Impacts of Mobile Phone

Today, mobile phone has been a silent issue among society. As the advancement in technology, we do aware that usage of mobile phones has affect ourselves in terms of social contacts, education systems, safety, business activities and health. It replaces another types of communication such as Morse Code, letter and paintings. Due to its features such as camera, memory capacity and software that it use, the appearance and personalised accessories, it had contribute to a rapid-growth market. This is because, the characteristics it hold, creates a status symbol especially for young people such as high-school and university students. It is seen as crucial accessories which that satisfy the needs of individuality. Although it attract young generation interest, but it also affect the older generation. Those who involved in working industry totally dependable with this gadget as it act a type of communication for them and it is a neccesity to own a mobile phones as it can help them to carry out many business deals. For example, in the last decades, business can only be advertised through the word of mouth by discussion face to face. However, creation of mobile phones that can be used to contact others whether local or overseas, it enhanced the possibility of gaining business deals globally. Despite its provide advantages towards the millenials and older generation, it can also bring out disadvantages that can affect them in terms of social behaviour, health, education and budget. Thus, it is better to highlight the issues and curb the problems step by step otherwise it can affect the global society negatively.

First issue is related with the social behaviour of students. Social is defined as the interaction between individual and groups or welfare of human beings as member of society. Behaviour means the way in which one acts or conducts oneself especially towards others. Based on these definitions, I believe that human daily life is affected strongly by their own social behaviour. In the past decades, communication among others occur through face to face conversation. It allows one’s to learn the body languages, gesture and facial expression. That is how the evolution and definitions of words and actions keep updated. Through face to face conversation, they can learn and develop themselves emotionally, mentally. Those who evolve through this types of communication tend to be outspoken and extroverts with lots of ideas and adaptable into any types of situations. However, due to embrace of technology such as mobile phones, young generations such as students tend to use this gadget as their medium of communication. Through mobile phones, they develop and maintain their social and personal relationships. As we know, mobile phones is consist of applications that allow us to connect with others even if they were next to us. Software such as WhatsApp, WeChat, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram which created medium for them to interact with each other is highly used. Moreover, interesting features as emoticons and sticker also becomes ones necessity to express their feelings such as happy, sad and angry. Despite that, due to the impact of the creation of software and interesting features, it affect their capabilities to have a successful face to face conversation. By depending primarily on mobile phone as their medium, mediocre social skills will be develop. This is because, when using mobile phones to interact, students will not be exposed towards gestures, body language and facial expression of the other speaker as they are not facing each other. For example, conversation that can only be read through message which is written and listen through voices cannot develop one’s skill to differentiate whether they are interested or not with the topic. This is because communication via mobile phones is a nonverbal and lacks of emotional conversation. Thus, it will creating a void as the conversation can be out of context. People will tend to be uncomfortable with each other, thus avoiding conversation which lead to decrease in ability to speak and tend to be lonely. Therefore, the mindset of using mobile phones as medium for communication need to change as it will affect their social skills.

Apart from that, cyberbullying is also problematic issues related to social behaviour of students. Often we heard, victim of cyberbullying commit suicide or becoming a criminal. Cyberbullying is defined as the act of harrassing someone by sending mean messages through gadgets primarily mobile phones. In other words, it is the used of digital technology, including social websites, text messaging and emails to threaten, humiliate and shaming someone which can eventually harmful towards their emotions. For example, body shaming and creating bad jokes about someone’s name or actions via social media such as Facebook seems to be trending nowadays. Although it seems humourous towards other that did not know the actual reason it is posted, but it directly affect one’s feeling and created problems among society especially young generations who are sensitive about particular topic. Through the exposure of students toward the power of social media, they become more aggresive with their opinions and put their own perspectives without considering how their thoughts can affect the society personally. Apart from that, with the use of mobile phones that allow one’s to record and screenshot anything on their sight, those who with bad intention might misused it to threaten those who are involved. Through cyberbullying, their thought of gaining popularity or status always be prioritised as the actions and words they posted will be a trending topic. Even though mobile phones can act for medium of communications but if it misused with bad intention, it can caused major social problems such as cyberbully which lead to emotional distress of victim.

Moreover, it is also affect student’s learning process in terms of education issues. Various research had been conducted and it concludes usage of mobile phones does affect student’s education in depth. Although mobile phones can be used to search for information via Internet, it seems misused by some students in their learning process as they have the opportunity to do anything unrelated to their study. Without proper education being imposed towards the usage of Internet, student can accessed anytime without restriction that resulted in illegal search conduct. Furthermore, usage of mobile phones also disrupt the process of studying for them. Students who used mobile phones regularly tend to be procrastinator on their task which resulted on incomplete work that could highly affect their studies. They also tend to be slower in learning as their focus is now being disturbed by social media applications such as WhatsApp and Facebook. For example, student try to finish their homework on time but due to interaction of Facebook, his focus is affected because he spent every half an hour on social media but minutes on his study. Thus, it create diversion and his homework is incomplete due to lack of time spent on his task. Therefore, mobile phones mght be useful in searching information but if it is misused, it will gives negative impact towards student’s goal and objectives to gain knowledge, knowingly mobile phones affect their efficiency and focus.

Next, it is regarding towards their safety issues. With the advancement of technology, the knowledge of information technology also being updated that resulted in society with vast knowledge related to computer science. Usage of mobile phone in file sharing, music transfer always resulted in virus attack that can exposed their information. As we know, mobile phones is a technological gadget that used coding and programming, thus it would not take too long for someone to break through the security system of the mobile phones. This is known as hacking which is defined as breach defenses and exploit weakness of a computer. For example, we often used mobile phones to do online banking, thus we enter the information it required such as names, password, account number for the process. In relate to this, hacker will usually breach through the systems by scam or sending links which needed us to clicked it and then the virus will be triggered that lead to stealing of information. Moreover, with the usage of social media via mobile phone, they would know our location, our information via pictures that we posted through the gadget. Thus, it will endanger themselves because they are vulnerable towards threats such as kidnapping and becoming a victim for crime they did not commited.

Despite hacking issues, we also need to acknowledge that road accidents which involves students could be the effect of usage of mobile phones. This is because of the distraction of ringing mobile phones can interfere attention of the driver to focus on the road which possibly contribute to road accidents. For example, texting friends and browsing through Internet or scrolling through social media might stimulate the eagerness to look at the phone and reply them which disturb their focus on the roads, thus risking their safety. Thus, it is important for one’s to put their phone away during driving for their own safety.

Despite that, mobile phones also affect one’s health. Mobile phones or known as cell phones emit radiofrequency energy, a form of non-ionizing radiation and it usually absorbed by tissue close to the phone. Due to the exposure of radiofrequency, sometimes it does cause heating to certain parts it was held such as ear, hand and head. Although it is not proven yet, but scientist points out that it might cause cancer as exposure of radiofrequency can contribute to the development of brain tumours. Moreover, it also increase stress levels among young generations. This is because of sleep deprivation as mobile phones affect their brain activity and reaction times. As we know, mobile phones emitted blue light that can stimulates daylight which inhibit production of melatonin in the brain. Melatonin is a hormone produced in the pineal gland of the brain that regulates sleep cycles for human and animals. Thus, by emitting the blue light, it suppressed melatonin which leads to less production of the hormone. Apart from that, habit of answering text and scrolling through social media before sleep also become mentally and emotions stimulate which results in focus on usage of mobile phone even if they are sleepy.Therefore, it will cause sleep disturbance which could lead to depression and affect their emotions.

Furthermore, it also increase risk of illnesses in immune system of user. It is believe our body immune systems can be partially controlled by electromagnetic fields emitted by the mobile phones which results in undermining its proper functions.In conjunction, it is a frequently used devices for younger students. Exposure of mobile phones to different environment can lead the phone to be a carrier for virus and bacteria such as E.coli. Thus, it can affect user’s immune system which impact their health.

Mobile phones also increase risk of eye vision problems. Eyesight is the most functional are when we used mobile phones because we need to see what we write and watch videos. However, the higher usage of phones affect us negatively. This is because exposure of our eyesight towards the blue-violet light emitted gives out greater risk of mascular degeneration, a leading caused of blindness. Mascular degeneration, also known as age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is caused by deterioration of the retina and can severely impair vision. Due to the frequent usage of mobile phones, young generations might be suffered from the sickness although medical diagnose stated it could only occur towards person age 60 years old. Thus, when you are exposing eyesight to mobile phones for too long, you can suffer from short-sighted and far-sighted which then can lead to blindness.

In order to curb with these issues, it is vital for everyone to play their roles. Parents need to act as guidance and role models for thir children. To ensure their children does not primarily focus on mobile phones, they need to interact and create a comfortable environment whereby face to face conversation is used in their daily life. It will taught them to express their thoughts, feelings and perspectives freely without depending on mobile phones and social media. For example, nowadays, parents typically used mobile phones to ensure their children stay at their places and does not interfere with adult conversation. However, in my opinion, this would caused the children to lack of knowledge on mother-tongue language as they are really exposed to their native language, thus create an extrovert character in their childrens and conversation which could lead to gap between their relationships. Thus, it is important for parents to implement conversation routine on their children as it improve their communication skills and indirectly strengthen relationships between siblings and parents.

Teachers also need to take part in preventing cyberbullying that is caused by mobile phones. By encourage them via anti-cyberbullying campaign, teachers can ensure the opinions of bully’s victim to be expressed, thus it provide awareness to others about their wrongdoing. It also impact them on the negative effect of social media and the problems it caused. Thus it can curb this issue as the young generation can put on their mind about what others feel when someone judge them unfairly based on their looks.

Health issues also can be prevented by encourage the younger generation to be proactive. This is because, when they are exposed into activities that are challenging, they will not solely focus on mobile phones, but becoming more adventurous and active . They will understand that rather than focusing on social media, they can gain a lot of experience through activities they done. In relate to health issues, by focusing on sports, they can put less attention towards mobile phone that emitted blue light which affect their health as it does not used regularly. Although mobile phone is possibility a carrier of virus or bacteria, through actively participation in sports, the immune system can be strengthen.

In regards to the safety, government need to strictly impose policies that ban the usage mobile phones on the roads. With the advancement of the technology, they should be able to detect those who used phones on the road. Apart from that, the passenger also should play their role. They need to watch over the driver and avoid them from getting distracted by the phone. It is also their duty to remind the safety of the driver and passenggers on the roads. Apart from that, the cybersecurity risk can be preventive if the younger generation exposed to knowledge on threat of hacking. They need to know what types of method used by cyber criminal to tricked the user so that they can be careful whenever an unknown links were sent to them. Therefore, I believe enforce rules and regulations and enhance the knowledge about cybersecurity can prevent the related safety issues.

Thus, as Manager of Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, I believe that mobile phones can bring disadvantages that outweigh the advantages. Although mobile phones can be useful in communication, searching for information and improves social media but it comes with high risk of not able to communicate with others as it created uncomfortable situations, cyberbullying caused by social media, the student’s process of learning interference , safety issues related to accidents and cybersecurity leads to leak of personal information and health issues such as sleep deprivation and chronic diseases. However, these issues can be prevent if society consists of parents, teachers and governments play their role in making young generation to be less focus on mobile phones and be more extrovert in conversation, active and knowledgeable in usage of mobile phones and its impacts. Thus, mobile phones might be a useful technology, but somehow it does come with a greater risk that can affect one’s future if they misused it.