Today’s world is living under the strong mesmerising grip of mobiles. Is it very easy to come out of the magic labyrinth into which mobiles have pushed us? Absolutely not. Of course, it is not at all necessary for us to break out of the magic casements of the fascinating mobile world. Mobiles are very useful ingredients of modern technological civilization and are undoubtedly contributing to the speeding up of human civilization by establishing a worldwide mass communication. Mobiles have a lot of good things to do for us. It is we who have to decide in what way they will serve us. The sinister effect of the mobiles is the direct repercussion of our failure to decide in what way we shall make the mobiles serve our purposes and what kind of purposes should they serve for us. Instead of serving our purpose of exchanging and transmitting useful messages and information, they are compelled to serve effectively our pointless purpose of satisfying certain lighter urges of the minds. Mobiles are producing a seductive and highly detrimental effect on the youngsters.
The pernicious effect of the mobiles has more impact on the youngsters than the adults as the tender minds can be easily plied in any directions. Every glance of our eyes meets with a huge number of the tender girls and boys with the mobiles of different designs and models and with different types of MP3 music and video systems plugging their ears. They stay immersed in the world of joys and pleasures at the cost of the serious businesses in life. The unwise use of mobiles is not only making us unmindful to useful work but also is putting us into the jaws of doom.
The reports of various road mishaps singularly finger out the careless use of mobiles to be the cause of the massacres in most cases. In spite of innumerable warnings people risk their lives on the roads only being under the spell of the chatting device. They turn a deaf ear to the road safety warnings displayed on either side of the roads.
Few days back one Assam Secretariat employee was mashed to death by a rushing railway engine at Guwahati. Reports say that the deceased was crossing the railroad crossing plugging both his ears with mobile headphone. In spite of repeated warnings made by the rail-gate staff he was walking across the rails as he could not hear the railway staff and other people who shouted at him to stop him from crossing the gate at that very moment. Similar cases happening on the roads are a regular feature everywhere now-a-days.
The world of children is affected most by the mobiles. Children today are found more in the use of mobiles than the adults. They desist from the actual use of mobiles and pass their times making useless chatting. The most alarming negative effect the mobiles have produced in the children is that they are completely diverted from their studies and pass their invaluable time being under the tantalizing spell of the mobiles.
Children can not decide correctly what is bad and what is good. They easily fall prey to the evil effect of mobiles. The morality of the children comes under a big test. The pornographic video programmes played by them damage their morality and divert their attention from important business of life.
Groups of children gathering together around mobiles and resorting to enjoying pornographic pictures and listening to useless music and songs are the common scenes in every nook and corner of the villages and cities now-a- days. Mobile games have gained much popularity today and children have lost interest in the outdoor and important indoor games.
Mobiles can not be done away with. What we have to do is that we need to apply our reason and wisdom in the use of mobiles. Certain precautions are to be taken while using mobiles. Mobiles may be avoided while driving and while doing any work requiring uninterrupted concentration like operating or examining a patient, learning important lessons, cooking certain recipes and so on and so forth.
Use of mobiles by children should be carefully monitored by the parents and elders and should better be prohibited or allowed only under unavoidable circumstances.
Let’s make due and wise use of mobiles and save ourselves from the menaces they create for us. It depends completely on the individual users what purpose mobiles should serve for us. If we do not use mobiles as our tools for accomplishing our useful exigencies then mobiles will enslave us.
Gopal Talukdar
PGT (English), JNV, Kohima
