Most young people, and college students in particular,
are tethered to their smartphones. They
use them to make purchases, check social media, and even study from time to
time. Professors write odes to their distraction.
There is one problem with this picture: Damage or lose
the device and you’ve lost contact with the world.
“I can’t begin to explain how isolated I felt,” Jeff
Kagan, a columnist for E-Commerce Times, wrote after dropping his iPhone. “You would never understand unless you had a problem
with your smartphone yourself. It’s very uncomfortable.”
It’s up to device manufacturers to address the issue,
according to Kagan. He would like to see smartphones that are shock- and
water-resistant. There also need to be ways to track them if they are lost, and
an easy way to shut them off if they are stolen.
“Bottom line—smartphones and apps are the future,” he
wrote. “ We can use them as a remote control for our lives. However, if we are
actually to trust these devices with our important information, they have to
live up to the challenge. Today, they don’t.”
