Comment: Cell phones and cultural awareness

Here, you are asked to comment upon a statement from Text III: “… cell phones enable teenagers and young adults to become so much more culturally aware than they might’ve otherwise been” (ll. 41-44).

When you comment upon this statement, we recommend you look at the overall attitudes to smartphones displayed in Text III. In general, Bobbi McDowell, the author, is defensive when it comes to the use of smartphones. She states that teenagers and young adults are wrongfully judged for using smartphones; she claims they are often compared to zombies or it is claimed that they are rude or unaware of their surroundings.

McDowell offers several counter-arguments against this, one of them being the fact that smartphones allow youngsters to become “so much more culturally aware” (ll. 42-43) that they might have been. She explains that being “more culturally aware” means being more connected to the events that take place around the world:

I’ve heard over and over again that it’s awful how the world has so much fear because we hear about every horrific thing that happens the instant it occurs. As if the world was a better place when we didn’t know about the horrors that were happening. (ll. 44-50)

Instead of hiding information, smartphones offer it to their users and allow them to form their own opinions regarding what they find out. As McDowell states, horrific events do not stop happening if...