It has now quite become
the norm that everywhere you go you will find people staring at their glaring
smartphone screens. Teenagers and young adults would be flickering through
various social media while those in the business world go through their emails
and interact with other professionals. Our lives have become so centered on
this piece of technology that it has moved from being a luxury to a basic
necessity.
Smartphones |
When cellphones first surfaced
in Zimbabwe, they were mostly a luxury reserved for the elite. It used to be
the businessman, the doctors and lawyers who carried this large brick like
gadget which the average person could only see if they were lucky to sit to a
person who had one. They started get a bit advanced when Nokia which was the
biggest phone manufacturer in the world, introduced the Snake game in its
phones and people could customize their ringtones with polyphonic tones. Mobile
phones started getting a bit sophisticated when they started having color
displays, could play a couple of songs and some even spotted some low end
camera at the back.
Phones have become smarter enough for people to organize their
entire lives around them. A typical day for an average smartphone user involves
getting woken up by their phone’s alarm clock, checking for any new mail and
messages, plugging in their earphones on their way to work or school, while
updating their Facebook profiles, tweeting all that they know and googling what
they don’t. It is as if people have actually become more connected through
smartphones by becoming disconnected to their immediate surroundings.
People now would now
rather chat with someone far away and stay oblivious of those close to them.
The popularity of mobile applications such as Facebook, Whatsapp and Instagram
just serves to show how people how people have become heavily dependent on
their smartphones for social interaction.
Since phones have become
such a basic tool of communication, it is not uncommon to see children as young
as 10 years old carrying an iPhone. Although this is a good thing, it can
expose kids to harmful content on the internet, for instance pornography,
because of the internet is now easier to access. Also most children also appear
to be more tech savvy than their parents; therefore there is no censoring them
on what they can access and what kind of websites they visit. These are just
some of the negative effects smartphones have brought upon society.
On the other hand, there
is no denying that smartphones have improved and made our lives much easier.
Communicating with whomever you want has become easier, learning new things has
never been easier with the world at your literally at your fingertips. There is a plethora of smartphone
applications all aimed to make your life much simpler. Weather apps will give
you weather updates, fitness apps will keep you healthy while maps and GPS apps will
ensure that you never get lost. Smartphones have literally managed to fit into every aspect of our lives.
Smartphones have also
brought opportunities to those interested in bringing their ideas to life. People can create apps, and you can literally create an app for anything. There are
currently over a million applications on Apple’s App store and over a million
on Google’s play store and the numbers will keep rising. Although a few of them
actually make money, a lot of people have managed to benefit from building
mobile applications. Flappy Bird maker, Dong Nguyen for instance was making up
to $50,000 a day from probably one of the simplest mobile games out there
before he pulled it down. 17 year old Nick D'Aloisio sold
his news app to Yahoo for $30 million. This just goes on to show the
opportunities smartphones have brought about.
Smartphones have brought
about great changes in society, they have changed have the way in which we live as we now center our lives around this piece of technology.