Disadvantages Of Cellphones

Both Thomas Sherman’s interview and Dr. Terrence W. Cavanaugh’s article talk about cellphone’s relationship with people in the contemporary society. Thomas Sherman mainly discusses about the negative side of the effects of using cellphones on the young in his interview from the perspective of a teacher, whereas Dr. Terrence W. Cavanaugh shows both merits and demerits of using cellphones from the perspective of an observer. Different perspectives are used to reveal the consequence of using cellphones in these articles and these articles positions differently on the scale of bias.

To begin with, the first article reveals the disadvantages of students using cellphones from teacher’s perspective, while the second article expresses both merits and

The first article is totally biased since only the disadvantages of using cell phones are revealed in the article. According to the text, “cell phones are a major threat to learning while providing no benefits, [and] in order to limit this threat, they must be banned entirely from school”. The words “must” and “entirely” reinforce his opinion of how cell phones shall be treated, which is his personal opinion. Also, in the following content, he only include information that supports his main point, which means that the information are mostly persuasive one-sided contents. Since only the negative effects are included in the article and none of the positive effects is shown in the text, this article is totally subjective. On the other hand, the second article is more objective and slightly subjective. According to the text, the author points out that “with this technology, as with any technology, there will be pros and cons about the application”. This justifies that in this article, both pros and cons of using cell phones are expressed, which makes the article objective. However, by saying that “teachers should consider including them in reading process, rather than expecting students to abandon their devices every time reading begins”, it demonstrates that although both advantages and disadvantages are shown in the article, it is still slightly biased since the author also provides his personal opinion in this article. Since the second article is written from the observer’s perspective, and both the merits and demerits are expressed in the article, it is obvious to understand that is it more objective than the previous article. Therefore, they are at different positions on the scale of