Some Traps of a Cellular Phone

Itakura Toshinori

The number of cellular phones is more than seventy million in Japan. More than a half of all people have a cellular phone in circulation. Even some children have one. It would be difficult not to have a cellular phone in our times, because everyone does something under the consideration that everyone has a cellular phone. If someone who does not have a cellular phone is in a group, it will make a gap of the amount of information or communication among the members. On the other hand, it was a dream come true to be able to have access to so many things. People enjoy the internet, e-mail, games, music, pictures, and of course talking to other cellular phones. A cellular phone is still developing so people will have very convenient functions more than ever in the near future. However, some traps of cellular phone are indicated which have bad influences on their lives by several fields of specialists. This essay will introduce the traps and show that there are some points which people should pay attention to when they have a cellular phone.

A cellular phone may make people’s health and ability to see or to remember worse by its monitor, radio wave and memory. By the statistical data, the number of nearsightedness is increasing with the spread of cellular phones, especially with young people. The monitor of a phone is very small so they gaze at one point. Many young people use e-mail by the phone frequently so they tend to lose their good eye sight. At one time, radio waves from the antenna were discovered to have a bad influence on medical appliances such as pacemakers of heart so they must turn off the phone when they are in a hospital or a crowded place. Recently, a new bad effect of radio waves was discovered. It is that radio waves may cause brain tumors. The detailed effects of radio waves are still being studied, but people should give attention to being on the phone for a long time. It is at least clear that strong radio waves are dangerous for human body. Also, cellular phone’s memory may ruin people’s ability to remember. According to the results of experimentation, the ability of learning long figures is lowering. Specialists guess that it is caused by not having chances to remember phone numbers and alarm that the decline of memory leads to other cerebral declines.

Also, many people spend too much money for a phone so they sacrifice many other things. The charge of a phone is not cheap so some young people have to work a long time to be able to pay the charge. For instance, according to the most common charge plan of the most popular phone company, NTT docomo, it takes 30 yen per one minute. The average hourly wage of convenience store is about 750 yen so young people have to work one hour if they want to talk with their friend 25 minutes on cellular phone. They have to work more than 7 hours in a week if they call 25 minutes every day. It must be hard for high school students. As a result, they cannot use money for other effective ways such as leisure activities. However, they use their phone only to talk or send e-mail to friends, of which the contents are the same as usual talking when they are in their school. It is too wasteful.

Some young people become addicted to using e-mail that sometimes causes disagreeable things. E-mail is good for telling their mind with feeling at ease and it is not as expensive as calling so it is liked by especially young people. It is said that some young people who like to send and receive mail send e-mail more than 30 times per a day. It takes much time to type long messages by pushing number buttons so they consume much time by chatting every day. I cannot say it is wrong that, but it is wasteful a little, too. Besides, some receivers are unfamiliar mailing friends. Several young women are involved in crimes which are related to unfamiliar mailing friends. The serious crimes are murder, kidnapping and rape. Cellular phones make criminals close to people.

In addition, the security of a phone is also becoming more vulnerable because of many functions. A phone is a treasure house of private information. The information on its memory is easy to be abused. A function of leaving past records of receiving is often also abused. If someone replies to an unknown phone number, it connects a toll call automatically, and then an expensive bill is sent. And now a cellular phone has already had a function of money. People can buy soft drinks from new-style vending machines by the function of drawing automatically from their account. The new service of a cellular phone started that they can pay a fare of flight from their post-office savings account. Such service seems to extend soon. These functions are convenient, but they must manage a phone strictly or they will suffer serious damages.

In conclusion, there are many dangers in having a cellular phone like this. Likely, these dangers in exchange for fun or convenience may cause traps. But people can prevent these traps by several devices. The most important thing when using convenient machines like a cellular phone is that they should be used in moderation, and independently, people should not be ruled by them. If people know the shortcoming of a cellular phone, they will make use of one more wisely and efficiently.