Cell phones have become a necessity to people in our day and age. I personally would not know what to do with myself if I did not have my phone for a day. Whether phones have affected us mentally in a positive or negative way is debatable. When we think about our daily lives, and how much we use our phones or how much we see others use their phones, we can pick up on some pretty obvious affects that our phones have on us.

Our phones can influence our lives pretty negatively. One, people try to text and drive, and kill innocent people in their attempt at multitasking. Another is our lack of concentration. Just while writing this blog post, I must have looked at my phone and gone on Facebook in another tab in Safari maybe 15 times total. We are also relying on our phones way too much. If I did not have a phone, I would get lost all the time without the Google Maps app, because I never learned how to read a regular map. I often use auto-correct on my phone to check the spelling of things, or just assume it will always correct my errors. Lastly, professionals have seen a decrease in communications skills. According to Jonathan Alpert, “phones have become a pacifier of sorts, a security blanket, and a source of comfort to many.”

Although there are some negative affects to having a phone, there are also some perks to having a phone. Everything is at your fingertips, so you can instantly reply to emails, send texts, and call anyone around the world. In addition, with all the new apps being created everyday, the options of what to do on your phone are almost limitless. For example just at Penn State, we have an app to check the amount of people in the gyms around campus, where the busses are in comparison to where you are, and what is for dinner at Pollock tonight. Cell phones really make life so easy.

So, do the negative affects outweigh the positive affects? It is hard to tell, but in a recent comparison of statistics by Jess Bolluyt, it seems as though teens are becoming less intelligent from cell phones. The Pew Research Center has been gathering data on teen’s ownership of cell phones. In 2004, 45% of teen’s aged 12 to 17 had a cell phone. In 2013, 78% of teens between those ages owned a cell phone, showing a 33% increase in only 9 years. When you look at the SAT scores from the same nine years (2004 to 2013), the mean score from the Math, Critical Reading and Writing sections have declined. When putting these two factors together, it can seem like students are getting dumber due to the increase in cell phone ownership, but there can be many other factors leading to these results. This can mean that students are growing a dependence on technology, or that cell phones are affecting students reading abilities. The SAT measures student’s readiness for college, so there could be a better resource to measure a student’s intelligence, since socioeconomics also affects how a student will do on their SATs.

On the other hand, Daniel T. Willingham argues that phones are not making us dumber, but are just a huge distraction. “Research shows that our intuition is wrong. We can focus. But our sense that we can’t may not be a phantom. Paying attention requires not just ability but desire. Technology may snuff out our desire to focus,” says Willingham. The problem with technology is that it offers us constant entertainment, which can distract us from other more boring tasks, like learning. Now that we are such constant users of technology including cell phones, we have the question “Isn’t there something better to do than what I’m doing?” is always sitting in the back of our minds. This is a good way to look at your cell phone addiction as something you are actually in control of.

It is obvious that there are good and bad things to having a cell phone. Based on the SAT score decline while the cell phone ownership increased, it seems likely that cell phones are having a large effect on teens capabilities in the classrooms and on tests, but if you believe Willingham, this can all be controlled if you recognize when you need to properly concentrate.

Sources: Source 1, Source 2 (image), Source 3