Are Personal Mobile Phones Bad For Business?

In today’s world, distractions remain prevalent in simple everyday occurrences. Amongst these distractions is the use of cell phones whether simply walking down the hallway absorbed in a conversation or behind the wheel driving down the highway. Cell phones, no matter the context, are a major distraction. They have managed to pull us away from spending time with our families and appearing in places they are not prevalent such as family dinners and behind the wheel of a car.

Studies have found that as the phone use increases, your attention goes elsewhere, “revealing that the more heavily student relied on their phones in their everyday lives, the greater the cognitive penalty they suffered” (Carr 3). The more focus a cell phone receives the more a person will suffer mentally. At UCSD around 520 students were given two standardized tests of intellectual acuity. “The only variable in the experiment was the location of the subjects’ smartphones. Some of the students.. place their phones in front of them on their desks; others were told to stow their phones in their pockets.. others were required to leave their phones in a different room” (Carr 3). The results from this study were conspicuous. It’s self-evident that anyone with phone insight had worst scores than those who didn't have their phones at all or had them in their pockets. Technology has take over us and it is draining our

Even though smart phones are supposed to make working easier, studies have shown that they actually hurt our performance. In 2015, a Journal of Experimental Psychology study had 166 people to test. The experiment was to have the participants work on a challenging task while their phones start beeping and buzzing. The results showed that the worker became messier and had their attention elsewhere, whether or not they checked their phone. Dr. Adrian Ward is a psychologist and marketing professor at the University of Texas at Austin, he has been working with the effects of smart phones on our thoughts and decision making. Dr. Ward believes that we have grown so attached to our phones that they reduce our intelligence with their presence. To test this theory, Dr. Ward and three colleagues began a clever experiment to test his idea. They decided to enlist 520 undergraduate students at UCSD and make them perform two standard tests of intellectual acuity. The first test evaluated “available cognitive capacity”, it’s a test to measure how fully a person’s mind can focus on a single task. The second test gauged “fluid intelligence”, a person’s ability to understand and answer an unfamiliar problem. The only difference was the location of the student’s smart phone. Some students had their phone on the desk, while others had it in their bag or pocket. Others were even asked to leave their phone in a different room. The results of this test showed that “As the phone’s proximity increased, brainpower decreased” (pg.3).

It is also known that internet usage on cell/smart phones is a growing problem in the work force. Businesses are reporting that productivity and quality customer service is declining as a result of smartphone use. Cell phones in the workplace will cause disruptions such as talking loudly as well as loud ringtones, interrupting meetings, inappropriate, personal conversations, internet use, and gaming. According to a survey conducted on 145 out of 260 Chesapeake Fire Department employees, 56% claimed “Cell phones frequently interrupt training, meetings, and face-to-face conversations, which most consider rude and inconsiderate,” (How does the use of cell phones impact the Chesapeake Fire Department?, Long, n.d.).

A. Attention Getter: Four Years of your life is wasted to what’s sitting inside all of your pockets right now; your cellphone. The average person spends roughly 90 minutes a day playing on their phone, whether it’s checking emails, Snapchatting or scrolling through your Twitter feed. According to The Dailymail.com we unlock our phones at least 110 times per day! We’ve become almost dependent on these devices over time, and it needs to stop. We rely on our phones everyday to wake us up for school and to know the time of day.

Over the past few decades, technology has greatly improved. Computers have advanced from being the size of a room to a portable item we can carry in our pockets. The vast majority of Americans carry a cell phone at all times, or at least have one within arm’s reach. In today’s technology oriented world, people can be easily susceptible to an overuse of their cell phone; this susceptibility causes multiple distractions in the key settings of our daily lives.

It is said that smartphones are a substantial distraction and cause us to make poor judgements (Journal of Experimental Psychology, Human Perception & Performance).

In the article “Who says smart phone addiction is a bad thing? The case for constant connectivity.” (Toronto Life, 2012), Jesse Brown breaks down his reasons and beliefs on the negativity surrounding smart phones that perceived as an addiction. Correspondingly, Brown states that notification sounds and buzzing from our devices tells us, we are important and wanted, however we fear that we won’t be able to live without this constant stream of reassuring stimulation. Moreover, Brown tries to convey that smartphones are not the problem, we’re the problem. We reply on smartphones for everything way more than we need to. Furthermore, we make checking our smartphones our top priority by immediately jumping when we hear sounds that indicate notifications. Accordingly, we are on high alert because of these notifications, which could be anything from an important work update or a friend’s text.

One problem with cell phones in today’s society is that they have become major distractions. Cell phones are distracting employees in the workplace and are leaving them with their jobs halfway done. Everywhere in the business industries, the employees are hard at work re-tweeting and catching up on the latest newsfeed rather than managing their time more wisely. Not only are cell phones a distraction in the workplace, they are also a distraction and disruptive in school districts, causing students’ attention to be elsewhere. Many students would rather text in the middle of class instead of pay attention to what the teacher is reviewing. In this case, students do not gain the amount of education provided for them. In addition to cell phones being distracting, people often like to multi-task by walking or driving while texting. These things cause them to be unaware of their surroundings. Texting while driving has become a major issue because texting and driving can lead to car crashes which are often fatal. On the other hand, texting and walking isn’t too bad, but can cause a little bit of embarrassment. There are stories of people walking into walls and bumping into people or tripping over a table because their nose seems to be stuck in their phone. To some, being on their cell phone is more important than grades, clients, and others around them.

People get distracted all the time by phones firstly, people get distracted a lot on their phones, tablets, computers, and any other piece of technology from the real life world. Technology keeps us all away from your family and friends. This can be very distracting when you can just be going outside with your friends and go do something else like play sports or play tag. Technology is way to distracting in these days because people don't even care about what is happening to the world anymore instead they are just sitting on their couch on

Cell phones and technology in general has advanced a lot over the last ten years. Allowing students to be able to take their phones or devices wherever they want in today’s society. Thus bringing forward the issue of cell phone distraction in the classroom.

Cell phones have become more and more popular in the United States as years have gone by. They are now nothing like how they were years ago. Since cellular devices have evolved employees have become able to do increasingly more jobs on the phones. For example, during work employees are now able to check social media, listen to music, take quality photos, and play games all on a small mobile device. Because of the evolution of the phone, employees have certainly become less effective. Cell phone usage has disturbed the work place because it decreases productivity, endangers employees, and lowers quality of work.

Unfortunately, cell phones have become one of the biggest challenges instructors face in college classrooms as these devices have become a pervasive part of young people's lives. What used to only make phone calls and send text messages, now does our emailing, sends us Facebook and Snapchat notifications, and plays music. Additionally, our cell phones are not only used for personal activities, but for school and work life. We want to be reachable in case of an emergency, but the constant stream of notifications has led our productivity to significantly tumble down. Recently, I noticed that in many of my classes, even though the professor says there is a “no phone” policy, many students are scrolling through their social media feeds or responding to a text rather than paying attention to the lecture of the day. I admit to using my phone constantly during class, which often has led my grades to suffer poorly. Rather than paying attention to the lesson, I was checking on buzzing notifications of entertainment news and random trivia. Because I was not listening to my professor earlier in the day, I had a difficult time trying to complete the homework assignment. Thus, in an attempt to be epistemic temperate, for the last two days, I tried to not use my phone during class lectures and study time to measure my productivity.

The article focuses on the distraction of mobile devices in the college classroom. Brenner explains that they are distracting to not only the person using them, but the people around them as well. Through her research, she found that the people sitting next to multitaskers on their laptops tended to score lower on tests than those without the distraction. On that note, she states that people “are not wired to multi task”. Through a study, she found that texting during lectures caused a decrease in student’s ability to take notes, pay attention, and perform well on tests. She also found that the use of laptops

If I were to ask each of you if you were able to go an entire day without your mobile device, very few can say they`d be able to do so. In fact, in a recent TIME Magazine Mobility Poll, 84% out of 5000 people surveyed in 8 different countires, admitted that they couldn’t go a single day without their phones and a third of respondents admitted that being without their mobile device for even short periods of time leaves them feeling anxious. It is clear that whenever we`re waiting for those last five minutes before the bell rings to every class, our automatic impulse is to reach for our phone. Do you really need to check anything that important? The sad truth is that we have become far too dependent on our phones. The fear that we might miss the latest gossip, or the most recent updates on all of our social webesites seems more like an addiction than anything else. We`ve clouded our vision as to what is really important, and that is-quality human interaction.