Portable Social Groups (original) (raw)

Mobile identity: youth, identity, and mobile communication media

… T. MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and …, 2007

Parents usually don't know how important a tool the mobile has become in young people's lives. They only think about the communicative function, not the social meaning. 1 (sixteen-year-old girl) brought to you by CORE View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk provided by IssueLab 144 Youth, Identity, and Digital Media facilitates this mobility of identity, as it is ubiquitous in youth cultural contexts as a medium for constant updating, coordination, information access, and documentation. At the same time, the mobile is an important medium for social networking, the enhancing of groups and group identity, and for the exchange between friends which is needed in the reflexive process of identity construction. The mobile has become the ideal tool to deal with the pace of information exchange, the management of countless loose, close or intimate relations, the coordination of ever-changing daily activities, 4 and the insecurity of everyday life. Hence the mobile becomes a learning tool for dealing with living conditions in modern society for young people, while at the same time it adds to the conditions they are trying to deal with. This chapter addresses four broad themes. The first theme is availability-the fact that the mobile is always on, which makes the users always available with no or few communicationand information-free moments. The second theme is the experience of presence during mobile communication, that is, the experience of social presence in public space being invaded by ongoing mobile communication. The third theme is the importance of the mobile as a personal log for activities, networks, and the documentation of experiences, a role that has implications both for relations between the individual and the group and for emotional experience. These discussions lead to analysis of the mobile as a tool for learning social norms. Before I proceed with the discussion of these themes, however, I offer a short discussion of the concept of mobile media and a broader account of the role of the mobile phone in the context of contemporary youth culture. The main empirical basis for my analysis is quantitative and qualitative findings from a series of studies of fifteen-to twenty-four-year-old Danes and their mobile phone use. 5 These studies, which were conducted in 2004 and 2006, included questionnaire surveys, individual interviews, observations, and (in one case) high school essays on "My Mobile and Me." As even younger groups of children have their own mobiles, the fifteen-to twenty-four-yearolds cannot necessarily be seen as representative of young Danish mobile phone users in general. However, other studies and surveys 6 indicate that the general findings from these studies also reflect some of the main uses and meanings of younger children's mobile phone use, as well as experiences in other national and cultural settings. The Mobile Phone and Mobility The most obvious characteristic of the mobile phone is precisely that it is mobile, that it can be transported. Compared to the first transportable phones, which were huge machines, then very heavy telephones, both built into cars, and then heavy but portable telephones, 7 mobile phones today are so small, flat and light that they can fit into a pocket and effectively disappear in the hand and at the ear. Especially when connected with a light headset, the mobile seems to be part of the user's body-which may remind the reader of McLuhan's discussions of media as the "extensions of man," but which also points to the fact that it is so easy to take the mobile everywhere and to have it near and ready to hand that the user hardly notices it, until it isn't there, when it doesn't alert the user with a new message or call. But what are the specific potentials of mobiles? How are they different from landline phones? And how does the use of mobiles differ from PCs and traditional Internet? The German sociologist Hans Geser states that "Seen in this very broad evolutionary perspective, the significance of the mobile phone lies in empowering people to engage in communication, which is at the same time free from the constraints of physical proximity and spatial immobility." 8 This general and yet simple notion is expanded by Rich Ling, who describes

A Social Context for Adolescent use of Mobile Phones

During early adolescence (e.g. aged between 13 and 15 years) communication and connectedness with peers is an essential part of their self-identity; mobiles phones are a conduit that maintains both communication and connectedness among adolescents whereby social interactions and connectedness are not limited by place, context or time. To study mobile phone usage among adolescents, Grade 9 (n= 218) middle-school students in Queensland, Australia were surveyed using a self-developed questionnaire. The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between mobile phone use and developmental frameworks. The study results suggest that adolescents use their mobile phones as a way of expressing their sense of self and as a means of communicating quickly between peers.

Appropriation of mobile telephones by 16 to 22 year olds: a field study

2002

Abstract What do young people want from mobile technologies? How do they use mobile technologies in their everyday lives? This research uses multiple research methods to build understanding of 16 to 22 year olds' perceptions and use of mobile telephones. We propose a model of technology appropriation that represents the way that these young people evaluate and integrate mobile telephones into their lives.

The Structural Transformation of Mobile Communication: Implications for Self and Society

Mobile communication is a relatively new form of interaction. It has only been commonly available in developed countries for the past two decades and in developing countries for less than that. Perhaps because the rise of mobile communication is so recent, the juxtaposition of its use against traditional social practice illuminates issues in a new way. To be sure, mobile communication's explosive growth as an everyday life resource has given us a lens through which we can study both sociological and psychological developments. Despite being a relatively new addition to the media landscape, the assuredness with which we appropriate our mobile devices speaks to well routinized use. When we reach for our phone to fill in what Fortunati (2002, p. 518) calls the "smallest folds" of life, we manipulate them with ease. In addition, at the social level, we increasingly understand that it is expected of us to have a mobile phone. Our friends and family expect us to be available to them, to be socially "on call." Through mobile communication, we become more attached to one another, not to mention to the technology itself. Without the device, it is not uncommon for a user to feel utterly disconnected and psychologically distressed .

Social Pathology of Mobile Phones: Mobile Phones and Social Deviations

2014

In specialist resources of the sociology of deviations, the effect of technology in general and information and communication technologies in particular on the quality and quantity of social deviations are discussed. Every emerging technology has some effects on the nature of social behaviors. There is usually a sort of gap or delay between the advent of technology and social behavior adjustment. Social response or reflection to technology can have both functional dimensions and non-functional dimensions. In fact, a technology may have been engendered with other objectives in mind. However, during times, it will be assigned by other functions which necessarily may not be adjusted with the social norms of a society, but it may be assigned by some pathological nature. In other words, a technological innovation, however it may result in increasing the level of welfare and facilitating the social life and supplying or satisfying some needs, in the same proportion, it may pave the path f...

A socio-cognitive inquiry of excessive mobile phone use

Asian Journal of Psychiatry, 2014

Mobile phones have become one of the most influential technologies in people's life and for the past several years, have played an influential role in everyday communication (Park, 2005). Currently, mobile phones are known as an important part of adolescents' life (Walsh and White, 2006) and have rapidly become popular among the younger generations (Hakoama and Hakoyama, 2011). Nowadays, mobile phone not only is known as a communication tool (Park, 2005; Hakoama and Hakoyama, 2011) but also has found various functions in the psychological and social aspects (Babran and Akhavan Tabatabaei, 2011). In addition, mobile phone use has succeeded to change the social networks and may alter methods of human's interaction (Walsh and White, 2006). According to the 2010 World Health Organization report, there were approximately 5 billion mobile phone users in world (Riemer, 2011). The increasing rate of the users has been instrumental in encouraging researchers to investigate the social (Hakoama and

'I am happiest by having the best': The adoption and rejection of mobile telephony

R&D Report, 1999

In this paper, four ownership/shopping categories of mobile telephones are used to provide insight into the dynamics of ownership, procurement, use and attitudes towards the device. Data from 1001 telephone interviews with "teen" parents in addition to qualitative interviews with 12 families in the Oslo area form the basis for the analysis. The findings here show that fathers own and mothers loan mobile telephones, and that economic aspects are in the background when considering access to mobile telephones. In addition, those who do not own a mobile telephone are critical of its use as in areas such as coordination between marriage partners and the use of the device by youth. These findings are considered in relation to Silverstone's analysis of consumption in contemporary society. 1 The proper citation for this paper is: