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Benjamin Rose
Erin Rogers
Writing 2010
15 March 2016
A Smart Risk to Take: Smartphones in the Modern Era
Technology is an increasingly dominating force in today's society, and nowhere is that
more obvious than the smartphone. While smartphones have been around for a few decades, it
wasn't until the mid-2000s when their popularity exploded, setting up a debate between two
major schools of thought. Smartphones have become a major source of distraction, which can
cause problems on the road or between pedestrians. The vastly improved ability to connect
with others has, somewhat ironically, made it easier for people to separate from each other, to
flame each other or just not care about those around them. However, their ability to quickly
access information and find use in many areas largely makes up for these issues; services like
the Uber driver and NFC mobile wallets have been made possible thanks to the expansion of
smartphones, and social media has allowed residents to be aware of and prepared for natural
disasters, as well as giving city managers a better look at their residents lives.
Smartphones have been shown to be a distraction for both pedestrians and automobile
drivers. According to a study of 1,102 pedestrians, over a third of them were observed
walking while distracted with a smartphone, performing activities like sending texts and
listening to music. Pedestrians listening to music walked more than half a second (0.54)
faster across the average intersection than undistracted pedestrians; texting pedestrians took
almost two seconds longer to cross that intersection than the undistracted pedestrians.

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Texting pedestrians were 3.9 times more likely than undistracted pedestrians to display at
least 1 unsafe crossing behaviour (disobeying the lights, crossing mid-intersection, or failing
to look both ways), and that is a serious problem (Thomson, Leah L et al). With traffic
gradually moving faster and more recklessly due to the ever-increasing pressure on the
working class to get to work on an increasingly strict time schedule, distracted pedestrians
present a huge hazard to traffic safety that wasnt even thought of before the explosion of the
smartphone world. People have been trying to find ways to reduce the problem of distractions,
but most of the proposed solutions either dont work in practice or are too cost-prohibitive.
One attempt was to use motion gestures and audio instead of a touchscreen when trying to
perform common tasks. The gestures werent very reliable, however, and the smartphone user
was still unable to fully concentrate on walking, which prevented the motion gestures from
actually reducing risk in walking while using a smartphone (Neglescu et al). Another attempt
was to use technology in the smartphone itself to sense cars and tell the user to get out of the
way. The concept is a difficult one to realize thanks to limited technology, though (Wang, T. et
al 1-2).
The expansion of smartphones and social media has allowed people to connect more
easily with each other. Unfortunately, the growing ease of communicating with others has also
revealed the more primitive bad side of the human mind. In a phenomenon known as the
Online Disinhibition Effect or the GIFT, a term coined in the webcomic Penny Arcade
people act in much less restrained ways because the ability to remain anonymous on the
Internet largely removes the sense of social consequences, allowing people to speak more
freely. In some cases, this can be a good thing, as it allows people to be more honest in their

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discussions about certain topics, be it a more personal matter such as their sexual orientation,
or a larger issue such as global warming. Other times, however, this anonymity can lead to
acting on more hostile emotions, getting on peoples nerves or igniting flame wars across the
Internet (Suler 1-2).
The explosion in smartphone usage is also a major security risk; with more people and
devices connected to each other than ever before, there are many opportunities for hackers to
break into smartphones and steal the information they find. As explained in an epsiode of
CBS Newss 60 Minutes, all a hacker needs is a phone number to gain access to contacts, text
messages, and voicemails; for someone as important as a member of Congress or even the
President of the United States, this is a serious issue for national security and makes it that
much easier for a potential terrorist to find who or what to target, or for a hacker to spread
otherwise confidential information (Sharyn). Telephones, be them traditional or smart, use a
system called Signaling System 7, or SS7, a protocol designed for communication between
separate companies phone lines. It was designed to fix a flaw in the previous two systems,
SS5 and SS6, that allowed users to manually reroute long-distance calls, allowing free calls to
places where they would normally be charged a fee. However, SS7 still has its own flaws that
allow hackers access to entire calls both during and afterward, which leaves information
transmitted in phone calls unprotected. These same flaws also allow hackers to track the
location of smartphones with an unsettling degree of accuracy (Sharyn).
Even with those problems, smartphones have benefited society in many ways to make
up for them. Take the Uber driver, for example. Taxis, the predecessors to Uber, didnt have as
much of an obligation to their passengers because those passengers werent necessarily

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assigned to them, and as such there was a risk of being left behind if the taxi didnt show up
due to being distracted with another passenger on the way. With Uber, a customer uses their
smartphone to call up a driver to their current location, which puts a sense of personal
responsibility on the Uber driver (Rempel). As Uber continues to grow, its increasing
prevalence, ease of use, and lower cost have convinced people that Uber is just one example
of smartphones changing industry to be more immediate and personalized. Of course, this
doesnt come without its own problems. With Uber revolutionizing the transportation
industry, low-wage workers may no longer find work in the taxi business. Uber is very
aggressive towards its competition and is willing to bend laws to achieve its goals (Rempel).
There have been violent incidents related to Uber drivers despite the companys anti-gun
policy, such as when one driver in Florida shot a passenger who was allegedly choking him
in an argument, (Chasmar), or when a driver in Michigan killed a customer and five other
people in an unexplained seven hour rampage (Conlon and Valencia). Even with these
problems in mind, Uber is leaving its mark as a more reliable and less expensive alternative to
a traditional taxi system, and its implementation finally gives the car-hire industry a sense of
supply and demand thats common in most other markets (Rogers 85-88), allowing eventual
competition to further lower prices.
A more immediate benefit of the expansion of smartphones is the use of social media
to spread important information. While it was previously explained that social media can be
harmful, it can also be beneficial: social media has been used to warn people of natural
disasters. When finding emergency information, social media websites are a high priority
among communication methods, and these websites have been used to tell families that

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people are safe, spread word about raising funds for post-disaster reconstruction, or during the
event itself to tell people to evacuate while they still have the chance (Lindsay 2).
Social media has also been used to gather information about and understand city
culture and demographics. As location-based apps and services are developed, and as
smartphones capable of using these services become more frequently used, studies can be
conducted that use social media to find patterns in a city and its residents, and find dynamics
of the culture within (Cranshaw et al 2). This can help city planners improve the lives of their
residents through spreading word about helpful places to visit, times for the community to get
together, or to arrange utilities in the most efficient way possible.
At a more personal level, smartphones are gradually replacing wallets, not just because
of their capacity to hold personal information, but also with their ability to replace
conventional credit and debit cards through the use of Near-Field Communication, or NFC.
With NFC, a user can scan their card(s) into their smartphone, then use their phone as their
card when they pay for goods and services (Jackson 1). Its popularity is already being shown
in Malaysia, where NFC smartphone payment is used instead of other, more traditional forms
of currency. This can be seen as a potential security risk; hackers could use NFC as a means to
connect to a smartphone and collect information from it. Doing so isnt feasible though, as
NFC has a very short range, and several security measures were built into the NFC
specification such as being isolated from other hardware in the smartphone and fuses that
blow under certain conditions commonly associated with more amateur hacking methods
(Jackson 1-2). As such, the security risk from NFC in particular isnt much when compared to

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the other potential methods of hacking noted above, leaving NFC as a relatively safe method
of transmitting information.
Smartphones have grown as a powerful influence in todays world. Yes, they are a
major distraction even when used by pedestrians. Yes, there are rather easy ways that hackers
can use to break into smartphones and retrieve sensitive information. And yes, people have
been more than willing to express their darker side on the internet from their smartphones.
But even with all of those problems, they have still been beneficial to the growth of the
modern world. Transportation has become more manageable thanks to the introduction of
Uber. Social media has been used to spread important information on natural disasters and to
collect information that can help city managers make their city a better place to live.
Smartphones are gradually replacing wallets as a means of carrying money around. With these
new and growing technologies and many more to complement them, there is no doubt that,
despite the issues they present, smartphones have overall been a beneficial influence on the
development of the 21st century world.

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Works Cited
Thompson, Leah L. et al. Impact of Social and Technological Distraction on Pedestrian
Crossing Behaviour: an Observational Study. University of Washington. 13 Dec.
2012. Web. 6 Mar. 2016.
Suler, John, Ph.D. The Online Disinhibition Effect. Rider University. 2004. Web. 16 Apr.
2016.
Rempel, John. A Review of Uber, the Growing Alternative to Traditional Taxi Service. AFB
AccessWorld Magazine. 2014. Web. 2 Mar. 2016.
<http://www.afb.org/afbpress/Pub.asp?DocID=aw150602>
Chasmar, Jessica. Uber Driver Breaks Anti-Gun Policy, Shoots Passenger who Allegedly
Choked him. The Washington Times. 30 June 2015. Web. 6 Mar. 2016.
Conlon, Kevin and Nick Valencia. Kalamazoo Uber Driver Picked up Fares Between
Killings, Source Says. CNN. 22 Feb. 2016. Web. 6 Mar. 2016
Wang, Tianyu et al. WalkSafe: A Pedestrian Safety App for Mobile Phone Users Who Walk
and Talk While Crossing Roads. University of Bologna. 28 Feb. 2012. Web. 8 Mar.
2016.
Rogers, Brishen. The Social Costs of Uber. Temple University. 6 May 2015. Web. 2 Mar.
2016.
Lindsay, Bruce R. Social Media and Disasters: Current Uses, Future Options, and Policy
Considerations. Congressional Research Service. 6 Sept. 2011. Web. 5 Mar. 2016.
Cranshaw, Justin et al. The Livehoods Project: Utilizing Social Media to Understand the
Dynamics of a City. Carnegie Mellon University. Web. 6 Mar. 2016.
Alfonsi, Sharyn. Hacking Your Phone. CBS News. 7 Apr. 2016. Web. 7 Apr. 2016.