Girl Falls Down Sewer While Texting

Most of us are guilty of walking around with our heads buried in some kind of hand held device.  If I’m not checking Facebook on my phone then I’m usually deep in a texting frenzy.  Spare a thought for poor little Alexa Longueria, 15, of Staten Island who was so absorbed in her phone that she plunged down a man hole.  Apparently the sewer was horrible.  She lost a shoe.  That’s how dangerous technology can be.

In 2008, there was a move from the State of Illinois to outlaw texting while crossing the street and on the same note, London’s Brick Lane was voted the most dangerous place to text-walk in a survey conducted by 118. The council responded by padding lamp and sign posts to cushion the blow for reckless gadget fiddlers.

This led me to wonder about the frequency of freak accidents caused by the phones we carry on a daily basis.

Leaving aside the slightly more serious issue of talking on the phone while driving, there are also claims in the British Medical Journal that mobile phone users have been struck by lightning, and that the use of a mobile phone channeled the hit directly into the inner ear causing perforation of the eardrum .

The director of the British Repetitive Strain Injury Association, Andrew Chadwick, has reported that text messaging can result in “a painful swelling and inflammation of the fingers and thumbs”.  This hideous affliction has been termed “Blackberry Thumb” and it even has its own entry on Wikipedia so it must be a reality!

There have been cases in Malaysia of phones spontaneously combusting, setting the ear of the hapless user alight taking taste buds with them.  This seems to have been down to faulty batteries.

Some phone users experience damage to ulnar nerve (over the elbow) through repeatedly flexing it over a 90 degree angle.  Others are actually allergic to their handsets, or rather the nickel in the phone’s coating and develop a nasty condition similar to eczema.

Weirdest of all has to be phantom phone vibrations.  According to Dr. William Barr, the chief of neuropsychology at the New York University School of Medicine, some of his patients have reported that they sense vibrations from their phones when they’re not using them.  Apparently this is because we connect the buzzing of a phone with receiving a call or message and the positive association leads our brains to actively search for these sensations; freaky.

While I’m on the subject, there’s also the possibility that alien races may have chosen your phone as the best place to begin their inter-planetary relations.  Here’s a link to a website whose writer claims to have held a detailed conversation with “Forth”, an extra terrestrial from the humanoid Kliendcontlar race; possibly just a case of mobile induced insanity.

So next time you pick up your phone, beware!  It organises your life for you, wakes you up in the morning and keeps you entertained in moments of boredom, but it may also be plotting to kill you.