Dependence

I never really considered how much I depended on technology until my cell phone broke. I didn't consider myself to be the type of person to keep their whole life on their phone but now I'm rethinking that. I guess you really don't know what you have until it's gone.

The obvious effect that my broken phone will have is on my social life. Pretty much all of the plans that I make with friends is through a phone call or a text message. But going deeper than that, a lot of the sports news that I find myself talking about comes in the form of an update on my phone. I update online sports leagues on my phone, and I update Facebook through my phone. If I just had a home phone and I didn't pick up when someone called, they would assume I wasn't home. If I don't answer a call or text on my cell phone, people assume I'm ignoring them and that might make them upset.

Speaking of making people upset, losing my phone will affect my work life. I work as a photographer for a consignment shop and don't have regular hours and what I do changes just about every week from the obvious things like taking pictures to the less obvious like uploading the pictures to an online auction site. The only way I know what to do and when to do it is through my boss texting me. As I'm writing this even, he could be asking me to resend him a few pictures from last week. The consignment shop is small and relies on quickly processing  the items to make the most money. When everything was working how it was supposed to I never thought twice about anything going wrong. Now I have to figure out a way to fix it.

The most surprising reason that I have to fix my phone problem is because of how it could affect my school life. I check my homework for some classes on my phone. Now I know this can be easily fixed be easily fixed by writing the homework down in class but it will still be an adjustment. Also, a lot of the group work that goes on in classes is coordinated through texting and calling. In biology we will start our pig dissection soon and all the work will be done in groups and the teacher suggested coordinating the work by texting my group members about what everyone should do.

After thinking about this I realized that my life was kept, at least mostly, on my phone. This is a common theme that I don't think most people realize. The writing prompt on a recent ACT test that I took asked "are human relationships strengthened or weakened by technology?" The ACT wouldn't ask a question that the test takers couldn't relate to so I guess it just goes to show how much society relies on technology to function.