Technology & News: Mobile, Teens & Our Money

Two pieces of important news about mobile phones I would like to share with you today.

The first one comes from the findings of the Pew Internet & American Life Project by the Pew Research Center. It discovers that,

1. American teens have increased their text messages from 50 a day in 2009 to 60 texts for the median teen text user. 
2. "Smartphones are gaining teenage users. Some 23% of all those ages 12-17 say they have a smartphone and ownership is highest among older teens: 31% of those ages 14-17 have a smartphone, compared with just 8% of youth ages 12-13."

What does this mean? It means that the older they get, the higher chance they will get a smartphone, and the number of texts will continue to increase as the smartphones get increasingly popular.

So?

A few things might happen,

Will this happen?
Image from International Business Times

1. The number of car accidents might increase because teens will no longer be looking at the road when crossing.
2. Chiropractors will be celebrating as more and more teens will suffer from neck pain and neck bones dislocations. 
3. More teens might go into depression if their smartphones are lost.
4. Distance between the teens and the parents will either decrease because they share common interest, OR drastically increases because their parents don't use smartphones.
5. The teens will "chat" with their fingers and not with their mouth.
6. Queuing up for yum cha will get easier, just ask the teens to do it and surely they can find entertainments on their phones, BUT
7. The waiting time for a table at a Chinese restaurant for yum cha will be even longer as the customers will cling onto their table playing phone games and texting instead of eating and drinking tea.
8. Your internet bill will take up the largest sum in your monthly household expenditure.

Brits spend nearly an hour using smartphones during nights out
Image from Telegraph

Yeah, I might be a little over-dramatic. Smartphones are not all that evil, such as the benefits I have mentioned before in my article, Academic Research (Literature Review): Smartphones for Teaching and Learning, Angels or Demons? But will any of these happen in the near future? Maybe it is already happening now. If you don't believe me, read the following article as well, Brits spend nearly an hour using smartphones during nights out. I don't know what you think, but I really can't stand sitting with a friend on the same table and they just look at the phone and not at me in the entire dinner.

Like many games, Angry Birds has a free version supported by targeted advertising
Image from BBC

The second news from the BBC is short but very much worth reading, titled Free mobile apps 'drain battery faster', talks about why the phone batteries in my phone and yours get drained out so quickly and so easily, and the article pointed directly to the free apps which downloads advertisements to your phone while you are using the free apps.

I've tested it out, and it is all true!!

If you don't believe me, try to play Angry Birds as usual, during the game, an ad will pop up, like the image below,

Ads appear on the top right corner
Image from Android Related 

This is why your data plan keeps hitting the roof! Try it on some other free apps and you will be surprised how often these ads are downloaded onto your phone. If you don't want that, just cut off the 3G before playing or using these free apps. The app will still work fine, and you won't feel frustrated when you can't shoot that red bird to where you intend to.

See? Reading more does help you save money! Especially when you read the English Playground.

"Like" this entry, "Like" the English Playground, "Like" the Facebook page, and "Like" the updates on the Facebook page.



Vocabulary:
chiropractor -- (n) [C] a person whose job is to treat diseases by pressing a person's joints (=places where two bones are connected), especially those in the back
yum cha -- (n)[U] also known as Ban ming , is a Chinese style morning or afternoon tea, which involves drinking Chinese tea and eating dim sum dishes.
expenditure -- (n) [C or U] the total amount of money that a government or person spends
dramatic -- (adj) very sudden or noticeable, or full of action and excitement
drain -- (vb) [I or T] to reduce or cause something to reduce



Resources:

SMH: Older teens now send around 100 texts each day @ VB
http://venturebeat.com/2012/03/19/teens-send-a-ton-of-texts/

Teens, Smartphones & Texting @ Pew Research Center
http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2012/Teens-and-smartphones.aspx

Academic Research (Literature Review): Smartphones for Teaching and Learning, Angels or Demons? @ Locky's English Playground
http://lockyep.blogspot.com/2012/02/academic-research-literature-review.html

Brits spend nearly an hour using smartphones during nights out @ The Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/mobile-phones/8806277/Brits-spend-nearly-an-hour-using-smartphones-during-nights-out.html

Free mobile apps 'drain battery faster'
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-17431109

How to remove ads on Angry Birds? @ Android Related
http://www.androidrelated.info/2011/03/how-to-remove-ads-on-angry-birds.html

http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/chiropractor?q=chiropractors+#chiropractor__3
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yum_cha
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/expenditure?q=expenditure
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/dramatic_1?q=dramatic
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/drain_3