Dear Editor,

The cell phone, of all devices man has invented, has the potential of not only doing good things, but it also has the potential like many inventions to go for the betterment of mankind or just the opposite.

So, as always I feel it’s best to lay the facts out and let you pick out the pluses and minuses of this device.

It was invented by Martin Cooper, who was a designer of electronic devices for Motorola. The device made its debut on April 3, 1973. The opening price was $3995.00 dollars which would be $11,000 at today’s price. It weighed 21 pounds, with a total talk time of 30 minutes and a charge time of 10 hours. The monthly service charge was $60-$100 a month. At that time its sole capacity was for cellular calls.

Modern phones as compared to computers from the 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s are presently 100,000 times faster in speed and memory. A single cell phone today offers more processing power than the computers of that time capable of processing collectively. The modern cell phones of today have a speed that exceeds 10 to the 12th power (teraflops) per second. Today’s cell phones have a RAM capacity of 8-16 GB’s which is four million times more than the RAM’s of the 1960’s. The speed of the modern cell phone is approximately that of the 60’s era personal computers. Efficiency of the single 5ph, is cheaper than the 30T multi-million dollar, plus it has more capacity.

Issues with Phones: The daily usage per phone now exceeds five hours. That’s called addiction and people can pick the things online to get addicted to.

Lawsuits are now beginning in California against major websites because of the addiction, and the suits are being brought by parents who bought the phones and didn’t monitor its usage. Most of the parents filing lawsuits bought the phones to get the kids off their backs, and instead of worrying about addiction they would say at least they’re not bothering me. With the cell usage that parents have allowed many children and parents don’t even talk to one another. The cell phone can cause addiction, depression, anxiety, reduced productivity, physical health and mental health issues, and social disconnection. A CNBC poll says that the cell phone is checked on average 144 times a day over 16 hrs. And nearly 90 percent of cell phone users check their phone within 10 minutes after they are awake.

It has been suggested through laboratory testing, that over a 72 hour period of not using the cell phone, that the following things might happen. Less stress, anxiety, sleep improves, sharpness, and actual person to person talking in real life. Today’s use of the cell phone is for a variety of reasons other than just a phone call. Examples include texting, GPS, captioning, stowing high speed information, photography, science, math, social media and many other purposes. Some good and some evil, with all of that it really does become an addiction, and it’s destroying the personalities of young and old.

A preacher came to our church and during his preaching he made the remark’ “One of the biggest mistakes I ever made was giving my daughter a cell phone”. He said it ruined her life.That struck me very hard, because I can look around and see what this device has done, which is destroying many young and older people.

Sincerely, Larry Ritz

New Martinsville, WVa