Do Young People Need Watches?

My brother told me that watches are not needed nowadays, especially by young people, because you can easily tell the time on your mobile phone. Why then do I wear a wristwatch? It could be because of habit. I am used to glancing at my wrists to tell the time and getting used to looking at my mobile might take a while.

Another reason is because I don't carry my phone around with me everywhere. In fact, I don't think many people do. When I'm walking outside I have my phone in my pocket all the time. But when I arrive to work I take the mobile phone out and put it on the desk. Many of my co-workers seem to do the same. When I come home I take the phone out from my pocket and leave it on my desk. I don't carry it around everywhere I go. When the phone goes off I can hear it from the other side of the house and run. I don't take the mobile phone into the shower with me otherwise I'd ruin it. When I sleep I don't sleep with my mobile phone on me. I leave it on the floor of my bed. I mainly keep the phone away from me during these times for comfort (having a phone in your pocket all the time really is uncomfortable) and because of fear of cancer (the evidence is inconclusive, but I still worry). During all these times when my phone is away from my body I may need to know the time and because the mobile phone isn't always on me this can be a problem. My watch, however, is always on me. I wear it everywhere all the time. Unlike the phone it is not bulky or uncomfortable. It is lightweight, it doesn't need recharging all the time, and it's comfortable. I often forget it's even on me. When I'm in the shower I can check the time out (it is water resistant). When I'm in bed in the dark I can easily check the time by illuminating the dial. Not all watches have this illumination function but mine does. You can get one for pretty cheap.

Another reason why I have a watch is not really because I need the time but because I need a stopwatch. When I am on the treadmill doing exercise I time myself to make sure I do enough. On an average day I do about 30 minutes of exercise on the treadmill. There is a stopwatch on my phone, but I remember one time when my watch was dead and I had to use the phone's stopwatch. It wasn't good. What I did was I started the stopwatch and then put the phone in my pocket and proceeded to run. As I ran faster and faster, my legs moved more and more vigorously, and this caused the mobile phone in my pocket to bounce up and down all over the place. Not good. The watch, however, is different. It doesn't interfere with my running. It is easy to quickly glance at the watch while running.

Ultimately the problem with the phone as a timekeeper is that the phone, while being a timekeeper, is trying to do many other things as well. It is a phone, obviously. But some phones are also cameras. Just because you can put a camera in a phone it doesn't mean cameras will become extinct. This is because the phone's main purpose is to be a phone, for you to talk to others. Once you start pumping other features into it then one gets in the way of the other. A watch is good as a timepiece because it does precisely that and it does it well. But a mobile phone isn't as good because it is a phone. Because it is a phone it requires constant recharging, it is bulkier, there are radiation fears, and so on. The same goes with the camera. The camera phone does not offer the same level of power as the stand-alone camera. There is usually a tradeoff in image resolution.