America Untethered

American Demographics, March 1, 2003

Indeed, a 2001 study by Rich Ling, a researcher at Norwegian telecom firm Telenor, and by Leslie Haddon, a research associate in the media and communications department at the London School of Economics, found "micro-coordination" to be the backbone of mobile phones. Unlike the traditional telephone, the mobile phone has none of the strictures of location and therefore "softens" time, enabling people to merely suggest a time and place to meet, and to pin down a location as they approach the meeting time. Perhaps not surprisingly, as users of mobile phones leave more planning to the last minute, they also tend to overshoot the final arrival time as well.

Palen and Blinkoff both found that greater accessibility has brought work even deeper into the home - where it's often least wanted. For many recent wireless subscribers, that is often the greatest concern, though workers are growing increasingly used to the change. Blinkoff says that at least some of the concern is overblown.

"As the new mobile technology pervades life, it's more difficult to separate work from personal life," Blinkoff says. "The reality is that work and home have been overlapping faster anyway, but what the mobile phone does is highlight the effect."

* Public and Private Lives

What the mobile phone has really demarcated is the shifting boundary between public and private lives. Discussing private matters in public has become a habit in Europe and the U.S. For years, Americans have complained about cell phone users who gab in public. But Palen found that as people acquired cell phones, their resistance to chatting in public ebbed and they often found themselves guilty of the same act. Because of their portability, phones now appear in places they never did before. But because cell phones are relatively new, social norms about their proper use, especially in public, are just being formed. Palen, for example, found most of her newly unwired subjects gradually accepted using their phones in public.

"[Mobile phones] are a cultural menace. People are talking all the time, and they obviously aren't saying anything," one respondent told Palen. Yet just weeks after decrying the practice, the same respondent ventured outside with his phone and saw the value of talking on the go. He soon admitted to being less judgmental about how important people's public calls were.

* Kids Speak

By far the clearest effects of wireless are being seen in kids, a naturally media-savvy group whose lives are being shaped by this technology. Kids are the fastest-growing mobile demographic, with half of all teenagers between 12 and 17 carrying cell phones in 2002, according to a study by Frank N. Magid Associates. By the end of 2002, 29 million kids were expected to be toting cell phones. Much of that growth is being driven by parents who are giving their kids phones so they can keep tabs on them. Yet three studies found kids gaining more independence and developing new ways of connecting once they became wireless. "For parents, [cell phones are] a matter of security," says Jay Melican, senior research associate at the Illinois Institute of Technology's Institute of Design. "For kids, however, it's a matter of coming of age."