Teen Times: For 90 per cent of teenagers today, a mobile phone is top of the "must-have" accessories list. Mobile mania is sweeping the country, preying on the young and easily-influenced. I cannot help but wonder whether this craze is becoming more an addiction than a joy.As a young person who has never known adolescence without the mobile phone, I can honestly own up to being completely baffled when I imagine what my life would amount to without one.
When I hear stories of the "Swinging Sixties" complete with sex, drugs and rock'n'roll, I find myself wondering how that raging, out-of-control generation managed to party without this appendage.
How did people begin and maintain romantic relationships? How did they keep in contact with friends?
The shocking revelation of my personal dependency struck when my sim card took a turn for the worse and had to be replaced, leaving me with an empty phone book, inbox and photo album. It felt like my right arm had been torn off, leaving me naked and eerily vulnerable. Mobile phones are your individual life support machine with built-in pictures, songs, videos and even Internet access. No wonder teenagers react badly to all this being cut off.
But it's worth looking at how far this activity has progressed in young people. With phone calls making letters obsolete and texting replacing phone calls, it is difficult for young people not to get sucked into the propaganda game.
With constant advertisement reminders of how mobiles are "connecting people" and urging us to "see what you can do", without a mobile you are immediately isolated from your clicking, classroom cliques.
It's proven that since the phenomenon of mobiles took over there has been a drop in the amount of under-age smoking but is the habit being relinquished or replaced? There have been many reports of teenagers stealing - in some cases from their parents - to subsidise this trendy habit.
Like a drug, our phones are keeping us on the high of constant communication, with the need to have the machine within our grasp bordering on crazy.
When watching a bus-load of passengers patting themselves frantically for their phones in response to an orchestra of cheesy tinkling ringtones, this theory seems plausible. When a person cannot engage fully in a sensible conversation without constant glances at their mobile, they are an addict trying to satisfy a different kind of fix.
This craving has not only created a new outlet for our hard-earned cash but has invented a new form of bullying and depression. Text messages, or lack thereof, are a measure of a teenager's popularity and can breed feelings of inadequacy and self-loathing if the gadget remains uncalled or untexted for a few days.
How did we let this tiny machine take over? How many mobile junkies are out there in need of rehabilitation? "My name is Cristina and I am a phoneaholic". I'm taking it one day at a time.
Cristina Duffy (18) of Glasnevin, Dublin, sat her Leaving Cert this month.
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