastest-growing telecommunications market in the world with over a million new mobile phone subscriptions sold each month. That translates into one million additional tools for learning and teaching each month. (Tom, 2009)

Similarly, young people around the planet are expressing themselves in more mobile ways. Today's students are increasingly wired as well as unwired. Entering an unfamiliar building on a college campus, the Net Generation will immediately search for the computer lab or an Internet hot spot. Between classes such students are elated when finding a connection to the Internet in a café, a bookstore, or an empty room, or even while sitting on an outdoor bench during the summer. Of course, their jubilation is maximized if they quickly receive a response from someone located far away.

We live in a time when access rules the day and learners are perpetually online or attempting to ...