Cell Phone Are the New Cigarette When you get in your car, you reach for it. When you are at work, you take a break to have a moment alone with it. When you get in to a lift, you play with it. Cigarette? Cup of coffee? No, it's the third most addictive thing in modern life, the cell phone. Experts say that it is becoming more difficult for many people to curb their longing to hug it more tightly than most of their personal relationships.  With its shiny surface and its smooth and satisfying touch, the cell phone connects us to the world even as it disconnects us from people three feet away. In just the past couple of years, the cell phone has challenged people in ways its inventors in the late 1940s never imagined. The costs are becoming even more obvious, and I don't mean just the monthly bill. Dr. Chris Knippers, working at the Betty Ford Center in Southern California, reports that the overuse of cell phones has become a social problem not much different from other harmful addictions: a problem that limits one-on-one personal contact, and an escape from reality.  Sounds extreme, but we've all witnessed the evidence: the person at restaurant who talks on the phone through an entire meal, ignoring his kids around the table; the women who talks on the phone in the car, ignoring her husband; the teen who texts messages all the way home from school, avoiding contact with kids all around him. Is it just rude, or is it a kind of unhealthiness? And pardon me, but how is this improving the quality of life? Jim Williams, an industrial sociologist based in Massachusetts, notes that cell-phone addiction is part of a set of symptoms in a widening gulf of personal separation. He points to a study by Duke University researchers that found one-quarter of Americans say they have no one to discuss their most important personal business with,Williams says studies show that we don't have as many friends as our parents."Just as more information has led to less wisdom,more acquaintances via the Internet and cell phones have produced fewer friends."he says. The example of a woman talking on the phone in the car supports the idea that  _
women use cell phones more often than men talking on the phone while driving is dangerous cell phones make one-on-one personal contact easy cell phones do not necessarily bring people together