October 24, 2003
Distance within families due to cell phones [PART 2]
Following Taro Matsumura's previous entry several days ago in Keitai Log reported in Textually, commenting on a special report which was published in NHK, on how Japanese parents struggle with wild children, Matsumura continues in a second entry by looking at the changes occuring in family communications due to the proliferation of cell phones.
What Matsumura explains is so interesting. That basically, children are using cell phones to communicate with their parents and this brings on a new closeness. Japan is way ahead of us, we don't use our cell phones in Europe for e-mailing, mostly texting, but I find the same close relationship developping with my own 14-year old son. He'll send me an SMS from school announcing a good or bad grade, or I will send him one when out to dinner, asking whether the Geneva girl we know has been voted in or out of Star Academy (the French equivalent of American Idol), because I know he's watching television.
Excerpts from Keitai Log
"In the case of a family I know, for instance, ever since the mother and daughter started e-mailing each other via cell phones, they also started to talk more frankly. They also began to use cell phones to make appointments for eating out together or for seeing each other at the local station to go home together. They say the conversation at home has increased, too.
[...] In other words, children with cell phones do not seem to necessarily distance themselves from their parents. Parents just need to use the communication tool their children use. Then, it seems possible for parents to create the same opportunity to communicate with children they used to have".
While the development of cordless phones and cell phones was once believed to distance family members (because those new phones would not allow family members to participate in the conversation), nowadays a new type of intimate conversation has emerged, thanks to the cell phone's penetration to each family member, which leads to better communication within a family.
While some parents have a tough time navigating their cell phone for writing e-mails to their children, the children who grew up with cell phone will become parents themselves before long. Then, the cell phone will be used within families more commonly and frequently. More than anything else, cell phones might be used for parenting."
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