Pontificia Universidad Católica Madre y Maestra

Santo Tomas Aquino Campus

Applied Linguistics Department

Academic Writing ILE-322

Prof. Newcombe Sosa
Group:
SD-ILE-322-T-071

Addiction of Cellphones in Interpersonal Interactions

Presented by:
Carlos Jiobanny Angeles Abreu
2011-5628

July 18th, 2014

Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. –
In the past two years, I’ve noticed that us people are becoming more dependent on our

phones. People don’t pay attention when trying to socialize to each other anymore, they

rather be on their social networks and their phones than trying to establish a conversation

with the person next to them. We are not paying attention to things happening around us.

Sometimes we do things unconsciously that affect the people around us, just by using our

phones. We have to stop that; we are becoming addicted to our phones.

People participating in social interactions should refrain from using their cell phones. In

doing so, you will get the same experience you get on the phone, plus you’ll get along

better with the other person. You won’t annoy or bother anyone by stopping the use of your

phone and paying them more attention. In addition to all this you’ll get better in your

interpersonal skills. You might want to try these recommendations for you to get better in

your interpersonal relations.

If you stop using your phone when you are in a meeting with your friends, coworkers,

family, etc. You will get the same experience you get while chatting or socializing on the

phone. Instead of being “plugged” to your phone and the social networks, you can get the

same and even a better experience by talking and trying to engage a conversation with the

people next to you. It’s better for you to interact with other people face to face, that way

you can see their expressions, the emotions their having, and the ones you want to transmit.

There are things you can’t express via texting or chatting on the social networks.

In summer of 2011, when Twitter entered the mainstream and the iPhone4 was released, a

friend of mine invited me for dinner in my birthday. My friend, who had just bought the

iPhone4, and I went to a sushi restaurant. She spent the entire dinner fooling around with

the phone, chatting, and scrolling down on twitter. With one hand she was using the phone,

and shoveling sushi with the other.

This is the kind of things you’ll avoid by stopping or just giving a break to the use of

phones in personal social interactions. Instead of having a good time and enjoying the

company of others, you’ll end up in just having a good time when you are using the phone.

You should give a rest to using your phone while in company of others and just try to

interact with them instead. You’ll get better experiences and you won’t end up in being an

antisocial.
If you stop the use of your phone in the company of significant others you won’t annoy or

bother them, on the contrary they’ll feel that you care about the things they’re saying or

doing, and that you are paying them more attention. To give you an idea of what I’m trying

to say here I’ll continue the story about the time I went out to dinner with my friend. When

we were at the restaurant I was trying to establish a conversation with her. She instead of

keeping the conversation track, she kept talking about the things she was seeing in the

phone. At first I didn’t care about it but after a while it became annoying. "You just need an

ability to be yourself and no be doing something," Louis C.K. explained to Conan O'Brien

in an interview last September. "That's what the phones are taking away, is the ability to

just sit there and socialize with the people you care about or even different people... That's

being a person." (2013).

Sometimes we make things unconsciously that affect things around us. In many cases we

use our phones in a public space or in school or even at work, without even noticing that we

are distracting others or making them pissed. “Sometimes something as simple as checking

your e-mails o tweets in your phone can cause a big problem”. (Parmar, 2011) That’s why

it’s better to avoid the use of the phone when you can. When you ignore someone for your

phone is called Phubbing. Phubbing happens in all kinds of social situations amongst young

people especially. They claim it's habit, they just can't help it, and that it's so prevalent,

everybody does it. A new study by Howard University showed that 66-percent of people

under age 30 thought texting and emailing while in the presence of company were okay,

compared to only 20-percent of those age 51-65.(Kreuz, 2013)

If you give a break to your cellphone use you’ll get better in your interpersonal skills. “The

technology itself is not good or bad,” Campbell said. “It is how it’s used and who it’s used

with.” Campbell made a study in which, more than 1,800 responses from a national survey

suggested that cell phone users seeking news on their mobile devices were more likely to

engage with people around them than people talking on cell phones. Additionally, the study

found that people who use cell phones to coordinate plans are more likely to participate in

public conversations. Campbell said the findings also support the notion that people who

talk on cell phones frequently are less likely to communicate in public. (Campbell, 2013)

That’s why it depends more on the use you give to your cellphone, instead of talking via

chats or texts. You should interact with the people so you can get different points of view

and express yours. That way you’ll develop communication skills that will help you in the

life. It’s different when you are trying to give your point of view trough chat rooms than in

face-to-face interactions.
 Conclusion

I admit it I check my phone compulsively. And the more I use it, the more often the urge to

look at it hits me. But we all should try to make a stop to the compulsive use of our phones.

We are getting so addicted that we aren’t paying attention when trying to socialize to each

other anymore, we rather be on our phones, we have to start giving a break to our phones

when in company of others. We are not paying attention to the things happening around us

we are wasting our time with this addiction. We have to be more careful in the when and

the how we our phones, because we don’t realize that we are maybe harming someone

around us. We have to stop that; we are becoming addicted to our phones. Because of this

we are becoming worse at face-to-face communications and that’s something we cant

afford, because if you can’t express yourself in person the same way you do it over the

phone, you might be loosing your interpersonal skills. We have to stop all this; we will be

addicted to our phones.

 References

Bibliography

C.K, L. (2013, September 5). (C. O'Brian, Interviewer)

Parmar, B. (2011, October 13). Huffington Post. Retrieved 10-07-2014, of Huffington Post:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/belinda-parmar/get-a-gripon-your-phone_b_1008898.html

Kreuz, G. (2013, November 23). ABC 7. Retrieved July 10 2014, of WJLA ABC 7:

http://www.wjla.com/articles/2013/11/phubbing-the-annoying-habit-of-ignoring-someone-

for-your-cell-phone-96405.html#ixzz37nSqRIiN