Background
The mobile phone has been a technological advance which has helped to greatly improve communication across the world. The introduction of hexagonal cells for “mobile phone base stations” was invented in 1947 by Bell Labs engineers at the “American Telephone & Telegraph Company” (AT&T). However, these were not the first mobile phone but the owner of this achievement is Martin Cooper, an American, who works at Motorola Communications, where he made his first mobile phone call on the third of April 1973.The mobile phone has become common in the last two decades. Moreover, in the current days, the use of mobile phone among young people, especially teenagers, is possibly higher than in old people. The purpose of the use of mobile phone is no longer limited to speaking alone but the current mobile phones can also support many additional services such as SMS for text messaging, email, access to the Internet, listening to music, MMS, and taking photos. The mobile phone is also being used in making video, recording information and transmitting it to a phone or a computer among other uses. It is therefore quite important to learn more about the widespread use of mobile phones, especially among the teenagers, in order to establish potential problems and areas that need to be improved.
Aims and objectives
The aims and objectives of this study were;
- To find out the purpose for which the mobile phones are used in the everyday lives and how long the mobile phones are used during the day.
- To investigate whether using mobile phone affects the families’ harmony and which place people, especially teenagers, prefer to use their mobile phones
- To find out whether there is awareness about the health problems associated with using the mobile phone for long hours.
- To look at the impact on the family budget of using mobile phone by teenagers for long hours and who pays for the monthly bills for using the mobile phones.
Method
The sample
The sample included twenty people. The respondents were selected basing on the age. The teenage respondents were 15 in number, and the old people were 5. Respondents involved in the survey were of different gender and nationality backgrounds. A sample with such characteristics was chosen in order to ensure the results obtained were an accurate representation of the general population. They were all residents of urban areas near the city of Sydney.
Data collection
The study involved use of primary data. Primary data collection was carried out by using the survey method. 20 people were interviewed, looking at the use of mobile phone mostly by teenagers. The survey needed some important details to ensure all the objectives are met. A questionnaire was used. This comprised 14 questions about the use of mobile phone. It attempted to elicit important information about the use that teenagers have with the mobile phone.
Findings
Length of time spent on the mobile phone use and how the family is affected
74% of the teenagers said they preferred to use the mobile phone during free time other than doing other activities during this time, while 100 percent of the older people interviewed said they preferred doing other activities other than using the mobile phone such as watching or playing sporting, reading and sleeping among other activities. This indicates that more teenagers than old people spend their free time using the mobile phone. It was also established that, in one way or the other, both teenagers and old people think that the use of the mobile phone can affect the harmony in the family.. This was indicated by the fact that 23% of the respondents agreed that using a mobile phone always affects the family harmony, 23% said it sometimes affects and 31%said it rarely affects. However, it was only 23 percent that said it never affects family harmony. Old people use their mobile phones anywhere, unlike the teenagers who mostly prefer to use their mobile phones away from home. This was indicated from the survey where 100 percent of the old people indicated that they could use their mobile phones anywhere while 70 percent of teenagers indicated that they could prefer using their mobile phones away from home.
Awareness of health problems in using mobile phone
In regard to what people actually know about how the mobile phone can affect health, we found that young people don’t know or they don’t have awareness of the damage that this can do on their health. This is indicated by the fact that 100% of the teenagers confessed that they did not think the mobile phone use affects one’s health while 95 % of the old people gave positive answers about this question by indicating that they were aware of the fact that mobile phone use affects a person’s health. This was further indicated by the fact that 80% of teenage respondents spend at least 2 or 3 hours per day using a mobile phone, not realizing the grave negative health effects of doing this.
The purpose of having and using a Mobile phone
When respondents were asked what they do mainly use for their mobile phone; there were big variations in answers given by teenagers. The teenagers use the mobile phones for various purposes. 32 % of them could say speaking is the main reason for using Mobile phone. Also, 32 % of the respondents said text messaging, 21 % of them chose listening to music and 15 % of them chose games. On the other hand, a large number of the old people prefer using the mobile phone for speaking. This fact was indicated by having 90% of respondents (old people) giving out this idea. Moreover, we expected that teenagers are having Mobile phones because everyone around them has one. However, it was found that teenagers felt exactly the opposite. It was established that 77% of teenagers have the mobile phone because they feel it is a necessity, with only13% of the respondents saying that the reason for having a mobile phone is because somebody asked them to get one such as friends or parents. However, a very surprising result was that 85% of teenagers say that they can sleep and stay at least one day without their mobile phone, when we thought that maybe they could not live without it. This is an indication that the teenagers do not have a complete dependence on the use of the mobile phone and they can sometimes do without it. This was not the case among the old people. 100 percent of them said they could not sleep or stay for at least one without their mobile phones. This may be attributed to their need to use the phone for talking to other people all the time.
Financial effects of using the mobile phone
When teenagers were asked about who pays for their mobile phone use, it was established that only 40% of them pay by themselves but 60% of them depend on their parents. This implies that a larger number of teenagers are dependent on their parents in meeting the costs associated with their mobile phone use. 100 percent of the old people interviewed pay for the plan for their mobile phone themselves. This indicates that this group of people is not dependent on anybody and takes full financial responsibility for their mobile use. A larger number of the old people agreed that their mobile use strained the family budget but a few teenagers agreed to this. This was indicated by 60 percent of the old people stated that mobile use strained their family budget. Contrary to this, 60 percent of the teenagers stated that they did not actually feel their mobile use strained their family budget. A larger number of the teenagers spend less than fifty dollars on the mobile use per month while a larger number of the old people spend more than 50 dollars per month on mobile use. This was indicated in the survey where it was established that 70 percent of the teenage respondents spent less than 50 dollars as the monthly bill on mobile use. 25% of the teenage respondents spend between $50 and $100 and only 5% spend more than $100. On the other hand, 60 % of the old people that were interviewed spend more than 50 dollars per month.