It's a security thing : mobile phones and moral regulation

It has become incresingly common to claim that we live within a "culture of fear" in which anxieties around social cohesion, technological change and the desire for a meaningful existance dominate our everyday lives (Furedi 1997). Such anxieties often converge in larger moments of moral panic (Poynting et al. 2004, p.221). As many commentors have noted - including Cohen (2002) - this has often meant that the term "moral panic" is overused, so that every issue of public concern gets refashioned by commentators as a "panic". One of the problems of this overuse is that "moral panic" can be easily misread as media hysteria over unfounded concerns.