Authors: Beatrice Musonda
Abstract: We live in a world where we are faced with rapid and dynamic changes in communication technologies. The cell phone is one of the rapidly growing communication tools in the world. The number of mobile phone users in Zambia currently stands at 10.2million (Zambia Communications Authority, 2012). Statistics show that 44% of teenagers aged between 15-19 years own a mobile phone while 85% of those aged between 12-19 years are cell phone users. These statistics provide an important background for undertaking a research on teenagers and cell phone. This study looks into the influence of cell phone usage among teenagers on social interactions and socialization in the community. There have been a number of suggested theories and studies that have been contributed to the rising popularity and commonality of cell phones as to how they are affecting the way individuals are interacting in society. The advent of the mobile phone has denied people the opportunity to interact more socially including face to face interactions. People are spending more time on their phones communicating to those within their social circles and ignoring proximate others and adjacent surroundings. A disconnect however exists between the level of social investment in social interactions and cell phone usage occasioning to loss of social capital. This therefore led to the need of undertaking a study to establish and determine how the cell phone usage among teenagers has affected social interactions in communities with a view of coming up with recommendations on how to overcome them. Specifically, the study establishes how independent variables like socialization, communication and entertainment through the phone, has an influence on the social interactions in communities, which is the dependent variable in Kasama, Zambia. Descriptive survey design will be used and a sample of 3 compounds and 4 public secondary schools in Kasama will be selected through stratified sampling and simple random sampling methods. Teenagers including students, teachers, parents and community members of the sampled schools and compounds formed the study respondents. Questionnaires with both will be closed and open-ended questions will be used to collect data as well as observation and interview methods. The findings from this study established that most of the cell phone usage among teenagers has a negative influence on social interactions within the community. The target population will be 320 which will consist of a sample of 50 recipients: 12 Ict teachers, 3 school administrators and 12 parents of the learners and 30 learners from the four selected public day secondary learning institutions in Kasama district: Peas Kampinda, Henry Kapata, Misamfu and Kateshi. Therefore, the research study will adopt simple random Sampling and purposive sampling techniques to sample its respondents. The research study by classification consists of five chapters. Chapter one provides the introduction of the research problem, background of the problem, objective of the study, research questions and the significance of the study. Chapter two provides literature review. Chapter three gives research methodology and chapter four offers the research finding. Chapter five provide the conclusion and recommendations.
