What is The Sociological Imagination and Its Examples?

According to C. Writght Mills. The sociological imagination is the ability to think ourselves away from the norms or daily routines we follow and to look at them from afresh. (Mills. 2015)The sociological imagination allows us to avoid the robotic lifestyle that we may have been following. If we have not realised it yet, we have been following a monotonous routine without questioning it. I am using the example of the mobile or cell phone to explain the sociological imagination. Cellphones where merely created for communication. It allowed people to communicate irrespective of the distance between them.

However, cellphones evolved at twice the speed as man. Cellphones are currently capable of performing calculations, conversions and translations. Cellphones allow individuals to have access to any information at their fingertips. Man has become highly dependent on Cellphones for the various additional functions it can perform rather than using it for the main reason it was designed. This has led to Identity theft, Peoples identity created on social networking sites have been hacked.

My personal experience has been when my friend tried to hack into my personal student account which had confidential information regarding my address, financial status, current semester and previous semester marks etc. The system saves a password the is the individuals date of birth, this is not a safe method as people have access to this via social networking sites.

Cellphones helped me create an email address to receive correspondence from the university that I applied to study at, it helped me receive my matric results before it had been released to me at high school. I received a message from the university stating that I have been accepted to study the desired course that I have applied for. I was able to access my bank account through my cellphone. It helped me access past year papers to study for my matric final examination. A cellphone was a disadvantage, when my cellphone number was passed to unknown people and I received calls from unknown people offering me a loan.

Messages stating that I have won a large sum of money to get it I am required to give them confidential information regarding my passwords which will allow them access to my bank account. It helped me capture long term memories through pictures and videos. It helped build my network…In school, we were told my teachers that a cellphone is a distraction. It was to some extent. Cellphones allows access to social networks, which can help start and grow businesses as well as terminate businesses. It helps start and grow a business through advertising, however promotes negative publicity through allowing people to comment and opinions are not always positive.

If information about the businesses financial position is leaked or any events of a strike action is revealed, foreign international are made aware of it due to social networking and withdraw from investments in that company. The level of dependency towards cellphones has leas to obesity, as children do not play sport, they rather play games on their cellphones. Cellphones have made people to shy away from actual face to face conversations, they rely on texting and social networking sites to communicate, people hide behind “emoji” ideogram used in electronic messaging. People depend on their phones to remind them of birthdays, and plan their day or week or plan events, or even work from home. Peoples accounts get hacked into due to fake phone calls or SMSs requesting passwords.

Cellphone could save a life. In an event of being deserted, or helpless your phone can be tracked, and you could be rescued. If you are in danger you could phone for help. Cellphone could also lead to loss of live, they are valuable due to their feature, therefore, in an event of a robbery the if the victim does not part with their cellphone, the robbery harms him or her to forcefully retrieve it. This has happened on many occasions. Victims do not part with their cellphone due to the amount of personal information stored on it as well as the cost of getting a new one. A cellphone can even be used to prove oneself innocent by recording of evidence and presenting in court.