Mobile phone body language

Joi Ito via Gizmodo describes a new report written for Motorola by social theorist Sadie Plant - well known for her study on the "thumb generation", which asserted that children who grow up using mobile phones and gaming consoles are changing the shape and dexterity of their fingers and thumbs".

This new report is entitled "The Effects of Mobile Telephones on Social and Individual Life" and describes the different stances people adopt when they're speaking on their phones. How they hold their cell phones, with a firm grip or a light touch. Their different bodily postures; a speakeasy pose which exudes confidence whereas a spacemaker pose is more introverted, closing around oneself to seek privacy when making a call.

There are also variations in the ways in which people's eyes respond to a mobile call. Some mobile users adopt the scan, "in which the eyes tend to be lively, darting around, perhaps making fleeting contact with people in the vicinity. Others adopt the gaze, "the eyes tend to focus on a single point, or else to gaze into the distance".

Gizmodo picked up on research done in London found that if a man and a woman were sitting together in a public place like a restaurant or bar, 32 percent of men were likely to have their phone on display (like by placing it on a table) while only ten percent of women did so, but when two women are sitting together, 38 percent of the time both women would have their cellphones out.

emily | 4:59 PM | SMS Studies & Research |
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