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Running head: CELL PHONES DRUGS AMOUNG STUDENTS

Are Cell Phones Modern-day Drugs among Students?


Mohammad Al-Satari
American University of Sharjah

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Abstract
Advent of advanced information and communication technology has changed the ways in
which people communicate each other. Yet it is a growing concern. Increasingly large numbers of
people, the young generation in particular, are becoming addicted to their mobile phones.
Adverse effects of the use of cell phone by students are discussed in this research. Although
cellphones have certain advantages, the adverse effects that they create are more significant and
dangerous. Based on evidence, the present research reveals that mobile phones are quite
detrimental to students.

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Cell Phones Modern-day Drugs among Students?
Who does not use cell phone today? This multipurpose tool that allows us to call, text or
any other form of communication is always in our pockets or within an easy reach. But there is a
growing threat on its negative effects on people's health due to harmful radiation. Should we be
concerned? In the past, passing of small chits or papers was the main form of communication for
students in college and high school in the classrooms. But, in the modern era, the cell phones
have replaced those chits and papers. In todays era, with the advent of modern mobile and
communication technology, students use their smart phones to communicate each other by
sending text messages or interacting through social media. Lepp et al (2013, p.2) explains that
young people, especially the high school and college students, spent a great of their time using
cell phones. As such cell phones have become a new kind of drug amongst the youth.
Technological devices have lowered academic grades for students, destroyed their health and
taken away their overall satisfaction with life.
Discussion 1
The increased use of cell phones tends to create adverse effect on the writing skills of
students. As college and high school students depend more on cell phones to communicate with
their peers, they use different social media smart phone applications and text messages. This way
of communication does not require good writing skills as most of the messages involve the use of
informal or operational broken version words and sentences that enables ease and swiftness in
transiting the messages. No complete sentence or grammatical accuracy is expected in such
messages. Therefore, the increased use of cellphones adversely affects development of writing
skills among youngsters. It has been reported that the college and high school students use a
great deal of abbreviated form of language and tend to omit punctuations in their text

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communication using the smart phones (Campbell, 2015, p.4). Hence, those students who
extensively use text messaging and smart phone applications may find it hard to distinguish
between grammatically correct formal language and informal form of language. This habit
inhibits development of good writing skills. These students often encounter difficulties in
preparing accurate and effective reports, research papers, assignments etc. where the use of
formal English language is a requirement.
Although the increased use of cell phones has certain adverse effects, it does have many
useful benefits. The ability to use modern technology is a requirement to be effective on almost
all kinds of jobs in the modern era. Proficiency in cell phones use offer distinct benefits in this
regard. It helps employees making important notes of meetings quickly and effectively on their
cell phones. They may not require keeping a meeting book or diary to make notes. Similarly, one
can use cell phones as a planner as well as a reminder of important events. One can use cell
phones to input their important events/activities/appointments of the day/week or month. The
cellphones will notify these events on time so that people will not miss any important activities.
Since people carry their cell phones with them almost all the time, it will be able to prompt the
users about the important appointments and activities effectively. This utility is extremely
beneficial for those employees who have multiple roles and busy schedules. Research by
Campbell (2015) found that those individuals who are proficient in smart phone use or more
frequent users of cell phone are more efficient in making meeting notes. They will be quick in
making notes than less frequent users because the frequent cell phone users have fast typing
skills and are effective in abbreviated writing than others. Clearly, this illustrates the positive
impact of cell phone use.

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One may argue that cell phone use makes people effective on their work, but the
extensive of use of it will not help high school and college students potentially successful in their
careers. Those high school and college students extensively use cell phones will continue this
habit even after their graduation and assuming professional careers. They might have intense
drive to use their cell phones for texting, browsing and social networking even during their
work/office time. As employees are driven toward cell phones, they may not be able to
concentrate on their work leading to poor commitment and productivity. The employees may not
be able utilize their potential skills and talents in the workplace. Ronald (2011) noted that cell
phone use is detrimental to workplace productivity. Therefore, the author suggested
organizations to develop adequate policies to define and limit the use of cell phones in the
workplace. It is apparent that the cell phones have some useful benefits, however, those benefits
are less significant. Instead, intense use of cell phones in the workplace is quite detrimental to
both employees and organizations.
Discussion 2
Inability to concentrate in the classroom and poor grades are the other important adverse
effects of the cell phone use by students. Those students who are motivated to use their cell
phones frequently will be tempted to use it during the class as well. The will be often distracted
from the subject matter being taught in the class. Students who do not concentrate well in the
class may not gain much from their teachers. This will lead to their poor performance in
assessments. A study among the University students in the US revealed that frequent use of cell
phone is significantly negatively related to their Grade Point Average (GPA) (Aryn et al., 2015,
p.1). It appears that the cell phone-savvy students are highly likely to visit social networking
sites and do text messaging during the lecturing hours and they gain much less from the class

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leading to their poor academic achievement. Therefore, certainly, the cell phone use is harmful to
academic performance of students.
The argument that the use of cell phones or smart phones in classrooms adversely affects
the learning process may not be accurate. Advances in mobile technology is favorable to students
learning as it offer new avenues (e-learning for instance) for learning than conventional methods.
Traditionally, students learn from teachers directly in the classroom itself. However, the
advanced technology, e-learning using mobile technology, could offer effective learning
opportunity for students beyond the walls of the classrooms. This is a great opportunity
especially for certain category of students (those geographically distantly located and special
need students who find it difficult travel to schools/colleges). Aryn et al (2015, p.4) notes that the
modern smartphones help students interact with teachers and other students and learn the subject
matter in virtual environment. Webinars, skype, zoom, Twitter stream etc. are some of the
important on-line platforms where virtual learning is possible. Not only it helps students attend
their classes on-line but it also help teachers continue discussion with students and build a strong
learning community among students as well as offer accessibility to library, teaching and
learning materials via internet. Students tend to enjoy such form of learning. It demonstrates that
students could be engaged in teaching and learning via social media with the help of smart
phones or cell phones. Clearly, it indicates that, if used in the right way, the cell phones are
helpful for students in teaching and learning.
While on-line or e-learning technology could offer a new platform for teaching/learning
and does require travel or carrying books to classrooms, it may not guarantee positive learning
outcomes. When students attend classes via online mode or they use smartphones or mobile
phones instead of books in the classroom, it may distract students from the very the act of

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learning. Students may misuse the internet-based or online learning platforms. They tend to
prefer social networking, chatting, browsing to learning subject matter in the classrooms which
might lead to poor learning outcomes. Research by Lepp et al (2013, p.5) found that e-learning
embedded multitasking is negatively correlated to students academic outcome. Those students
who are exposed to such multiple tasks in the classrooms as learning from teachers, online
learning, texting, e-learning etc. do not gain well academically compared to normal students. It
conveys that the mobile technology based learning or the use of cell phones to support classroom
learning might diminish the learning process that lead to poor learning outcomes. It is apparent
that the use of cell phones may make classroom experience easy and interesting for students, but
it has significant negative impact on learning outcomes.
Excessive use of cell phones has negative effects on health and wellbeing of students.
Frequent use of cell phones causes several health concerns among students. The cell phone savvy
students tend to spend considerable amount of time on chatting, browsing, social networking etc.
Often they sit without many movements and sleep very late. Uninterrupted interaction with smart
phones causes severe strain to the eyes leading to other visual problems. Besides, the heavy users
of cell phones also cause sleep deprivation, anxiety, and temperamental problems (Borreli,
2013). Increase in the frequency of cell phone usage by college students could be detrimental to
their health, researchers find, because the constant availability via phones can generate stress and
produce the feeling of never being free- stated by Borreli (2013, p.1). It appears that the cell
phone-savvy individuals are emotionally addicted to it and they find it difficult to live without it.
The above evidence shows that cell phones are becoming unavoidable evils to youngsters. It
seems that they are getting emotionally addicted to cell phones. Therefore, it can be inferred that
the uncontrolled use of cell phones are detrimental to health and wellbeing of people.

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Although many argue that cell phones have adverse effects on health and welling being
of people, its health benefits could not be ignored. The advanced technology-enabled cell phones
help the users abreast of a wide range of health information that help them remain fit. The
internet connected cell phones or smartphones help brining the world of information to the
fingertips of the users. The cell phone users will be able gather a variety of health and fitness
information, information on fitness-based daily activities, heathy diet, calorie value of food etc.
that help them organize their daily activities conveniently without consultation with a health and
fitness professional. There are cell phone-based applications (eg.S-health) to assess the calorie
value of each food consumed and inform the users about the amount walking or jogging required
to burn off the calories from the consumed food. Moreover, cell phones or smartphones help
understand different illnesses and their symptoms so that one can take proper corrective
measures (Klasnja et al., 2012, p.2). Essentially, cell phones could act as an important source of
health information and fitness guide for the users. This illustrates that cell phones have a
positive role in the health and fitness of people.
While it may be true that cell phones help people remain physically fit, the radiations
emitted from them cause serious health hazards. The communication devices used in the cell
phones tend to emit different levels of radiations in the process of receiving and transmitting
messages and excessive exposure to these radiations cause serious health hazards like cancer. A
study by Adams et al (2014) found that the radiations (Radio Frequency waves) emitted from the
cell phones cause gene transformation leading to serious health complications. It has been
reported that students generally keep their cellphones close to their body, mostly in the pocket of
trousers or shirts, for long periods of time. The body cells in the closer proximity of cell phones
are vulnerable to gene mutation and consequent damages due the radiations from them. It is

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apparent that cell phones are quite destructive to health and wellbeing of people. Therefore, the
potential health hazards that the cell phones create are more serious and destructive than the
possible health benefits they could offer to the users.
The cell phones use destroys happiness in individuals life. Generally, the youngsters
spend a great deal of their time online texting with their friends, browsing and social networking.
The prolonged social networking activities make the cellphone-savvy youngsters engrossed in
the virtual world and they may lose their presence of mind and location. As they interact with
their peers in the distant location via online media longer, they might ignore their near and dear
people who might be staying in their closer proximity which will hurt the relationship leading to
loosing of happiness in life. In his writing, Davenport (2013, p.4) inquires, Why choose to
communicate through social media, rather than enjoy a friends company? Or better yet, do
something together, other than sitting side by side staring at the displays on your individual
devices?(p.2). The concern expressed by the author in the above article is a serious issue and
quite widespread in the modern-day world. It indicates that cell phone addiction is growing a
concern among college and high school students that creates cracks on interpersonal relationship
thereby destroying satisfaction in life. It is revealed that those who extensively use cell phones
are less happy in their life than those who do not (Davenport, 2013), which means that the
frequency of cell phone use is negatively related to own general satisfaction amomg the users.
Hence, it is clear that the increased use of cell phones has adverse effects on personal happiness
of the users although it helps keeping people connected.

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Conclusion
Cell phone addiction is a growing concern among college and high school students.
Whether or not cell phone use is effective is a debated issue. Although cell phone use has certain
useful benefits, they are quite insignificant. On the other hand, extensive use of it are certainly
harmful to people. Poor writing skills, low grades, detrimental effects on employees and
organizations, and adverse effects on health, wellbeing, and personal happiness are the important
concerns posed by the cell phone addiction. Cell phones are becoming a kind of modern-day
drug among the young generation that requires immediate attention. Developing self-control is
an important solution to this growing problem. Educating people, college and high school
students in particular, on the harmful effects of the extensive use of cell phone could also help
reducing the cell phone addiction to great extent. In any case, uncontrolled use of cell phones
certainly an evil.

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References
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Borreli, L. (2013). Students' cell phone use may increase anxiety, decrease GPA and
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Campbell, R. (2015). OMG: social media may wreck your kid's writing. In N. Berlatsky
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