Shoaib Ahmed Baloch - Smart phones and youth of Pakistan

Subject: Creative writing
Practical work carried out under supervision of Siddique Soomro Sb

Smart phones and youth of Pakistan

Shoaib Ahmed Baloch

2k17/MC/93

Attending a class, sitting with friends & family, playing sports games or doing work, swiping here and there regardless on a screen, the youth is getting stuck into a world which can be profitable for anybody but at the same time this technology can be harmful enough to destruct someone’s health, wealth and time.

As technology is getting advance day by day, we are witnessing many of new and astonishing changes into a device which once was just used as a means of communication between people for the personal and business matters. The journey of this device “Mobile phone to Smart phones” has completely shocked people’s minds. People are seen excited for the upcoming new advancements, but the question is that; is it useful or not in a country where majority of population is not well educated or hardly educated and don’t have enough knowledge or understanding the purpose of smart phones that how this device can profit them in their lives?

The world’s first mobile phone was made in 1973, when Martin Cooper, a senior engineer at Motorola, called a rival tele-communication company and informed them he was speaking via a mobile phone. In Pakistan, it was introduced during the 1990’s. Instaphone and Paktel were the pioneers in the mobile communication. They were joined by Mobilink in 1998, which was owned by Motorola until its sale to ORASCOM.

The Journey of smart phones started from 1992 but it got its term “Smart Phones” in 1995. It was called ‘Simon personal communicator’ and was created by IBM. Smartphones got popular when NTT DoCoMo launched the first 3G network in Japan in October 2001 which made video conferencing and large email attachments possible. But the true smart phone revolution started in 2007, when Steve Jobs launched the first edition of iPhone.

About ten to twelve years ago, only few people had a little knowledge about smart phones in Pakistan and because of high prices these smart phones with very few features were limited to the upper and middle class people only. As the time passed, the technology kept moving towards advancements and at last these smart phone manufacturers succeeded in producing low cost mobile/smart phones for lower class .

According to print media facts, between 2000 and 2007, the smart phone industry has seen an annual growth of 119% in terms of cellular subscriptions, where as the mobile/smart phone penetration rate in Pakistan was calculated to be above 55% at the end of 2007. According to PTA, the mobile/smart phone sector was contributing 2% to the GDP directly and 5% to the economy indirectly.

In June 2011 as notified by DAWN, the number of smart phones had reached 131 million in the country, with which Pakistan was ranked at 5^th position in Asia in the category of mobile/smart phones users.
These facts and figures show that smartphones and its users are rapidly increasing in Pakistan, but it doesn’t seem like this rapid increase has brought that positive change which is needed. Why it has happened? Aren’t people using it in a right way. Because if it could have been used for better purposes, it could have served much better for the development of our society.

Talking about development of a country and neglecting or not mentioning youth is unfair as it is a basic pillar for the development, prosperity and stability of a country. But it is sad to say that youth of Pakistan, intentionally or un-intentionally doesn’t care about the country’s future which is in fact their own future. It seems that they are badly and helplessly stuck in the swamp of misusing this technology.

For a country, youth is an essential asset which help her to be a part in the ongoing race of science and technology around the world but unfortunately youth of Pakistan is busy in self destructing themselves through drugs and wrong use of technologies mostly smart phones. Today if we look around,9 out of 10 teenagers have one or more than one smart phone. It seems they are handling businesses worth of millions of rupees, but it is not true. As a fact only few of them know the proper and fruitful usage of smart phones while majority is involved in useless, time & energy wasting and harmful activities. This wrong usage of smart phones is making them useless and physically and mentally ill.

Grappetite, a mobile app development firm has released a new infographic that details the usage pattern of smart phones in Pakistan.
It reveals that: -
-77% of smartphones users are just 21 to 30 years old.
-60% of Pakistani’s use more than one cell phone.
According to this infograph,84% of users use free apps while 16% uses paid apps. But in most cases these 84% people also doesn’t seem to get free of cost apps. Most of the free apps mostly contain vulgar ads which are promoting nudity, vulgarity and negativity. So, these 84% of people mostly youth pays with their lives and future to get to these apps.

With easy access to any social media sites youth are misusing this by falling in fake love trends, wasting their time and energy all day on social media sites like Instagram, Facebook, Whatsapp etc and finally regretting in the end..
As smartphones are type of hand-held computers so it has made easy access to internet .If a teenager has no one to look after him/her, he/she can get easy access to the different adult content websites through different vulgar ads which are easily found on any webpage. This activity diverts their minds from their education and other healthy activities.

Afterall these facts and figures and some bitter truths about our youth, I’m afraid that if this continues with the same speed what will happen with the country’s future in this race of advancing science and technology ? Will they even struggle to prove their existence ?
In greater national interest it is very first job of government to help youth in getting out of this deadly swamp by :(1) controlling or keeping check & balance of content shown in these apps and internet:(2) introducing new rules and regulations on the usage of internet and smartphone to control this increasing negativity and vulgarity among youth :(3) introducing new programs online and encourage youth to “participate and win” competitions:(4) introducing youth interest based short technical courses as a replacement.
Parents should also set their children as their priority by setting up their time on smartphones and computers and by looking after their children and should do their bright future counseling and encourage them to live a better life.

By taking such immediate measures about our youth which is constituting 64% of the total population of Pakistan, government of Pakistan can secure the future of this country and help youth continuing in this ongoing race of science and technology.