March 20, 2006
Why mobiles are shrines to self-image
According to a new study, the new social outcasts are teenagers and young adults without mobile phones. The Sydney Morning Herald reports.
"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.
Katz says. "To not have a phone feels like social banishment. It really is an issue of being excluded, of being an outsider."
... Young people consider a mobile phone the most important item of all - it is more important than access to the internet or even television, Marilyn Campbell, from the Queensland University of Technology, says.
"Getting calls and text messages are status symbols," she says. "Ownership of a mobile phone indicates you are socially connected, independent from your family and in demand."
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