Technology plays a significant role in our daily lives; technology has without a doubt, made our lives very easy for us. Technology, along with its unlimited advantages also has a lot of disadvantages. Technology is a gift to ourselves so that we can live our lives more comfortably but many people tend to abuse this gift for their own pleasure or personal gain. Cell Phone is one such device that has made our life so easy that we cannot even think of a world without it. Cell Phones can be used to stay in contact with your friends and family no matter where you are the added camera saves you the trouble of taking your digital camera everywhere with you and services such as GPRS keeps us connected to the internet no matter where we are. But these services can also be abused by people.



Scams:

A rather new problem with cell phones is scam messaging. Low lives and criminals try to trick people into sending money into their account. This is becoming a real problem now as people posing as the network inform people via sms that they have won a lot of money and in order to get their hands on that money they should send a small amount usually $20 or $30 to this account or number. Sadly a survey shows that an alarming amount of people actually fall for this and do actually send the money, and then wait for their prize. Messaging which should have been a fun way of staying in contact with your friends is also used for this purpose and in this way the service is abused.

Pranks and Misleading Information:

Cell phones are also used to carry out pranks and other jokes which in actuality are not funny and they do more damage that good. Pranks such as bomb threats and death threats are not funny at all, yet people send them to random numbers just to have a good laugh. They do this because they know that their identity is secure and there is no way the receiver of that message can find out who the sender is. Similarly, forwarding messages that are unverified and half true can be destructive. It can worsen an already bad situation. For example bomb scares spread like wild fire by forwarding that sms to a large number of people, then those people forward it to other people and so on. This can create paranoia and anxiety.

No More Privacy:

Due to cell phones are lives are no longer private. Cell phone cameras have made sure of this. You can never be sure when someone is taking your picture or recording your video. Due to the powerful cameras and zoom features of modern cell phones anybody's picture or video can be taken in high quality, no matter where they are. Further more tracking services by network providers can be accessed by anyone and we can be located anytime via our cell phones.

Pornography:

Now here is a problem nobody wants to discuss yet it is so openly available in our society. It is undesirable as well as uncontrollable. Due to GPRS and 3G technology internet and porn sites can be easily accessed by anyone anywhere and at anytime as well as minors via their cell phones. Internet on cell phones offers us huge advantages; it can offer us a sea of information. Thus it is up to the user how he uses internet on his or her cell phone. It can be used positively and negatively.

Proper use of cell phones would yield higher global efficiency and output. But if exploited, it would almost equally generate the same degree of damage. It is no longer a question of how bad technology can affect people but how do people tend to use that technology.