The Modern Day Mobile Phone

It was merely an idea that sprung from Martin Cooper’s head in 1973. Although not quite in a Zeus-like fashion, it was still an incredibly historical moment as Martin Cooper would be announced the father of the cell phone. He had thought of a way to create a hand-held device that allowed you to stay in touch with other people who were not around you. It was an amazing invention, not only was it portable, as opposed to standing in one spot and twirling and twisting the telephone cord around your index finger while you waited for the conversation to end, but it would lead to nearly 85% of the world population having a cell phone in the future.

Although the initial ideas of cell phones were to stay in contact with others, it has progressed incredibly with help from modern day technology. Like teenagers, cell phones too went through that awkward stage. It kick-started with brick-like devices, a popular one being the invention of the Nokia - which today are basically considered the Crocs of technology – to becoming trendy as it progressed from uncomfortable phones that required nearly two hands to hold, to flip phones that fit snugly in the palm of your hand as they caused great strain on your thumb and your pinky finger which the weight of the phone rested against.

There was also the short duration of Blackberry smartphones and the ever increasing popularity of the Apple smartphone brand, because yes, we are now naming technology after fruits.

Cell phones got smarter but their owners didn’t. Through the evolution of this very popular gadget, intelligent conversations have been substituted for a wide variety of social media such as iMessage, Snapchat, WhatsApp, Instagram etc. The human race has become a slave to communicative technology because a seemingly little known fact is that although you are able to turn up the brightness on your iPhone, it will not provide you with vitamin D.  There are constantly new applications to download and people are always sitting behind a screen. Get-togethers consist of sitting with friends while everyone is chatting online and lunches require you to take a photo of what you’re eating before you actually consume it. People turn to their phones in awkward situations to avoid looking awkward, thus making them look antisocial instead and highlighting how symmetrical irony and circumstance really is.

I think this trend has carried on because yes, it is a form of communication, but it is also about status and even social hierarchies. The make, the brand, the price - all very diminutive things in comparison with valid and real world issues, however somewhat important to society nonetheless. Our response to technology and how we allow our private lives to be displayed on such a public platform like the internet may even indicate the kind of people we are. Naturally, mobile phones are still extremely useful and relevant today, much more so than it was years ago due to availability to access more functions. There is nothing wrong with having a lot of social media platforms and using them,  but if you are counting how many ‘likes’ you’ve received, it may be a good idea to take a step back and just reflect on why it is so important in the first place.