Are Phones Even Phones Anymore?

Have you ever found yourself bored and reaching for your phone? Have you ever found yourself lost and reaching for your phone? Or maybe found yourself in an awkward conversation and don't know how to end it, so yet again your phone saves the day? Cell phones and smart phones are the new security blankets of todays culture. They are found in the hands, pockets and purses of every day human beings everywhere. Smart phones and cell phones are not only used for phone calls, but can do practically anything any human being needs. They search the internet, show you where you are on a map, show you where you're walking, you can shop, you can make payments, and the list continues. They also are their so a hovering parent can keep track of where you are and when you'll be home.

Although making phone calls was the starting point for the original cell phones, they have taken leaps and bounds doing other things, with the media helping make people feel worthless without a phone, especially without a smart phone. The media does not appreciate the cell phone or smart phone for their main reasons, but for all the money they can collect by making you "need" one. For example, being in a strange or awkward situation, not many people try make it not awkward, but they just pull out their phone and pretend to text or look at their email. Imagine being the one person in a group who doesn't have a phone. What do you do? Sit and look around? No, instead you feel terrible looking around aimlessly, thinking I'm the only one without a smart phone and most likely wanting the newest iPhone possible. In this example, the subject wants the object. The object is merely a phone with games, GPS, and more on it, but the object due to what the world has made it is now a security blanket we all take around with us. We never let it leave our site. If it dies, we feel completely apart from the world. We don't actually even talk face to face with these objects, but media has made us feel more closely connected since we have begun using them more than having actual face to face interaction. Being that every image is an argument, and everyone takes a position on an image, the position most people have taken is relying on their phones for everything they need in life, every question they need answers, and every internet needed activity. The position to take in current day is this is a needed object. The signs of this object being a "necessity" in everyone's every day life is clear. Every movie or show deals with a character using their phone. But the commercials are the real social construction that brings people to need this object and find it irresistible. The commercials take things to the extreme and make the impossible seem possible. Leading the social construction of the item relayed to the public as impossible not to have. Making you believe you need to do extreme things while sending a picture to Facebook or searching the web while in the most remote location.

This commercial shows someone skydiving while taking pictures and uploading their pictures to Facebook while they are still free falling. The phone makes the sky diving all the more exciting, while sky diving itself is beyond exciting already.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gq0P5HUSX6A