Hey, Mom and Dad. I want an iPhone.

Seriously, I’m like the only kid at school who doesn’t have one. We did a survey and everything, and we found out 58 percent  of students own some sort of smartphone. My current piece-of-junk-sliding-keyboard-red-Samsung-brick-of-a-phone is so far from a smartphone, it has an IQ of four. It’s embarrassing when I’m caught texting in class; my teachers laugh at me.

If I had an iPhone, I would have full access to the app store, where I could buy games like Angry Birds and Temple Run. Not to mention, iPhones are super cheap, costing anywhere between $100 and $400. These low prices are thanks to manufacturing chains like Foxconn, a Taiwanese electronics manufacturer that employs 1.2 million employees in China.

I know, there are some stereotypes about Chinese labor companies, but let me tell you, these workers are living the life. They live in these hi-tech factories, sleeping in dormitories fitting roughly 10 people in a room. Most of the time it’s not even that awkward since they don’t know each other’s names.

According to research by the China Labor Watch, a nonprofit organization dedicated to conducting assessments of factories in China, these workers assemble tiny parts in iPhones and other Apple products about 5,200 times a day. It might sound like tedious work, but their workdays only last 35 hours, so it’s cool…right? Okay, so maybe that’s a long time to work, but they kind of have to, since they only get paid 31 cents an hour.

If you’ve heard of Foxconn before, they had an explosion at one of their iPad plants last year. No big deal, only four people died. Well, 18 others were injured, but that means only 22 people were affected. According to CNN, officials thought the explosion was a result of some “combustible dust” buildup in the polishing workshop, but that kind of thing could happen to anybody. However, a civil rights group called Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior did a report just before the explosion and found workers at the plant did not have proper training to use some of the chemicals in the factory.

So maybe there have been some deaths (a few from the explosion, but most from suicides due to the less than awesome working conditions at Foxconn), but things are improving. The company set up a suicide hotline, and even installed nets outside the building to catch jumpers. So now, these people can continue living and working in the personal heavens that are Foxconn factories.

On second thought, an iPhone doesn’t sound so great anymore. Nevermind, I’ll keep my current piece-of-junk-sliding-keyboard-red-Samsung-brick-of-a-phone. There are some things more important than Temple Run.