Smartphones as extensions of us.

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.