Evolution of the cell phone in America

Cell Phone Growth & Resulting Issues

Millions of young people are growing up today in American using cell phone wireless technologies in ways that can properly be termed obsessive. And many of those same youths figure cell phones and wireless technologies are the way life has always been. A lion's share of 17 and 18-year-old high school students -- and millions of college students -- walk out of class or out of school are not looking up to see what the weather is like, or looking around them to see what friends might be around. They are most likely looking down at their hand, and in their hand is that ubiquitous cell phone with text messages waiting to be quickly read and answered.

Where and how did this begin? Where is it leading? What are the positives and the negatives of cell phone technology? Are cell phones dangerous? Do cell phones cause cancer? All these issues and more will be covered in this paper.

Literature Review:

Brief History of Wireless Technology: The modern cell phone -- with its amazing versatility -- may be relatively new, but wireless technology is not new per se, according to authors James B. Murray and Lisa Dickey. Their book, The Frenzied Launch of the Cellular Revolution in America, points out that Girglielmo Marconi was the first person to "successfully transmit Morse code via invisible waves in the air" (Murray, et al., p. 15) in the late 1800s. Marconi was helped by the discoveries that German inventor Heinrich Hertz had made as to the existence of wireless waves (radio waves) in 1887. And just at the turn of the 20th Century, American professor Reginald Fessenden "figured out how to transmit the human voice across radio waves," which was the marriage of two technologies, wireless and telephony, the "earliest seeds of the modern cell phone industry" (Murray, p. 15). It was Marconi's wireless technology (Morse code) that was used on board the sinking Titanic (in 1912) to call upon the Carpathia vessel -- 50 miles away -- to rush to the scene and save hundreds of Titanic's passengers (Murray, p. 16).

Meantime airplanes began to fill the skies in the 1920s, and wireless radios were a huge help in communication ground to air. Also, the Detroit Police Department began using mobile radios in squad cars in 1921, albeit the radios only worked one way; the dispatcher could call the cars, but the police had to pull over and use a pay phone to get back to the dispatchers (Murray, p. 16).

However, by 1933 police radios became two-way (even though the radio phones required a truck-full of heavy communication hardware) and the benefits were obvious. During World War II Motorola developed the "first two-way communicator, dubbed the 'Handie-Talkie'" (Murray, p. 16). This freed soldiers up from having to lay wire between the front lines and rear-line commanders; the cumbersome (by today's standards) "Handie-Talkie" batteries needed frequent recharging, but nevertheless this was a huge advantage for combat forces.

A "milestone" in the development of the cell phone was achieved on April 3, 1973 in New York City. According to WirelessWeek.com the very first portable cellular phone call was made by Marty Cooper -- he was then the general manager of Motorola's Communications Systems Division and today he is chairman and CEO of ArrayComm. As he walked along a busy New York City street, Cooper spoke with individuals at several land-based phone sets, and "sophisticated New Yorkers gaped at the sight of someone actually moving around while making a phone call" (WirelessWeek.com, 2003). The writer of this article mentions that there were no cordless phones at that time, "let alone cellular phones," so it was an eye-popping experience for witnesses to the first cell phone call in America (or so it is promoted as such). Ten years later, Motorola began selling the first commercial cell phone, called the DynaTAC (WirelessWeek.com, 2003).

Obvious Dangers of Cell Phone Use: Using a cellphone while driving is not a safe practice. Some states such as California have banned the use of cell phones except when the driver is using "hands-free" cell phones, also known as "blue tooth" technologies. The American Automobile Association's (AAA) 2008 research shows that "half of U.S. drivers report having used a cell phone while driving" in the thirty days previous to being interviewed (Hannan, 2009). For drivers aged 18-24, sixty-five percent reported using a cell phone over the previous thirty days, and for that same age group about 48.5% reported having sent a text message" while behind the wheel over the thirty days prior to being interviewed by AAA (Hannan, 2009).

Hannan's article in the Florida Times-Union (Jacksonville's online newspaper) references two other cell phone studies, one in Canada and another in Australia, and both report that "using a mobile telephone while driving quadruples a driver's risk of being involved in a crash" (Hannan, 2009).

Tom Watkins reports in the Cable News Network (CNN.com) that the National Safety Council (NSC) has called for a ban on cell phone usage while operating a vehicle (Watkins, 2009). According to Watkins' article, six states have laws on the books that ban the use of hand-held phones (requiring "hands-free" technologies), but there are no states that have placed a ban on cell phone use per se (Watkins, 2009). The National Safety Council's statistics estimate that cell phone use in automobiles results annually in "six percent of crashes," and those accidents result in 330,000 injuries to passengers or drivers (Watkins, 2009). Of the 330,000 injuries, the National Safety Council reports that 12,000 are "serious" and 2,600 are "fatal" (Watkins, 2009).

While the NSC has called for a ban on cell phone use by drivers, the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association (CTIA) promotes education instead of legislation banning cell phones. "Laws aimed just at wireless use create a false sense of security with regard to the issue of distracted driving," the CTIA stated on its Web site (Watkins, 2009). The CTIA's vice president of public affairs, John Walls, believes there can be a "safe, sensible, responsible use for a brief period of time" for cell phone conversations while driving (Watkins, 2009).

An article in Monitor on Psychology (Novotney, 2009) reports on a survey by University of South Wales psychologist Julie Hatfield; female pedestrians who speak on cell phones are "less likely to look for traffic before stepping into the street," and also those same women cross streets more slowly, "increasing their risk of colliding with a vehicle" (Novotney, 2009). The article goes on to point out that most people have little problem when I comes to watching videos while jogging on a treadmill, or chewing gum while walking. Hence, those people believe it should be no problem to drive and do other tasks, like eating, putting on makeup, adjusting their music player or speaking on a cell phone.

However, research by cognitive scientists at the Center for Cognitive Brain Imaging at Carnegie Mellon University indicates that when it comes to driving and using a cell phone, things get more complicated than just eating and driving. Indeed, several psychologists examined brain activity during the same time participants were performing two high-level tasks -- responding to true-false questions that were given verbally and "mentally rotating three-dimensional objects -- both separately and then concurrently" (Novotney, 2009). The findings of this experiment suggest that when performing the above-mentioned actions together, "brain activation, primarily in the temporal and parietal areas of the cortex, was substantially less than the sum of the activation when participants performed the two tasks alone" (Novotney, 2009).

What does that mean in laymen's terms? Dual tasking requires that the brain pull information from "some shared, limited resource, slowing reaction time" (Novotney, 2009). In other words, reaction times, which of course are pivotal to the driver's ability to avoid a collision, are slower when the brain is doing more than one important function. It doesn't take brainpower to eat and drive, but it does require brainpower to carry on a conversation, think about what is being said and what will be said next, and negotiate a difficult road or a street with hazards at every corner at the same time.

In another study, Novotney reports that 29 undergraduates were asked to drive a simulated auto along a curvy road. While they were doing this, MRI images of their brains were being monitored. The research checked their brain patterns while they were undisturbed, and also while they were listening to "spoken sentences that they judged as true or false" (Novotney, 2009). The upshot of the research showed that listening to true and false questions (which obviously requires more serious brain work than just thinking randomly) "reduced driving-related brain activity…by almost 40%" (Novotney, 2009). Still another study (from the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied) that Novotney references shows that cell phone users are "more likely" to miss the exit on the freeway they had intended to use and more likely to "drift out of their lanes" on the freeway.

A deeper, more scientific method of research into cell phone use while driving was published in the journal Human Factors (Horrey, et al., 2006). The authors used "meta-analytic" techniques in this research; twenty-three studies were fed into the meta-analysis strategies and the outcome indicates that there are "clear costs" associated with driving and speaking on a cell phone simultaneously. The biggest "cost" (to driver safety) found through these analyses was "reaction time"; to a lesser degree, lane-keeping performance also carries with it a "cost" when using a cell phone and driving simultaneously.

What is a meta-analysis? This is a strategy that takes a number of studies that address a single hypothesis (for example, driving and talking on cell phones is not safe) and combines those studies "to provide a single estimate of the reliability and magnitude of the effect supporting (or refuting) that hypothesis" (Horrey, p. 197). The positive part of using meta-analysis, the authors explain, is that it allows researchers to combine data from "separate experiments that may have differences in sample characteristics, experimental protocol, and dependent measures" (Horrey, p. 197). In this particular meta-analysis the authors used five "moderating variables": one, different measures of driving performance; two, hand-held cell phones vs. hands-free use of cell phones; three, conversations vs. simple processing of information; four, talking with a person in a vehicle vs. having a phone conversation; and five, "simulator vs. field studies" (Horrey, p. 197).

By using algebraic formulae to come up with the meta-analyses data, the authors assert that the possible reason that lane changing is less dangerous (while a cell phone is in use) than "reaction time" is maybe due to fact that lane changing is "a skill that is relatively automatic, requiring fewer overall resources to maintain performance" (Horrey, p. 202). However, when a driver responds to a sudden road event, that response by the driver is apt to be "less automated because drivers must not only detect critical objects but also select an appropriate course of action to respond to them" (Horrey, p. 202).

Interestingly, the researchers discovered through their meta-analyses that "costs" drivers incur are the same whether using a hand-held cell phone or using hands-free cell phone technologies. Why is this true? "The larger part of these costs is attributable to the cognitive aspects of conversation and not to the actual manual aspects of holding the phone" vs. not holding the phone (Horrey, p. 203). That finding could be used rather effectively it would seem in a debate about whether a city or state should ban cell phone use for drivers or just require hands-free technologies. Sharp legislators could certainly argue that it isn't a matter of hands-free or hand-held usage -- rather, it is the issue (empirically demonstrated through meta-analyses) that simply having a cell phone conversation causes a distraction. The authors made a note of the fact though that there are indeed "costs" associated with the hand-held phone conversation that are absent when using hands-free technologies; e.g., there may be from time to time a need to engage in emergency manual steering, and a hands-free device would clearly be a better choice in those instances (Horrey, p. 203).

Moreover, the authors' meta-analyses show that the task of having a conversation on a cell phone has greater potential costs to the driver of the vehicle than simple information-processing tasks (such as word games, mental arithmetic, etc.). Clearly there is more "engagement" mentally when the driver is speaking on the phone than when he or she is just processing some information.

Do Cell Phones Cause Cancer? A Potential Danger. Freelance writer John D. MacArthur has published a research piece in the Townsend Letter for Doctors & Patients that addresses the potential dangers involved with the use of radiofrequency (RF) devices, such as cell phones. MacArthur explains that one study already conducted (which is 9 years old in 2009) does not empirically implicate cell phones as far as causing cancer in users. The study that MacArthur refers to was conducted by the Independent Expert Group on Mobile Phones (12 scientists spent eight months listening to all available evidence from researchers and scholars); the bottom line was that while the study shows that no dramatic proof exists as to what damage RF radiation can cause, there is "evidence that effects on biological functions, including those of the brain," may be "induced by RF radiation at levels comparable" to those put out by a cell phone (MacArthur, 2002).

Though it was not possible at that time to state without equivocation that RF radiation is harmful, the study alluded to in the paragraph above did recommend "a precautionary approach" be taken vis-a-vis cellular technology "until much more detailed and scientifically robust information on any health effects becomes available" (MacArthur, 2002).

Nine years after the study that MacArthur references, an article published in the Indian Journal of Cancer arrives at a similar conclusion: "The evaluation of current evidence provided by various studies to suggest the possible carcinogenic potential of radiofrequency radiation is inconclusive" (Sachdev, 2009, p. 5). The author, a doctor in the Department of Internal Medicine at the University of Wisconsin (Madison), conducted an in-depth research project that surveyed the following materials related to cell phones and cancer: specific case reports; in vitro published studies; population-based retrospective studies; World Health Organization guidelines; federal and technical authorities; the "Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers and the International Commission for Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection" (Sachdev, p. 5).

Sachdev explains that because of the "burgeoning number of people" who use cell phones and hence are "continually exposed to high frequency radiation" from cell phones and from "towers that serve as receiving and transmitting stations" (Sachdev, p. 5), the ongoing research into possible connections with cancer is valuable and necessary. Sachdev spends a good portion of the article suggesting specific investigations that need to be launched and he also points to existing studies that need to be taken to higher levels. Sachdev explains (p. 6) that it has been demonstrated that rats exposed to 2.45 GHz of RFR (which is similar to RF only stronger) were found to have "structural and genomic changes in the brain and testes," but again, the RFR is more powerful than RF and no precise link can be established from that research.

The author flatly states that the "overall results" of numerous studies attempting to link cancer and cell phone usage "cannot be deemed conclusive" (Sachdev, p. 7), and he lists four reasons for his assertion: One, few studies assessing the risk of cell phone use were conducted for more than ten years; two, many studies relied on "either self-reporting or retrospective interviews" to determine how frequently cell phones were used by the participants being studied; three, exposure to radiofrequency varies widely depending on what phone is being used, whether calls were made from city or rural areas, and whether or not phone calls were made from hands free or hand held cell phones; and four, individuals receive radiofrequency radiation from other sources too, so it becomes impossible to isolate the effects of cell phones on human health (Sachdev, p. 7).

Vini Khurana, a "highly regarded Australian neurosurgeon" has conducted another study into the possibility that cell phone radiation can cause cancer (Sparling, 2008). Writing in the journal Current Science, Evan Sparling claims that Khurana spent fifteen months reviewing 100 previous studies of cell phones, and Khurana's research shows a "significant" link between cell phones and cancerous tumors (Sparling, 2008). That of course doesn't prove anything, but all research should be analyzed over and over when there is even a remote chance that cell phone technology might cause any harm to humans.

Sparling goes on to reference an Israeli study that reportedly found that there is a 58% higher risk of developing cancer of the parotid, a salivary gland behind the ear, for "frequent cell phone users" (Sparling, 2008). Another study brought to light by Sparling was conducted in Sweden; doctors apparently found that the "risk of developing acoustic neuroma and glioma doubles after 10 years of heavy cell phone use." Acoustic neuroma is a tumor that occurs where the brain meets the ear, and glioma is a kind of brain cancer, in fact the same kind that Senator Ted Kennedy suffered in May of 2008.

The author of this short article suggests -- for those concerned that cell phone use may one day be empirically linked with cancer -- doing what CNN's chief medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta does: use a headset to keep the heat and radiation away from the ear.

Cell Phones and Texting: In the fourth quarter of 2008, American teenagers sent and received "an average of 2,272 text messages per month," according to an article in The New York Times (Hafner, 2009). That data comes from the Nielson company, and by doing the math the reader can quickly break teenagers' texting habit down to about 80 texts a day for the average teen. That may be a conservative estimate for some teens because a recent survey of two high schools by Dr. Martin Joffee, a pediatrician in Greenbrae, California, indicates "many students were routinely sending hundreds of texts every day" (Hafner, 2009).

So what's wrong with sending hundreds of texts daily? For one thing, receiving text messages at night is going to cause "sleep issues," Dr. Joffee explains; and this is an age group that is "already plagued with sleep issues," he goes on (Hafner, 2009). More importantly, constant texting at all hours every day of the year may be causing a "shift in the way adolescents develop," according to psychologist Sherry Turkle, director of the Initiative on Technology and Self at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).