And why do we think that they shouldn’t?
Have you ever seen a homeless person on the street, at a shelter, or in the library tapping away on a smartphone?
Did it make you do a double take?
For a lot of people, it might. There’s often an attitude of, “If this person can’t afford a home, what are they doing with a cell phone?”
But when you stop and examine it, that attitude doesn’t really make sense, does it?
For one thing, phones are a lot cheaper than housing. There are also many organizations who provide free phones and service to people who are homeless.
You may be thinking people who can’t afford the basics shouldn’t have access to luxuries like cell phones. But, in this day and age, cell phones are no longer a luxury. They’re a necessity. How else will you keep in touch with your network, call for help if needed, or hear back about a job interview?
But let’s go deeper.
Let’s talk about the fundamental reason people of all economic strata cling to their cell phones, tablets, and laptops.
Unsurprisingly, it’s all about connection
Cell Phones Are a Lifeline
Unfortunately, connection is rare commodity for people who are homeless. This is true even when it comes to things as simple as a passing conversation or eye contact.
Where can anyone reach out to a larger community of people and connect with others like themselves? Why, the internet, of course!
Having a phone connected to the internet offers people the ability to connect with people from all over the world. More importantly, they can foster meaningful relationships – something that homeless people are disproportionately likely to be missing out on offline.
Cell Phones Are a Tool
In addition to connecting with likeminded people, cell phones can connect one with people from all walks of life. A well-worded tweet can shatter stereotypes and teach people things they never knew about the lives of homeless people.
The internet can also be used as a tool to effect change, either in your own community or on a wider scale. Through it, you can alert neighbors and politicians of your situation, what’s needed to change it, and put pressure on them to follow through.
Imagine if there was a chance that sending the right message to the right person at the right time could mean the difference between spending the rest of your life on the streets and receiving housing through a new program.
I would certainly be tweeting non-stop.
Cell Phones Are Ubiquitous
Think of all the things your average smartphone can do. Then think of all the things these devices have replaced. And it seems everyone has a cell phone in their pockets at all times.
Phone booths, offline job applications, alarm clocks, even paper maps are getting kind of hard to come by. Why? Because our cell phones can do the job of all those things and more.
But since everyone is expected to have a cell phone, the lack of these lower-tech items can cause a major inconvenience.
For example, what are you supposed to do if you need to go to a meeting at an office building with an address you’d never heard of?
Good luck finding an up-to-date paper map. You’d need to go to the nearest library, wait for a computer to become available, look up the address, and write down the directions before your computer time runs out.
Hope you have plenty of time before your meeting starts!
Cell Phones Are an Escape
Living life without a permanent home to go back to every night is hard. It’s hard in ways that those of us who have always been housed can’t fully understand.
If you think you deserve to put your feet up and scroll through some fresh memes at the end of a difficult day at work, think how much more a person experiencing homelessness would love to do the same.
When you’re homeless, there are very few times during the day when you’re allowed to forget that fact. From the way other people treat you to the places you have to go and hoops you have to jump through just to get by, there isn’t a lot of time for just being.
Cell phones, through their access to all the wonderful, entertaining, and time-killing things the internet has available, offer a way to forget your circumstances for a while and become engrossed in another world.
It’s a way to escape reality for a time without drugs or alcohol.
And that’s something all of us need to do from time to time, even when we’re not curling up in a dark alley or a patched-up tent to try and get some rest.
Poor People Deserve Happiness, Too
If all this cell phone business is still rubbing you the wrong way, you may believe people who can’t afford basic needs also don’t deserve to have fun.
If that’s the case, you’re wrong.
Fun, happiness, and a mental escape are things we all need from time to time. This is even more true for those with more difficult lives. They are natural parts of the human experience. And there’s no amount of money that makes you deserve them, no lack of it that can make you undeserving.
As a culture, using technology is one of the main ways we unwind, relax, and have fun. That’s whenever we’re not using our cell phone as a tool to get jobs done or facilitate the everyday smooth functioning of our lives. Technology is a part of life for everyone, and everyone should be able to access it.
If the idea of poor people being happy without “earning” it gets your blood boiling, you should probably look at some cute animal gifs on your phone.
Everyone deserves that much.
