How Attached Are We to Cell Phones?

First off, my cell phone has been broken for about a week and a half now, and reading these articles makes me feel a little bit unusual, and almost like an outsider. As does walking around Saint Mary's campus and seeing everyone else talking on their phones, while I am not. There are perks, however, to not being attached to my mobile. In Rachel Campbell’s article, “Teenage Girls and Cellular Phones: Discourse of Independence, Safety, and ‘Rebellion’,” parents' have a 'digital leash' on their teenagers. I agree that in this article and with Donna in sense that my mom did the same thing to me in high school. In fact, my mom has gotten better, but now they have turned into a an hour long"Hi, how are you?" conversations instead. Don't get me wrong, I love my family and friends very much, but I found that when my cell phone was broken I had so much more free time, and that I get my homework done faster. I also discovered that as a whole I felt more relaxed, since there were no unexpected phone calls anymore, and all of my interactions with everyone felt so much more sincere.
It was in this sense that I discovered that everyone I knew had a "digital leash" on me, and how much I was attached to my phone. Everyone I know keeps asking me how I could "survive" my life without my cell phone. Are we really that attached to cell phones now? Apparently we are. When it comes to cell phones 63 percent of users say they have a very personal connection to their mobiles according to a Harris Interactive poll released by Ingenio. http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2007/06/29/cell-phone-users-attached-to-phones This makes sense given the fact that most of the people that we talk to on our mobile phones are our close confidants. I myself went through a peroid of withdrawal, feeling weird without someone to chat with at any given moment. I overcame this within a day or so, and actually started to enjoy my freedom, and as someone in class mentioned, I was relieved. I did not have to worry about calling anyone back and I didn't stress out that I was missing someone's call. I now have a cell phone again, and oddly enough, I do not miss it as much as I thought I would. In fact, I find it somewhat a nuisance.
There are many controversial articles online about the usage of cell phones and whether or not it is related to cancer. In Cell Phones and Cancer: No Clear Connection, http://www.fda.gov/fdac/features/2000/600_phone.html , John E. Moulder, Ph.D., a cancer researcher and professor of radiation oncology at the Medical College of Wisconsin, says that from the physics standpoint, biological effects from mobile phones are "somewhere between impossible and implausible." To the majority of people, this is a comforting statement, however, more studies are being done as it has potential cause for concern if otherwise proven differently.
Another interesting topic is the issue whether Men or Women talk more, and who talks more on their cell phone. According to this article, Men just barely talk more than women do on their cell phones, http://www.cellular-news.com/story/24322.php, and another article http://www.mobiledia.com/news/30468.html?rfp=dta revealed that men talk 35% more than women on their cell phone. How's that for busting myths? Both studies concluded that both men and women are increasingly using cell phones more because of convience. Any thoughts on this gender related issue and the stereotype of women talking more?