The fact is that the Thuong Tin high school students are abusing the mobile phones, which is complained by a number of parents and students.. Data were gathered using the following metho
Trang 1Final research report "THE REAL SITUATION AND BAD EFFECST WHEN THE THUONG TIN HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS ABUSE
MOBILE PHONES"
Trang 2THE REAL SITUATION AND BAD EFFECST WHEN THE THUONG TIN HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS ABUSE
MOBILE PHONES
By
Bui Thi Bich Class: D06-K52 Supervisor: Ms Dau Thi Le Hieu
Faculty of Foreign Language Hanoi University of Technology
Trang 3May 2010
ABSTRACT/ EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The age of information and technology has brought mankind lots of the
“breakthrough” inventions, in which the appearances of mobile phones with the cheap costs and high application has made the great changes for people’s lives, especially for the youth Most of the cities- dwellers possess one or more hand phones, in particular, the secondary and college students do The mobile phone has been admitted to offer plenty of benefits, but it is also said to create too many troubles, in deed The fact is that the Thuong Tin high school students are abusing the mobile phones, which is complained
by a number of parents and students Therefore, this research was concerned with the overuse of mobile phones of Thuong Tin high school students The objective of the research was to explore real situation and the bad effects that Thuong Tin students might face up with in case of abusing mobile phones Data were gathered using the following methods: questionnaire survey for collecting the facts related to abusing hand phones, and existing information about negative consequences that students might encounter The study was concluded that Thuong Tin high school student has been abusing hand phones with “high frequency”, i.e they were depending on mobile phones As the result, many of them have received the bad effects from the mobile phone itself
From this real situation together with negative effects caused by mobile phones, it
is recommended that using hand phone by Thuong Tin students should be limited apart from necessary circumstances, and more consideration should be also taken into by parents before making decisions of buying their children, the students in the physical and mental growth, a mobile phone
Trang 41 INTRODUCTION
1.1 Overview of project
Nowadays, together with the development of science and technology, the
information science has been successfully developing for the last few years Especially Vietnam has experienced the integration of mobile phone into society Progress has beenmade to the point that small, reasonable mobile phones with expanded capabilities
(applications) are available for innumerable uses Therefore, there has been a massive increase in personal mobile phones over the past five years Moreover, the growth of our economy, our higher living standards permits parents to buy their children one or more hand phones in purpose of communicating or controlling them more easily
It is undeniable that cell phones have played an important role in our lives and become one of the basic of our lives due to the enormous benefits they has brought:
“They are life-saving tools when we are alone and encounter unexpected troubles” ,
“They are unmatched, ultra-convenient communication tools”, “They are fantastic
entertainment tools” ( Linda Song, 2009) However, everything has two sides:
advantages and disadvantages Beside different benefits, cell phones have bad influences
on living environment and our health; especially, “With cell phone use becoming more and more
ubiquitous, particularly among high school students, and cell phones becoming more andmore sophisticated, tempers run high when it comes to students, schools, and cell
phones” ( Katharine Saw, 2005) The secondary students, who are in the period of
physical and mental growth, are abusing cell phones without being aware of its possible harms Together with complaints of some teachers that” I feel so annoyed and
Trang 5disrespected when the students in class would like to go out to receive the calls or just focus on messages instead of concentrating on lessons”, this phenomenon is described as
“serious in the extreme’ in Thuong Tin area today and has become great interest of most parents and teachers At present, there has yet been any study about cell phone overuse ofThuong Tin high school students to warn them of possible harms that they might not aware of
1.2 Statement of objectives of hypothesis
Therefore, the research was conducted to explore the real situation of abusing mobile phone of the pupils at Thuong Tin School and bad effects on their morality and health The topic was implemented in hope that Thuong Tin students should limit their cell phone uses
2 LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1 Source of information
Most of information was retrieved from the Internet websites (research papers) which include major data related to the mobile phone uses and negative effects when abusing cell phones:
* Erin Schreiner studied about the effect of mobile phone on students He mentionedboth positive and negative consequences of cell phones It was noted that cell phones presented new opportunities and challenges for students It was also described as a convenient and helpful tool in our daily life such as: to make phone calls, to watch films,
to take photos, etc in spite of those benefits, cell phones was argued to lead students to more distraction and off task behaviors Because when the cell phone rang during class, everyone’s attention was drawn away from the lesson, and the flow of learning was
Trang 6disrupted More importantly, it was added that many of the features of the cell phones could be used to engage inappropriate behaviors; for example, taking inappropriate pictures and then "sexing" them to a boyfriend or girlfriend is a growing problem The consequences for inappropriate behavior were real and long-lasting
* Ya Na (2004) also confirmed that cell phones were bad for teens about the health and morality Teens were advised not to use mobile phone because this equipment emits some radiation which is proved to harm cranial nerve and their immune system is weaker than those of adults Ya Na confirmed that the number of students using cells phone was surging in China According to Xinhua News Agency, Li Nie, a high school student from Lanzhou, the capital city of Northwest China's Gansu Province, said over of his 44 classmates had a cell phone Teachers were concerned with the effect cell phones having
on children's studies and personal social skills Cell phones was said to become a new means for cheating during exams because students could send messages to each other
* Geoffrey Lean (2008) wrote a report titled “Mobile phones 'more dangerous than smoking'” Mobile phone was concluded by cancer experts to kill far more people than smoking or asbestos Professor Khurana – a top neurosurgeon who has received 14 awards over the past 16 years admitted that mobiles could save lives in emergencies, but concluded that “there is a significant and increasing body of evidence for a link between mobile phone usage and certain brain tumors" He added that “Smoking kills some five million worldwide each year, and exposure to asbestos is responsible for as many deaths
in Britain as road accidents” In general, mobile phone is said to have bad risks on
people’s health
Trang 73 METHODOLOGY
3.1 Research methods used
There were two methods used to support my thesis including: questionnaire survey and existing information
3.1.1 Questionnaire survey: this method was used to investigate the real situation
(How, When, Where and what for the pupils use mobile phones) In fact, it was a
quantitative research, i.e the data collected from a large number of respondents (statistic figures) would be used to evaluate the reality by the researcher
3.1.2 The existing information: this method was utilized for bad effects that the
students might encounter as abusing the cell phones The data collected contained both quantitative and qualitative The quantitative information was the statistic figures
achieved in questionnaire survey method, and the qualitative information obtained from the Internet websites related to physical and metal effects when pupils use mobile phones
3.2 Procedures
3.2.1 Questionnaire survey
The population for this study is the total number of Thuong Tin high school
students who are overusing their cell phones To answer for the research question” What
is the real situation of abusing mobile phone of the pupils at Thuong Tin School”, a
Trang 8questionnaire survey ( respondent- completed form) was designed It included 13 coded questions in form of Yes/no, multiple- response and open- ended questions Pupils were required to tick a cross or write down their answers The next step was to pilot the survey The researcher went to Thuong Tin high school, Ha Noi on May 5, 2010 to test
pre-on 10 pupils The goal of this pilot survey was to check whether the cpre-ontent of
questionnaire survey was appropriate to research objectives or not As the result, survey design was a little amended and improved On May 7, 2010, an official survey of ThuongTin high school students’ use was conducted in their own school Because of a large number of students, it would be so hard for the researcher to carry out Therefore, only 3 classes of 3 different grades were chosen at random to fill in the survey sheet, i.e one class from 10-grade level, one from 11-grade level and one from 12 grade levels with 10 survey sheets for each class Because the type of information that was expected from this questionnaire was quite sensitive, the researcher show expectation to collect the correct data and would like the students to be willing to support the survey Therefore, a total of
30 questionnaire survey sheets were distributed with the students and the same number ofsheets was collected From the results of 30 questionnaire survey were generalized to obtain the total final result
3.2.2 The existing information
To answer for the second research question “what bad effects might there be for students of Thuong Tin high school in the circumstance of abusing mobile phones?” the results of questionnaire survey and the information from the Internet Websites involving
in negative consequences of cell phones were utilized A lot of the online articles related
Trang 9to topic were read and saved but just the articles closely related to negative effects on students’ morality and health were selected as the literature review The following is the list of some sources of information involved:
* Geoffrey Lean (2008) Mobile phones 'more dangerous than smoking’ Health & families Life & style The independent, 1 Retrieved May 23, 2010 from
more-dangerous-than-smoking-802602.html
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/mobile-phones-* Le Huy (03/2009) 7 tac hai ma dien thoai di dong gay ra Thong tin y duoc Suc khoe va doi song, 1 Retrieved April 12, 2010 from
gay-ra.htm
http://suckhoedoisong.vn/2009032005514951p0c19/7-tac-hai-ma-dien-thoai-di-dong-* Katherine Saw (2005) Students and cell phones: Controversy in the class room Opinion and editorial Associatedcontent, 1 Retrieved May 23, 2010 from
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/4903/students_and_cell_phones_controversy.html?cat=9
4 RESULTS, ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION
There was 100% response rate to the questionnaire The results found in this survey are shown below:
Most of the Thuong Tin high school students have been using cell phones
According to the statistic figures, 97 % of students are currently possessing at least 1 cell phone and 3 % of them are not They started to use mobile phones from the lower
secondary school or just as they got access to high school In fact, the percentage of
Trang 10students utilizing cell phones from lower secondary school are 20, from 10 grade are 70, from 11 grade are 10 and 0% for 12 grade The rate of male (46.7%) and female (53.3%)
is quite equal It can be inferred that most of them have used mobile phone from the earlyages This actually causes bad effects on students’ health It is demonstrated by the specialists that using mobile phones has a higher risk of cancer
Moreover, the students often play games on cell phones The statistic has shown that 50 % of the Thuong Tin students spend less than one hour per day playing games, 40% of them spend 1-2 hours and 10 % spend more than 2 hours for “this task” It can be seen from this figures that, on average, the students spend approximately 1 hour in games If games are played regularly every day, the total number of time (hours) will be very great It has been proved that the mobile phone waves have left the long- term and potential bad effects on students The more time the students carry or wear mobile phone
on their body, the higher risks of heart diseases, immune system they might suffer from
In addition, staying up late for messages is also a problem to the students In fact,
30 % of the students admitted staying up late 3-4 times before 24h / month, 40% of them after 24h and 30 % of them with more than 10 times after 24h per month It is the fact that most students (70 %) often stay up late to have a chat with others through messages
If this situation still goes on, and long- lasting, the students will seriously lack of sleepingand consequently weaken their bodies “An excessively usage of mobile phones can provoke headaches, amnesia, insomnia, irritability and even advanced tiredness” (Admin,2009)
Obviously, using mobile phones early is not good for teens; the students of
Thuong Tin high school are still teenagers, aren’t yet adults in deed because they aged
Trang 11between 16 and 18 However, it can be a modern trend when most of them use cell phonewithout realizing the harmful effects on their health In fact, the percentage of students that can be aware of negative effects of mobile phone waves on the brain and central nervous system, the heart and endocrine system and reproductive function are:
brain heart reproduction not hear of
Figure 4.1 Bad effects of mobile waves on people’s health
From the results of figure 4.1, it can be concluded that most of the students have just heard of one bad consequence of mobile phone, i.e they haven’t had the sufficient information (knowledge) of possible harms That is one of the reasons why the Thuong Tin high school students are currently free to use hand phones
It can be likely to confirm that one of the main reasons buy their children a mobile phone are to control (contact) students more easily However, the students use cell
phones with different purposes as below:
Trang 12The goal of using cell phones of
students
Mean Scores The maximum percentages
Times for contacting family/ week 2.03 70% ( 0-2 times)
Number of messages/ day 86.66 50% ( > 100 messages) Time to reply sms or phone call/ minute 1.8 90% ( 1-2 minutes)
Table 4.2 The purpose of using mobile phone
Although students’ parents have thought that their children call them more often but in fact, the figures in Table 4.2 shows that on average per week, the parents just receive the calls from their children 2.03 times, a low frequency compared the number of days of a week Most of students (70%) have made a phone call in case of emergency or necessity However, the time and money spent on messages are quite large 50% of the Thuong Tin students send more than 100 messages per day, while the time to receive and reply the messages on average from 1-2 minutes So, the total of time for messages a day is in the range of 100- 200 minutes, a large amount of time Not only consuming time and money, the bad influences of electromagnetic fields and cell phones waves on the students’ healthare very great because the time they carry the phones with them or take the phone on their hands is too long
It is undeniable that the cell phones have positively made the big changes in daily life; for example, 23.4 % of Thuong Tin students found that cell phones help their lives become more interesting and comfortable because they use phones to contact with their friends in a far distance easily with the cheap cost through the messages system
However, 46.7% of the students agreed that using cell phones has created some troubles, disturbances, and make them become lazier at school unexpectedly Instead of
concentrating on study at night, the students was interrupted by the messages or phone