Coming of Age

American Demographics, Nov 1, 2004 by Noah Rubin Brier

"For people 5 years old and under, this whole wireless thing will be meaningless because they'll just grow up with them," Lewis says. "It will just be a phone, it won't be a mobile phone or a cell phone." With that said, what happens when it's time for these young people to move into their own house or apartment and they need to make the decision of whether or not they need a land line? Overall, 6 percent of Americans currently use their cell phone as their only phone line reports the Yankee Group. That number skews heavily toward young adults, with 14 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds having already cut the cord.

"The decision to cut the cord is equally split between cost saving and lifestyle issues: 35 percent said cost while 32 percent said they don't need one because they're hardly ever at home," says Barrabee. What's more, an additional 18 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds expect to cut the cord in the next five years. One of the issues associated with this trend is how it will affect relationships among families.

Historically, the home telephone has been something that signifies a relationship; it is a number shared among a group of people. "The land line for voice purposes is seen as the communal phone. A grandparent calls the house and doesn't care who in the family they get," says Mark Page, vice president of management consulting firm A.T. Kearney, which along with Cambridge University released the Mobinet Index 2004, which examines mobile technology trends around the world. "No one has come up with a communal mobile phone yet." So, young people today are able to create their own identity completely outside the control of their families.

"One of the core teen experiences is the process of finding your own identity and separating from parents and learning about your individuality. One of the things that the cell phone can do in such an amazing way is promote that spirit of independence and individuality. It's really not monitored at all by parents," says McKinney. "Parents got smart and moved PCs out of the bedroom and into the kitchen to keep kids off the Internet in dangerous ways and to keep them from IMing all night long. Now, kids have their cell phones and they're doing the same things on them."

Comparing computer instant messaging (IM) and text messaging, Americans have adopted IM to a larger extent than SMS messaging up to this point. In a recent America Online survey, 90 percent of 13- to 21-year-olds said they used IM. In many ways, the two communication mediums vie with each other for young people's fingers. "What you're seeing in the U.S. is that IM is occupying the same social space that text messaging on mobile does in a Japanese and European context. The way American kids use IM is quite similar," explains Mizuko Ito, an anthropologist at the University of Southern California and Keio University in Japan who has done extensive research on the effect of mobile technology on culture. In those other parts of the world, young people with their own computers and Internet access are far less prevalent. Ito is quick to draw parallels between those parts of the world and lower-class America, where computers with Internet access are not as common. Among "a huge portion of the population, the mobile phone is going to be a more convenient and lower cost way of accessing the Internet," Ito says.