When households first began installing telephones it was very expensive for each to have it’s own line, so the party system was created,with between two and four homes sharing a single phone line. This meant that you could pick up your telephone and listen to your neighbour’s conversations. Eventually every home ended up with its own line, ensuring privacy providing you were the only person in the room! The only improvements for many years were the design or colour of the handset, then technology leapt forward with the concept of being able to take your phone with you wherever you went.
Today the majority of us would be completely lost without our handsets, particularly teenagers who seem to have theirs permanently glued to their hands! As more and more of us convert to texting the proportion of time for face-to-face conversation has decreased whilst messaging has seen a huge rise. A recent survey of Americans aged between 18 and 29 send and receive nearly 88 text messages a day and only 17 phone calls. Unfortunately this directly corresponds to the increase in the rise in the numbers of teen deaths due to texting whilst driving. 300 more teens die from this than from drunk driving, and it has been proved that you are 23 times more likely to have an accident if you text while driving.
Some people still find mobile phones a nuisance as one-sided conversations are considered annoying, but as more of us accept this new way of communicating old-fashioned manners will become a thing of the past. Our mobiles can be very useful sometimes as by pretending to be on a call we can avoid interacting with others around us, so perhaps they have killed the art of conversation. However we use them, mobiles are here to stay.