Nearly all children aged 13-17 in Britain possess their own handphones. This trend does not belong to Britain alone. Teenagers all over the world are acquiring handphones fast. By “fast”, not only do I mean quickly, but early too. Two years ago, a research company, TNS, discovered that the youngest owner of a handphone in Hong Kong was only six years old. However disturbing the decrease in average age of handphone owners, what is more worrying is the possible abuse of handphones by teenagers. In Britain, for example, the phenomenon of ‘Happy Slapping’ where teenagers record assaults on strangers is a very disconcerting trend. More recently, the Tammy incident in Singapore, where a film of a 17 year old student being intimate with her boyfriend was uploaded onto the Net, also proves my point. But the videotaping function in handphones also has its own advantages. For instance, a robber drives away on a motorcycle with a stolen bag. In the past, we might not have seen or remembered the license plate number, but now, we can just slip out our trusty phone and take a photo to help the police to nab the robber. From this we can see that it is the wielder who is evil, not the object itself. Good things can be abused by people to have negative outcomes. Also, handphones are so widely used that they have become part of teenagers’ everyday life. Handphones have come to represent the “identity” of people. For example, LG and Samsung phones are associated with style, while Nokia phones are affiliated with practicality. Like parents are wont to compare the achievements of their children, teenagers nowadays compare their handphones. Furthermore, over-reliance on handphones for basic functions such as a contact list, alarm etc. heightens the impact of lost handphones. This is a phenomenon not only for teenagers but adults too. In addition to that, teenagers sms (short message service) their friends frequently, to the extent of sending up to hundreds of smses a day. Perhaps adults think that this is a disturbing trend, but as a teenager, I think that this is just a way to communicate when away from friends. Like adults, I think teenagers value personal interaction more than over the phone, but the mobility of handphones let teenagers communicate with their friends anytime, anywhere. This is just a younger, noiseless version of adults talking for hours over the phone. Both cases have extremities, but the average human does not go overboard when doing such things. In conclusion, as technology improves, what initially was intended to improve on the quality of human life, might be mutated into a something misused by easily influenced teenagers into furthering their own warped ends. This could lead to widespread misuse, such as widespread voyeurism, if everything goes unchecked. But not all teenagers lack morals, thus, I believe that with education on handphone ethics, the younger generation can be taught how to respect the phone and use it as it should be used.
