Many people ask me the question, “What phone do you have?” and are shocked to find out that I don’t have a smartphone, before usually asking why I don’t have one. And this is my answer. Everywhere you look, the majority of people are on their smartphones, not paying attention to the world around them. I find this really upsetting, because the iPhone was only invented just over ten years ago, where everyone being techno-zombies would have just been unimaginable. For this reason, I do not have a smartphone or want one. Ever.

Of course, I do have a mobile phone. They can be quite useful if you want to call a family member and let them know where you are. My mobile phone can call and text. Oh, and I can play Sudoku on it. (That’s about the most complex thing it does!) But I like it.

It has been quite handy whenever there’s been a tonne of snow and the school closes, which is when I use my mobile phone to say, “I’m coming home!” (One example.)

The smartphone was originally invented so people could share a walk they had on Facebook before they got home. (For example.) Or they could send a friend a photo of that lovely meal you ate. (Another example.)

But we are all so reliant on these devices that at my school, our homework is now set online: something I do not like. Thankfully, you could view the site on a computer, too, so I did not need to worry about having to purchase a smartphone anytime soon. Thankfully, my mum bought me a large diary which I could write down my homework in, and the teachers would (usually) tell us what homework they were setting and when it was due in, so I didn’t really need to use it. (Unless they had a few things that they wanted us to print off, which was quite annoying.)

Another example on how we overuse our smartphones is for translating things we could easily work out ourselves or use a different resource. In one of my German cover lessons, everyone was getting their smartphones out to go on Google Translate to look up what “in the past” was in German. I knew how to say “in the” so all I needed to do was to get out my dictionary to look up what “past” was in German.

Conclusion

My conclusion from all this is smartphones can be great, when used sparsely and wisely. But we are using them too much, and mainly for things we could easily do or figure out by ourselves. So, no, I’m not saying that 9th January 2007 (the day when he unveiled the first iPhone) was the worst day in human history. I’m just saying that the 9th January was the day when we started to have a device that could do great things, but only if we use them responsibly. I mean, Steve Jobs wouldn’t want us to be glued to our smartphones for everything, would he?

So, this is the part of the blog post where I ask you for your opinion. What do you think of smartphones? Do you think they’re too addictive? Write your opinion in the comments box below.