The Elder Statesman

By BILL DUNCAN
The Elderstatesman

If e-mails, letters and personal phone calls are any indication, I am not alone as a dinosaur roaming the jungles of cell phones. To my surprise many others feel as I do that no telephone call is so important it can’t wait.

One of the shocking revelations came from a reader who researched the cellphone and electronic marvels phenomenon and sent me these mind-boggling statistics:

• There are 4.1 billion text messages sent every day in the United States alone.
• There are 140 million cellphones in the United States.
• Fifty-seven percent of teenagers see their cellphones as the key to their social life.
•Facebook has more than 200 million active users, with more than 100 million logging on at least once a day.
• Twitter has 18 million users and is most popular among those 45 to 54.

I am a dinosaur, not only do I not own a cellphone, but I don’t text, have a fairly decent social life without instant communication, don’t have the foggiest idea of how to get my face on Facebook and even though I am a mere 30 years older than those baby boomers on Twitter, I had much rather write a long, personal letter than twitter some nonsense.

I was also shocked when the reader said there are more than 500,000 dead cellphones waiting for disposal and gave some statistics that are even more frightening. Many of these older, obsolete phones have batteries containing cadmium.

The battery from a single old phone could seriously contaminate 600,000 gallons of water, enough to fill a third of an Olympic-sized swimming pool. Cadmium, however is no longer being used in new cellphone batteries.

Cellphones, even new ones, use lead to solder components to the printed wiring boards. Lead affects the immune, endocrine and central nervous systems. Those wiring boards also contain brominated flame retardants, which have been associated with cancer, liver damage and problems with neurological, immune and endocrine systems.

Cellphone users will call all this hype, trying to scare people. It scared the hell out of me and I don’t even own a cellphone.

I was so naïve, I thought people only walked around talking to themselves on these things, but each day I learn some new shocking event related to cellphones. The latest is some states are trying to get laws passed to criminalize sextexting, an unbelievable act, at least for this shy guy, of teens doing strip teases before the cellphone camera and sending the images out for the whole world to see.

Some district attorneys consider this child pornography and have arrested the strip teasers.

I will admit teenagers are a strange bunch, but when I look back and only had to handle long hair rebellion of my male teenagers, I pity this generation of parents. Solving the sexting problem is a little more difficult than finding Playboy and Hustler under the mattress.

Sextexting is so widespread that a British charity called Beatbulling surveyed 2,094 teenagers between 11 and 18 and discovered that 38 percent claimed they had received sexual images by electronic means with 55 percent stating the images were sent by cellphone.

As a parent, I made the mistake years ago when my son, John, came of age and moved out on his own. He came by the house one day, and all this old Marine could see was that he had joined the grow long hair trend. Like a Marine DI, I barked: “Get a haircut, John.”

He left. Weeks later I discovered he had come by the house to tell me there was a burglary at his apartment and his stereo set, his Martin guitar and other items had been stolen. When I asked why he hadn’t told me that before, he replied, “I tried to Dad and you told me to get a haircut.”

At that moment, I overcame and never mentioned the hair issue again. The same attitude should prevail in this latest texting crisis. Let’s not brand these teenagers as child pornographers, but only as adventurous teenagers with raging hormones. Let’s deal with it like adults using common sense.

(Bill Duncan can be reached at bduncan@nrtoday.com or by writing to P.O. Box 812, Roseburg, OR 97470)

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 10th, 2010 at 8:00 am and is filed under Column. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.