People’s
attitudes towards the cell phone use in Their Daily Lives
Yu
Zhang
Abstract
The cell phone has become one of the most popular and widespread electronic devices, which provides lots of convenience to modern humans’ lives. Besides communication, surfing the internet, shopping online, watching video, and listening to music and all these benefits, the cell phone also brings some negative effects. Cell phone use while driving is one of notorious behaviors that causes an increasing odds of road accidents. This risky issue deserves more attention. In this paper, a survey about cell phone use in humans’ lives was carried on. A series of problems including people’s attitudes about cell phone use while driving, and people’s purposes of cell phone use while driving, people’s attitudes about cell phone use in their daily lives were investigated. Totally 229 participants joined in the survey. According to the survey, people seem more sensible than we predicted, and many participants denied the negative effects of cell phone use on their lives. However, these results should rise more vigilance, because people avoided admitting the negative points of cell phone use on purpose, which may bring serious problems to themselves or to other people.
Introduction
Cell phones have become convenient and valuable tools in modern humans’ lives, which not only provide fast communication but also bring many computational functions, such as shopping by the smart phones, checking emails on phones, watching video and so on. According to the data from the Statista website, the number of smart phones in use in the USA was 62.6 million in 2010; the number is expected to reach 236.8 million in 2019. Without doubt, the widespread use of cell phones and smart phones bring lots of benefits to humans’ work and lives; however, it also causes serious negative effects.
Currently, cell phone use while driving has become a notorious behavior. Many people don’t understand the danger of cell phone use while driving, which may induce serious road accidents.
Some people have realized that cell phone use while driving may bring potential danger, so they choose to use hands-free devices when they drive. However, due to the number of accidents that are related to cell phone use while driving, even hands-free cell phone use while driving is still a dangerous behavior that should be avoided in driving. What’s more, texting while driving and texting while waiting for red lights all belong to cell phone use while driving. All these behaviors may cause car collisions and people’s casualties.
The distraction of drivers from cell phone use while driving is one of the reasons for car accidents. Mobile phone use while driving may disturb drivers’ attention, which decreases the drivers’ sensitivity towards the safety of the road. A distracted driver may not give an appropriate response, and that causes a rear-end accident; a distracted driver may ignore the other cars around him/her when he/she is taking a call, which induces an improper changing lane while driving. In a word, mobile phone use while driving increases the odds of car accidents dramatically.
In this paper, our group was interested in people’s attitudes about cell phone use in their daily lives. We wanted to know whether people had realized the negative effects that cell phones brought into their lives. Through a survey, we expected to understand how important a role that cell phone played in people’s lives. Also we wanted to provide some suggestions to control the excess use of cell phone.
Literature Review
In Dr. Lee’s paper (2013), he pointed out that cell phone conversations have negative effects on reaction time, lane keeping, car following ability, and speed control while driving. Both cell phone conversations while driving and text messages while driving increase car accident risk significantly. Besides, he emphasized that practicing cell phone use while driving can’t make the driving safe. The driver still can be distracted from inattention blindness. Finally, Dr. Lee suggested to his patients that they’d better get rid of the habit of cell phone use while driving.
Cell phone use while driving happens with teens and young adults more than with elder adults, because the young generation spends more time on the cell phone. Social media, such as Facebook and Twitter attract many young people to review the renewed information on them constantly. Some of them prefer to have a quick glance at these social media when they are waiting for the red light; surfing on the internet by smart phone is also a good time-killer while waiting for the red light. However, the cell phone use while driving is just like an addiction, which makes them get used to using the cell phone while driving.
Dr. Wilkinson’s group (2015) did a survey about cell phone use among Texas drivers. According to their research, the prevalence of cell phone talking while driving among drivers in major medical and academic campuses in Texas tended to decrease from 2011 to 2013; however, texting while driving assumed a rise from 2011 to 2013. Female drivers had cell phone conversations and texted more often than male drivers. Younger and middle age drivers preferred to have cell phone use while driving, compared with older drivers; what’s more, the youngest drivers presented the highest odds of cell phone conversations and texting.
Dr. Copeland (2010) focused on teens’ attitudes towards texting while driving. He found that many teens aged from 14 to 17 thought that texting while driving was less dangerous than drunken driving. However, Dr. Copeland pointed out that many teens misunderstood the danger of texting while driving. According to a survey from the University of Utah, texting while driving is as hazardous as driving with a blood-alcohol content of 0.08% (0.08% is close to the minimum value of illegal drunken driving). When people texted while driving, they had to remove their eyes from the road to phone screens; at the same time, their hands were off the wheel. Thus, texting while driving not only hampered drivers’ safety, but also jeopardized drivers who were next to them and also passengers on the road.
Cell phone use in school has become a widespread issue for most of students. According to a Pew Research Center study, 73 percent of teenagers in American have smartphones, and 92 percent of teens go online daily (2015). Too much use of cell phone in school would cause poor performance in class.
Drews (2004) found that drivers who had cell phone conversations yielded less sensitivity toward road conditions compared with drivers who had conversations with their passengers.
Lang (2015) pointed out that cell phone use may bring dangers to the users since they don’t pay attention to their surroundings.
Bjornsen (2015) did a survey to see how often his students used cell phones in his class. He pointed out that students’ test scores suffered with cell phone use in class.
Gross (2014) talked about how to control the misuse of cell phone among teens. He suggested that teens’ parents should become involved in this activity.
Hyman (2014) found that young adults preferred to communicate via texting, compared with the elders, who preferred to give a call or send an email.
Even though people have gotten used to using cell phones in their daily life, Kowalski (2014) stated that there hasn’t been a reasonable scale to measure if they get addicted to cell phone use.
According to a survey by the University of Maryland, cell phones have become central to the young generation. Alleyne (2011) gave a statement that the young generation are addicted to mobile phones.
In Luce’s paper (2011), he talked about the influence of cell phones in psychology, community, culture, art and economics around the world. He pointed out that even though cell phones provide a great convenience in humans’ lives, the cell phones also control humans.
In the paper “Teens and Mobile Phones”, Purcell (2010) pointed out that personal safety was an important reason for owning cell phones among teens. Most of teens’ parents supported this statement. Getting in touch with a child no matter where he/she was a major consideration for these parents.
Awatif’s group did a survey about the University students’ attitudes towards cell phones in a learning environment. They found that undergraduate students held more positive attitudes about cell phones being involved in a learning environment, compared with graduate students.
Baron wrote a paper about the mobile phone use among college students in five different nations. She found that the communication was the major function for cell phone use among all these five nations.
Sullivan (2013) found more and more Americans cared about cell phone use in public areas; in particularly talking during a movie was almost abandoned behavior. Only 6% people supported talking during a movie, compared with 11% people agreed with this behavior.
Averianova (2012) found that texting often interfered with students’ academic writing. Since students had a lack of code-switching skills and they preferred to use nonstandard language, how to help students develop essential skills to solve this interaction deserved English teachers’ attention.
Aziale (2014) did a survey about cell use among young adults in Gnana. He found that young adults used cell phones for entertainment more than for business or educational functions.
Hypotheses
1 I thought that even though the students in Texas Tech University had realized the dangers of cell phone use while in driving, most of them still couldn’t stop using cell phones while driving.
2 I guessed that many people used their phones while driving for communications frequently.
3 I thought that students used cell phones for entertainment more than for communication and education-related activities in their daily lives.
4 Since many students have gotten used to having cell phones in their daily lives, I guessed that many students might feel uncomfortable without their phones.
5 The excess cell phone use distracted people’s attention, which implies that they pay less attention to their environment and other people around them. I thought that too much cell phone use might interfere with people’s fine relationships with their partners.
6 I thought that the excess use of cell phones also brought some problems to people, such as stress, lack of interesting towards other things.
Methods Section
We made a survey about cell phone use in humans’ lives and people’s attitudes towards intercultural marriage/intercultural relationships. In this survey, 17 questions were about cell phone usage in people’s life, and 11 questions were about intercultural marriage/intercultural relationships. We made a paper form and an online form. Everyone in the class took this survey first, including the professor, three teaching assistants, 10 students, and 3 visiting scholars. Next, everyone in the class took 12 questionnaires and hosted a survey with 6 males and 6 females, separately. We expected to collect more than 200 questionnaires, so we could get enough data for the analysis of those two issues. The survey took around one week. After collecting data with 12 people, everyone in the class input paper forms into Survey Planet. We got a total of 229 responses. We used Survey Planet graphs and statistics to do the analysis.
Since cell phones have been widely used in people’s daily lives, I wanted to know how important cell phones were in humans’ lives, and the positive and the negative sides of cell phones. I was interested in whether people used cell phones while they were driving and the purposes of using cell phones while driving. I also wanted to know whether people were addicted to the cell phone use and the frequency of cell phone use in their normal day. What’s more, I was curious about the purposes of cell phone use besides calling and texting.
Since college students can represent the new generation, I thought that it was very important to know their attitudes about using cell phones in their lives. I started my survey in my class. I asked students who finished their experiments earlier whether they would like to take this survey for me. First, I introduced the goal of this survey. Then I asked if they were interested in taking this survey. No one refused my proposal. Since this survey occurred in a lab, most of them took this survey seriously and quietly. After they finished the survey, they left the class. No one talked about the survey in the class. I collected all paperwork and input their paper forms into Survey Planet.
Results
In our survey, we were interested in cell phone use in humans’ daily life. We were expecting to find out how cell phones affected their study, work, and relationships with other people. According to the collected questionnaires, there were a total of 229 people who joined in our survey. At the beginning, the genders, ages, marital status, and majors of participants were checked. Among these people, there were 105 males and 124 females. 126 out of 229 people (55%) were singles; 43 out of 229 people (19%) were married; people in committed relationship took 57 out of 229 (25%), and 3 people (1.3%) were divorced. Next, we collected these people’s ages. More than half of people (53%) were aged between 18 and 22; a small number of people (27%) were aged between 23 and 27; a small minority of then (20%) were more than 28. In this survey, 37% of students majored in hard sciences; the others were in math, English, creative arts, design, social sciences, etc.
One of the most interesting questions that we were curious about was people’s attitudes towards cell phone use while driving. We thought that many of them used their cell phones while driving, including calling, texting, checking emails, and listening to music. We also thought that people couldn’t control their own use of cell phones while driving. However, the results were quite different from our prediction. People were more cautious than we expected when they were driving. Almost a half (48%) said they only used cell phones at stop sites. A small number of them (19%) reported that they didn’t use cell phones at all while driving. A good proportion of them (31%) admitted that they used their phones occasionally. Only 5% of people used cell phone a lot of times.
Besides cell phone use while driving, we also wanted to know the purposes of using cell phones while driving. We believed that most of them just couldn’t control themselves from making a call or texting. However, more than half (56%) used their cell phones as GPS while driving. Around 25% of participants used their cell phones as a music player. That made sense. Since most cell phones were smartphones, Google maps and music Apps were easily available on their phones. Only a small number of people reported that they used cell phones for calling or texting; the numbers were 15% and 17%, respectively. Besides, only a small minority (3%) never used cell phones while driving.
People’s attitudes towards cell phone use while driving was also an interesting question that we wanted to know. We believed that people were agreed with the idea that cell phone use while driving was wrong and dangerous. In this case, it seemed that most people’s attitudes were in accordance with our expectations. There were 79 out of 229 people (78%) who thought cell phone use while driving was wrong or dangerous. Only 51 out of 229 people (22%) were more or less not agreed with this statement.
There was another issue about cell phone use in people’s daily lives. We thought that too much cell phone use in people’s daily lives would affect social interactions with the others. For this issue, 175 out of 229 people (76%) supported this idea. Only 54 out of 229 people (24%) hold the opposite opinion about the excessive use of cell phone reducing social interaction.
We also wanted to know if people suffered stress from cell phone use while they had dates or if they had quite different opinions on cell phone use with their partners or dates. We guessed that cell phone use took advantages from a fine relationship. However, the survey proved that we were wrong. More than half (52%) did not agree with the statement. They didn’t have a difference of opinion on cell phone use with their partners or dates. Only 36% people complained that their partners/dates used the cell phone more than they wanted. And a small number of people (12%) admitted that they used cell phone more than their dates wanted.
The last thing we were interested in was the afflictions of cell phone use in people’s daily lives, especially negative afflictions. We believed that too much cell phone use would bring some negative afflictions in their lives. From the survey, we could see that more than a half of people (64%) had or knew someone who had either excess stress or suffered sleep disorder because of cell phone use. However, there was still a small portion of people (36%) who didn’t have any problems or know of any problems with cell phone use in their lives.
Based on the survey, people were more sensible than we thought about the cell phone use while driving. Many of them only used or checked their cell phones at stop sites. Only a small portion of people used cell phones while driving. Especially, the main purposes of cell phone use while driving were using cell phone as a GPS or a music player. What’s more, most of the people didn’t support cell phone use while driving. Cell phone use in people’s daily lives didn’t affect their relationships with their partners/dates. Most of the people weren’t affected by cell phone use in their lives. However, we still suspected that some people didn’t report the truth, or they hadn’t realized that the cell phone use indeed brought some negative effects upon them. For example, the excess of cell phone use in people’s lives indeed hampered building good relationships with their partners, relatives, and friends. But some people didn’t want to admit this point.
Discussion
Cell phones play a very important role in modern humans’ daily lives. Besides communication by cell phones, which is the basic function of the cell phones, current smart cell phones provide multi-functions, such as checking emails, surfing the internet, shopping online, watching videos, listening to music, etc. The wide use of cell phones brought a big issue related to safety. Cell phone use while driving would distract drivers’ attention, which was one of the notorious factors for car accidents. At the same time, the excessive use of cell phones also could hamper human’s interrelationships. What’s more, unlimited cell phone use might cause some health problems, such as vision problems, sore neck, and sleep disorders. Our group was interested in the negative influences caused by cell phone use in people’s lives. A survey about cell phone use was carried out. Finally, 229 questionnaires were collected. According to the data analysis, there were 105 males and 124 females, and most of the participants were studying or working in Texas Tech University.
We thought that cell phone use while driving had become a common behavior among people. More or less, people used cell phones when they drove, calling, answering calls, texting, or checking emails. However, based on the survey, people were far more sensible than we speculated. Only a small number of participants reported that they used cell phones a lot of times while driving. In addition, the proportion of participants who admitted that they used cell phones while driving was less than we expected, too. We thought that these statistics weren’t reliable. We guessed that many people knew it was wrong to use cell phone while driving. Therefore, many participants ignored or refused to admit that they used cell phones while driving.
Furthermore, we investigated the purposes of cell phone use while driving. Compared with using cell phones as GPS or as a music player, only a small number of participants reported that they used cell phones for calling or texting. We thought that many people had realized the danger of cell phone use while driving, so they might be ashamed to admit using cell phones while driving.
Besides cell phone use while driving, many people also held conservative attitudes towards cell phone use in their daily lives. More than half of participants insisted that the cell phone use didn’t damage fine relationships with their partners or dates.
Besides participants being reluctant to admit that they used cell phones while driving, we thought there could be another reason to explain this phenomenon. Since the survey was carried out on the campus of Texas Tech University, most of the participants were students. The students had been receiving high education for a long period, and held a strong principles stand that it’s wrong to use cell phone while driving. With these opinions, most of them could control themselves away from cell phone use while driving; and many of them weren’t bothered by the excess use of cell phone in their daily lives.
In fact, the results above were accordance with many participants’ opinions about cell phone use. A large number of people agreed with the point that cell phone use while driving was wrong or dangerous, and a large population supported that the excess cell phone use could affect social interactions with others. It’s a great sign that most people knew the negative effects of cell phone use in their daily lives. At the same time, we thought that cell phone use while driving required more public attention. Society and individual should all realize the seriousness of this issue. Thus, legislation and supervision by the public were two good methods to reduce the cell phone use while driving.
Unfortunately, the more cell phone use in people’s lives, the deeper addiction they would get into, the harder for them to correct their bad behavior of cell phone use in their lives. Even though, from our survey, it appeared that many people did not use cell phone while driving, or didn’t suffer any health problems because of cell phone use, or cell phone didn’t affect their social relationships and private relationships, we still believed that a serious issue related to cell phone use was hidden by many people. A portion of people even didn’t treat this issue seriously, or some of them avoided answering questions truthfully based on their behaviors. To these kinds of people, punishment could be a way to rectify their wrong attitudes.
What’s more, there were some limitations in our survey. First, since 229 questionnaires wasn’t a large amount of data, which couldn’t represent an integrated information of cell phone use in people’s lives. We were looking forward to a bigger investigation that could be carried out. In future work, we thought that we could have a large-scale investigation about cell phone use. Secondly, most of the participants were from Texas Tech University and more than half were aged between 18 and 22 in this activity. I thought that the types of participants were too few to represent all people’s opinions. Next time, we hoped that we could go out of campus and make a survey in the street or in the community. At the same time, more than half of the participants were aged under 27; their attitudes might only stand for the opinions of the young generation. We still needed to know more information from people who were in their middle ages and in their senior ages.
Conclusion
From this survey, we found that people behaved more sensibly than we expected. They understood the dangers brought from cell phone use either in driving or in their daily usage. However, we were not optimistic towards this issue. The more people denied that they were compromised by cell phones, the more dangers the cell phones might bring to people and to our society. We should pay more attention to the cell phone use while driving, and advocate that people use fewer entertainment functions of cell phones.
Reference
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