Lol

In today's world, our teenagers use cell phones more than any other age group. And what has them glued to those tiny backlit screens? Texting, the new way of communications, the call function is almost untouched on the average teenager's cell phone, but the key pad is almost worn out by the excessive typing. This new form of communication has had a large impact on today's culture. For example, I remember in 6th Grade, in my small school where only the over-privileged students had cell phones, how two people would communicate using hand written, folded paper notes. As cell phones became more common and more affordable, the ancient art of note passing was forever lost. As I left 8th grade, I noticed that almost all of the new 6th graders have cell phone. And now I get stories from my younger brother that 3rd 4th and 5th graders are taking a fancy to the new, versatile technology. I assume it will not be long until children will be learning their ABC's and 123's on these small, metal and plastic handsets. But that's not all; the cell phone is no longer a phone. If you have heard of phones like the Kyocera Switchback and the Motorola Switchback, they are a texter's dream. No longer must the single thumb be worked to the bone, now both hands will be used to seen 160 character or less messages to their friends and family.

Although, texting is not just one pure badly written horror story, there are many positives that have made me succumb to its will. Texting can be much cheaper than calling. I can say as much as I would in an 18 cent minute call as I could in 3 or 4 text messages for about 10-12 cents. Texting is also a very discreet method of communication. Instead of hurling papers across a room, or endangering the students who are persuaded into passing notes, all one has to do is open his/her phone, while hiding it from the instructor, and then pressing a few keys, closing that phone, waiting, opening and reading the message. Rinse and repeat. This also shows the resourcefulness of today's children. Fully typing out the word would allow for short messages. So why type properly when you can abbreviate and shorten words. I myself do this because most text messages have a capacity of 160 characters, including spaces, so most of the text messages use words of a 5 letter maximum.

Those were the positive aspects of texting. Now let's get to the mean and ugly stuff. I understand that abbreviating is helpful in texting. But that's it. Don't use these abbreviations on your college application, please, if there are people who have done that out there, well here's a message for you. Wear your seat belts at all times, they're driving out there. Teenagers have selective learning properties. One may never memorize how to access the functions of their school's graphing calculators, but I have seen kids who can text fully comprehensible messages, with out ever looking at their phones. They won't remember the date of the Gettysburg address, but they will learn their friends' cell phone numbers. They won't write a single sentence in English, but type pages and pages of paragraphs in their phones. They won't learn the scientific method, but they will learn the method of accessing features of their phones blindfolded. Students are learning in school, but WHAT they are learning is the real question. They don't learn a thing in physics, yet they can perform stunning tricks on their skate boards. They pay no attention in biology, well, I'm not going to get into that but my point is that students pay more attention to their phones than to the whiteboard. The rules banning cell phones have only increased their use. Restriction spawns rebellion, stopping the use of cell phones will only make the students angrier, and find better ways to conceal their use.

Being a student myself I have mixed feelings when a poor unfortunate's cell phone rings in class. Everyone looks around and the owner pretends to look for the source. Sooner or later the teacher finds out and confiscates the cell phone. I don't know whether it is a good thing that they are not texting, but it is also a bad thing because they may have just forgotten to turn it of and haven't been texting at all. So I shall conclude this essay with a simple thought to sum it all up. Cell phones are a vital part of our lives and aren't going to go away soon, and our youths could be consumed by them, however there needs to be those of us who still want to learn, that's right I'm saying we need more nerds in this world. We need people who want to learn to take those skills out into the real world and let's face it, shape the world. Our actions today shape tomorrow. I recommend watching a movie called Idiocracy. It's a pretty new movie about a world of ignorance. A world that may be ours if we don't focus more on our studies than on our “study” dates. So I end this essay now hopefully persuading you to learn more, crack a book open once in a while, because you never know when it will be useful to know the most absurd things.