Mobile phones are the portals to friendships and social networks
Posted by andy, March 20th, 2006
Anastasia Goodstein put together an outstanding panel at SXSW Interactive. She brought two very successful teenage bloggers and had them describe their blogs and how technology fit into their lives. One of the most interesting revelations is that teenagers are so busy that they rarely have time to hang out with friends in person after school. Teens consider their mobile phone as more important than access to the Internet or television. As James Katz, Director of the Center for Communication Studies at Rutgers describes it:
THEY are the new social outcasts: teenagers and young adults without mobile phones.
Disconnected from their peers, they risk nothing less than social desolation. The lot of the mobile phoneless is to languish waiting, condemned to a merry-go-round of missed meetings, the mobile tribes having long changed plans and moved on.
This is not the melodramatic plea of an adolescent, bent on persuading sceptical parents. Nor a thinly disguised marketing pitch. It’s the conclusion of an increasing number of studies by academics and psychologists around the world.
It is no longer a matter of what you have to say, just so long as you are constantly talking or texting, and being seen to do so, says James Katz, director of the Centre for Mobile Communication Studies at the Rutgers University in the US.
Mobile phones are the portals to friendships and social networks, the ultimate measure of social status and portable shrines to self-image, he says. And if no one’s calling, there’s little shame in programming your phone to ring you, checking for non-existent text messages or talking up a storm with an imaginary friend.
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