Information Society 1 Project

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The Impact of New ICTs on Everyday LifeCS4003 Information Society 1Karen Kiely 0643564Sharon Brosnan 0651869


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CONTENTS

Introduction How we split the workload

Annotated Web Bibliography Description of field study

Discussion of findings Critical reflection

Conclusions Reference List


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INTRODUCTION

The impact of new ICTs on everyday life.

In todays world we are surrounded by technologies. The technology of the mobile phone

has been developing for a number of years and is expanding throughout the world at a breath-taking speed. (Geser, 2004) It has come to the point where mobile phones are maturing as atechnology , becoming almost ubiquitous. Its hard to imagine a time when the majority of the

population didnt own a mobile phone. The mobile phone has, without a doubt, brought aboutchanges to our everyday lives. It is no longer unusual to see people using mobile phones in a varietyof contexts (Palen, Salzman, Youngs, 2000). It is even believed that the mobile phone would have

been accepted in all human societies in the past (Geser, 2004). The mobile phone has had a strongimpact on social life and people are willing to spend a lot of time and money on this form of communication, even in comparison with PCs and the internet.

With the full amount of phones exceeding the total number of TVs in 2001 (Geser, 2004),we can see that they are not seen as just communication devices but also as forms of entertainmentwith MP3 players, cameras, games and internet. It has become a central part of social life, with

people of all ages and ethnicities using them as time managers as well.Originally the mobile phone would have been used for broadcasting, then bilateral

communication and now with WAP and 3G technologies it is back to a form of broadcasting. Theyare used for a limitless amount of functions, as both a phone and multimedia device, they cantransport voice, text messages, pictures, musical sound, software programs and anything elsecoded in digital format. (Geser, 2004).

A major service from the mobile phone is SMS. Over the years people have become awareof the benefits of it. It is cheap and can be done in a private way; instead of having a conversationthat people in a social setting can overhear, texts can be done quite discretely. It also allows theoption of postponing the responding to a text if necessary. People of all backgrounds, of all ages,worldwide are using this technology.

The mobile phones of today are cheap, small, energy efficient and easy to use. It has beenfound that people use their mobile phones to strengthen their image and existing relationships. Theusers can control their social network by only letting certain people have their phone number. It alsolets the user show that he/she has strong social contacts by being busy with the phone, textingsomeone or receiving/making a phone call. Mobile phones are popular as they allow users to becontactable but are also so popular as users can control their accessibility, they can decide whether or not their phone is on, if the ring tone is on or off, or can send the busy tone to callers if they so

please.In todays world however the mobile phone is not always accepted. They can be seen as a

nuisance to society as well as a benefit, they can be loud and disruptive, loud ring tones and peoplehaving a conversation in public. The mobile phone is in fact blurring the social and working boundaries, depending on the user this can be annoying or of great advantage. Here, we are aimingto research into the usage of the mobile phone by three different sub-cultures. We hope to analyseour findings and display the enormous social impact the mobile phone has on our respondents.


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HOW WE SPLIT THE WORKLOAD

Firstly, we held a brainstorm session between use where we thought up aspects of a day inthe life of a mobile phone. We thought of our own use of the device and wrote down everything wethought of. We then used this to think of relevant and significant questions, Together, we plannned

the intervivew, came up with potential respondents, thought about location and time of interviewsetc. We then made it each our business to find willing respondents. Karen took on the task of finding a parent, Sharon the business male in his 20s and the adolescent girl sub-culture.

Carrying out our interviews, we were both present for each. We each asked questions of therespondents and added some on-the-spot questions also. Analysing the data collected, Karen usedthe information found in the parent's interview and Sharon in the young adult male and theadolescent girl.

We split the written workload according to the structure provided. We decided to carry outour own respective web research and annotations for the webliography. We both made sure we bothdid not choose the same papers and aimed to write annotations on at least four each. We also eachmade our own contributions to the final reference list.

Dividing the structure we came to the conclusion that Sharon would write up a relevantintroduction, discussion of findings (business male, adolescent girl) and critical reflection; Karen'how we split the workload', description of field study, discussion of findings (parent) andconclusion.


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ANNOTATED WEB BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ling, R., Yttri, Birgitte (2002) 'Nobody sits at home and waits for the telephone to ring:Micro and hyper-coordination through the use of the mobile telephone'This article seeks to outline the social issues associated with the adoption of the mobile phone. Italso aims to analyse differences in the use of the mobile phone between different age groups. Theauthors attempt to illustrate this by focusing on the concepts of micro- and hyper-coordination. Thearticle documents and evaluates data collected from a series of group interviews with mobile phoneusers of different age brackets. It is concluded that teenagers seem to utilise their mobile phones for expressive purposes as well as instrumental purposes.

Ling, R. (2001) 'Adolescent girls and young adult men: Two sub-cultures of the mobiletelephone'This article aims to investigate into the two sub-cultures of the mobile phone: adolescent girls andyoung adult men and exhibit the role of the devices within these sub-cultures. Ling utilises a seriesof surveys on the use of mobile telephony among teenagers. As well as this, he analyses a surveycarried out by Statistic Norway on media use. Ling comes to a number of conclusions; young adultmales have a high use of voice telephony and low use of texting, compared with adolescent girlswho mainly use their mobile phones to send text messages, among other interesting facts.

Love, S. (2005) 'The Mobile Connection: The Cell Phone's Impact on Society'This article aims to concisely review Rich Ling's book 'The Mobile Connection' and put across the

points Ling makes in the book. It simply explains, chapter by chapter, Ling's research while tryingto distinguish the social impact of mobile phone use in public places and society in general. Heconcludes by praising the book and its contents.

Henderson, S., Taylor, R., Thomson, R. (2002) 'In touch: Young people, communication andtechnologies'This article assesses the place of ICTs in the lives of young people, emphasising on the place of mobile phones in their social and domestic lives. The authors aim to analyse data retrieved from aseries of surveys of young people. They chose 120 subjects from five contrasting locations acrossthe UK so as to get a good mixture of respondents. First, they focus on the respondents usage of technology before moving on to defining their contribution to particular forms of sociality. Theauthors recognise, the the conclusion, that these young peoples' phone culture would change withdifferent needs, among other interesting points of information.

Aoki K., and Downes E. J. (2003) An Analysis of Young Peoples Use Of and Attitudes

Towards Cell Phones.

This paper looks towards the motivations of users in adapting technologies and behaviouralcharacteristics in order to determine the motivations and feelings about usage. The aim of theinvestigation of these is to make clear and understand how the motivation for adoption affects theuse of technology.The investigation took place on college students and their cell phone usage using both qualitativeand quantitative methods, focus groups and surveys respectively. The main topics examined were

phone ownership and usage for feeling safe, time management, financial benefits, and tokeep in touch. It was found that people also use their cell phones for information access, parentalcontacts and privacy management.Investigators used Q factor analysis in order to quantify subjectively. Correlation analysis wasconducted also. This was used to examine the relationship between attitudinal factors and

behavioural variables. Using this method it was found that the longer a person owned a phone, the


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most calls the person received.This paper also found that many of the cell phone users use their cell phone as opposed to their landline, even when available.Overall this paper found that the advances in technologies changes users (particularly youngusers) attitudes toward those technologies, generating new social and cultural phenomena thatchanges the way the technology evolves.

Palen L., Salzman M., & Youngs E. (2000) Going Wireless: Behavior & Practice of NewMobile Phone UsersThe aim of this paper was to understand how and why people use phones in a range of situations,their process of discovery of the phone and the integration of the phone into their daily life. It alsodescribes the differences and similarities between the acceptance of the landline in the early 20 th

century and the mobile phone today. Overall the paper focuses on expanding the works of Ling andYittri and to understand the users changing perceptions of social propriety.In order to do this 19 new mobile phone users were closely tracked for the first six weeks after getting a phone. The subjects were varied in age and occupation. The investigation took place usingqualitative methods. Interviews were conducted over the six weeks with regular voice calls andvoicemail contact with the respondents.At the beginning of the study the new users initially had narrow ideas for how they would make useof their phone, but they applied the phone to included social interactions. By the end of the six-week period it was found that the users had evolved the use of their phone to resonate with their own unique lifestyle.

Geser H. (2004) Towards a Sociological Theory of the Mobile Phone

This paper discusses the differences and similarities of the social integration of the landline andmobile phone. In the past the landline helped in the development of large metropolitan systemswhile the mobile phone is attuned with spatial mobility. The paper examines the stages of themobile phone and the investigators use quantitative perspective to study the amount of mobile

phone usage in peoples lives under the headings Usage Intensity Usage Breadth Usage Variety

It also investigates why SMS is so popular today, taking privacy and cost into account. It alsostudies the impact it has on relationships, how it strengthens them and reinforces social controls.The investigators took a special interest in how users can control their social network by restrictingthe number of people who have their phone number, what phone calls they answer and the concept

of a text language developing in a social circle.

Ito M., Okabe D. (2003) Technosocial Situations: Emergent Structurings of Mobile EmailUseThis paper looks at the integration of the mobile phone into social life, and how the mobile phoneoperates in particular social settings. The mobile phone is criticized for the ways it disrupts theexisting social norms but since the mobile phone has become a big part of the world today there arenew social practices around the mobile phone. This paper studies teenagers in Tokyo, Japan andtheir use of the phone, collecting a detailed account on when and where particular forms of mobilecommunication was conducted. The investigators found that the new technologies of the mobile

phone and the new social practices it brings with it may clear away the old social practices. Theauthors found that mobile phones weaken the old social norms but bring about new ones andheighten accessibility.


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DESCRIPTION OF FIELD STUDYParticipants recruited

To carry out our field study, we first had to think of certain categories of participants to interview.

We came to the conclusion that our study would benefit from having three different respondentsfrom three different categories. First, we chose an adolescent girl, a full-time science student, aged18. From reading Ling's paper (2001) 'Adolescent girls and young adult men: two sub-cultures of the mobile telephone', we felt that analysing the mobile phone usage of this sub-culture would giveus some interesting facts. Because mobile telephony is being adopted on a bigger scale by younger generations, interviewing a teenage girl about her mobile phone habits, we felt, would be useful inanalysing the usage among the the teenage population. As Ling describes, the mobile phone plays amajor part in establishing oneself as independent from one's parents. This lack of parentalsupervision over the communication channel of the mobile phone gives teenage girls an opportunityfor individualization and development of social networks. (Ling, 2004)

Secondly, we opted to interview a young adult male on his use of mobile phones. The youngadult male we chose is in his 20s, working full time. Drawing some information, again, from Ling(2001) we feel we can analyse this sub-culture in depth to gain some insight into the usage of mobile phones among an older generation. The mobile telephone facilitates the coordination in anomadic period of life for young adult men. Their usage is not as focused on emancipation, rather the establishing of careers, finding mates and managing one's social life. We aimed to determine thereasons and details about their social motives behind their use of mobile telephony.

The third sub-culture we decided to study was the parent. We chose a woman in her earlyfifties, with four grown-up children and a full-time job as a special needs assistant. We proceeded tolook into her usage of the mobile phone, as with the two previous interviews. It is obvious that thissub-culture wouldn't have adapted to the technology of the mobile phone as well as the younger generations and we found this to be partly true with our subject. (Love, 2005) states that the parentunderstands the basic communicative function of the mobile phone but doesn't understand itsadvanced manipulation and, by extension, its symbolic position in the child's life (Ling, 2004) Aswell as this, as Ling describes in 'Nobody sits at home', it was found that parents utilise the mobile

phone as a coordination device. Having researched into this aspect of the social use of the mobile phone, we were keen to analyse our respondent's attitude towards the mobile phone andcoordination.

Structure of interview

To aid us in the construction of the interview, we first brainstormed our own personalmobile phone use. We thought in the context of a day in the life of a mobile phone. This helped usgather some of the primary functions of the mobile phone. Considering then, the structure of our interview, we felt that firstly, we would need to gather some general information about our respondents. This would include gender, age, occupation etc. Having received this information, wecould compare and contrast our findings at a later stage with respect to this general information. Westructured the first few questions this way.

Then we proceeded to add questions that related to the general mobile phone usage of therespondent. This included questions such as 'What make is your mobile phone?'; 'How long haveyou had this phone?' etc. Again, we felt it would be interesting to identify correlations between thethree different age brackets regarding mobile phone make etc.

Finally we constructed questions that would highlight the respondents usage of the mobile phone in a social context. We included questions like what group of people would you spend mostof your mobile phone interaction with? suggesting answers such as partner, siblings,


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parents/children, close friends, larger network of friends or work colleagues. We asked our respondents to rate these in order of importance. Taking quotations from a number of papers, we

posed questions to our respondents on the expression of personality through the mobile phone, thecoordination of social activities through the medium of mobile telephony and the usage of themobile phone while within a different social network, among many others.

How the study was conducted/ethical considerations

We decided to conduct our interviews separately for each respondent. We felt that shouldthe interviews have taken place in a group setting, respondents may feel pressure to conform tosocial expectations (Halpin, 2007). Carrying our three separate interviews, we believed therespondents could answer truthfully without fearing their answers would be ridiculed or seen asdifferent.

We conducted the study by first contacting our chosen respondent. This was the teenage girl,whom we will refer to as respondent A. We asked her would she partake in an interview to researchinto the social impact of ICTs on everyday life. We assured her that she would remain anonymousand her opinions would be used for research purposes only. We also let her know that she had theright to withdraw from the study at any time should she so wish. When she agreed, we set a dateand time for the interview to take place. We chose a private setting, namely in her own home. Wechose this setting as we believed it was important to put the respondent at ease and that she didntfeel under any kind of pressure or feel any kind of embarrassment, which may have occurred shouldwe have conducted the interview in a public setting.

The interview with respondent A lasted approximately 45 minutes, during which we posed anumber of questions in a semi-structured manner. We recorded our respondents answers andopinions by means of quick taking down of notes. We elaborated on subject As answers by posingfurther questions to her, relating to her original answers. Following the interview, we thankedrespondent A for her time and let her know that she had permission to see the end result of theresearch project if she would like.

For our second respondent, we made contact with a young adult male we felt would beappropriate for the interview. Unfortunately, the male we had chosen was unable to attend aninterview due to work commitments. We then chose another respondent who, luckily, was availablefor interview. We shall refer to this respondent as respondent B. Again, before the interview, we letrespondent B know of his rights as an interview respondent. The subject had no qualms about thisso we proceeded to arrange a date and time for the interview to occur. We chose the respondentsworkplace as the location for the interview. This was possible as he was self-employed.

The actual interview with respondent B took place in about 50 minutes. We noted thesubjects answers, again, by taking notes. We asked a number of questions, many of which were

exactly the same as those that were asked of subject A. However, some questions differed as wewere aiming to prove different points. We also developed the questions differently because of thesubjects differing social status from subject A.

Lastly, we contacted the third respondent. We contacted a mother by means of mobiletelephone and explained the study and interview. We shall refer to this respondent as respondent C.We let her know of her rights and there were no problems with this. We chose the private setting of the home for respondent C. The interview took place at the weekend, when the subject was notworking and the interviewer was not in college.

The interview with respondent C lasted approximately 45 minutes. Again, as with subjects Aand B, the interviewer noted the answers through the same means as previously. The interviewer expanded on the subjects answers by posing questions relating to quotations taken from papers that

were deemed useful, interesting and thought provoking. Following the interview,the interviewer thanked the respondent for her time.


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DISCUSSION OF FINDINGS

From analysing the data we received from the interview with our three respondents, wecame to a number of conclusions. However, we will discuss the conclusions in more detail in thecritical reflection. We found out that the mobile phone is the one portable object carried at all times,

by all respondents. We will now go into more detail about the findings in each interview.

Respondent A - Full Time College Student

The full-time college student we interviewed is in her late teens and relies heavily on her phone. After purchasing her first phone 4 years ago, she has learned to be dependant on mobile phones.

I'd always take my mobile phone and purse with me everywhere.Respondent A purchased her latest phone one month ago as she lost her previous one. This

has happened a couple of times in the past. She finds her phone most useful for socialising andtime-keeping. Texting is most important for this user to contact her close friends. She sends

between 10-15 texts a day, since purchasing her phone she has sent 165 texts. This is a verystartling fact which we shall delve further into in the critical reflection. Calling is also importantmaking on average 3 phone calls a day, over the past month she has had almost 2 hours worth of

phone calls. Respondent A uses the mobile phone for the camera feature as well as mp3 and games but these were not requirements when purchasing the phone. Communication was most important,and then price was considered.

Respondent A claims to know no one who does not own a mobile phone and so can contactanyone she wishes at anytime. She finds the phone freeing in this way as well. She does not have tosit by the phone or wait for some one to get home to get into contact with them. Knowing the

person she is trying to contact has a mobile phone and can be reached at anytime and can reach her is liberating. It is also comforting in insecure situations and emergencies. She finds it reassuringwhen walking home alone.

I feel much safer when I have my phone with me.When asked how Respondent A would feel if her phone were to be taken away from her for

a period of time she states upsetand not in time for anything as she uses the clock on her phoneinstead of a watch In a month Respondent A spends between 30 and 40 on credit.

Respondent B - Business Male in 20s

After interviewing the working male in his 20s we learned some interesting details. Being a business man he carries two mobile phones with him at all times. These are the only two items hementioned when asked what he carries with him at all times. He, Respondent B, is very dependanton these for communicating with people and for people to get into contact with him.

Two, one for business and one for my own use but the two get mixed up anyway.Respondent B's phones are used in their majority for communication reasons as he does not

have a great knowledge of the other uses of his phone other than a game and the basics of thecamera. When asked to check his call timers and message counter so to tally up how much use hegets out of his phone he did not know how to do so. Respondent B purchased his first phone inDecember 1999 but his reasons for having a phone have changed from a novelty to a necessity.When purchasing a phone today he looks for the usability and communication before all other

criteria. Daily use of the phone is a big part of Respondent B's life. The sending/receiving of texts plays a huge part in his use, on his personal phone he could receive anywhere up to 100 on a weekly


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basis, and on his business phone 60 during the day wouldnt be unusual however the personal and business phone are sometimes used in both contexts. Calls are also used a lot, making 25 phonecalls a day between both phones. Calling people is important to this user, as is receiving texts. Hesnot too worried about sending texts, only when trying to get in contact with big groups of people for the same purpose (group texts on the internet).

I use my web texts most days for keeping people up to date.

Although Respondent B is dependant on his phone he finds it restricting and annoying,especially when people are trying to contact him incessantly. He finds them restricting in thisway.

In general use he finds people texting whilst in conversation with him annoying but is honestin saying that he does it to them as well.

It's annoying, but I'm going to do it straight back to them anyway.He only knows one person who does not have a mobile phone and that is his grandmother.

This shows the broad spectrum that mobile phone users encompass.

Respondent C Full-time working parent

The respondent told us that she has owned her current mobile phone for three years.Moving onto the questions relating to amount of texts sent and received in the same period, wefound some starling information. We then proceeded to ask the respondent about her usage of bothvoice-dialling and texting.

I would definitely ring people more than I text. I've been told I'm a slow texter so it is justeasier for me to ring people.

We then asked the respondent does she know anyone who doesn't own a mobile phone andshe answered that her mother of 83 did not own one. We asked her to explain why.

She doesn't want one. I want her to have one for safety's sake but she just doesn't want one.I suppose it would be hard for her to learn how to use it.

When asked for what purposes does she mostly use her phone, out of the options of:chatting, organising social activities, time-keeping and emergencies, respondent C answeredemergencies.

I would mainly use it for important things, like ringing my younger children to see wherethey are. I wouldn't use it for time-keeping when meeting friends as much. I often text my sister tochat as she lives in Wales but not as much as I would ring other friends.

When asked, on average, how many text messages respondent C would send in a day, sheanswered:

It differs, but on average, I'd say I would only send one a day. Some days I don't text at all.Other days I would send about eight.

I would make about six calls in a day.Asking respondent C how she would use her mobile phone in the car, she admitted to notusing a hands-free set. This is obviously being practised by many other mobile phone users also.When asked how would she feel if a friend began texting someone while in her presence, she toldus she would be a little annoyed. We asked respondent C would she ever leave the house withouther mobile phone and she answered:

Never. I take it everywhere with me just in case.We asked in case of what? and she told us in case she was needed or she needed someone.Quoting from Ling and Yttri's paper, we asked respondent C had she turned off her mobile

phone to participate in this interview and she told us that she had turned it 'on silent'. Quoting againfrom the same paper, we asked respondent C would she agree with the statement that It is not like

'hi, I'm doing fine' etc., it is something that we need.. She agreed with this statement,whichdisplays her view of the mobile phone as a necessity rather than a social tool.


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CRITICAL REFLECTION

Analysing the data we have collected in our interviews, we have a number of points tomake. Firstly, we will deal with the similarities between each respondent's usage of the mobile

phone.Obviously, all three respondents own a mobile phone. They each find it a very important

material possession, as it is the one thing each will not leave the home without. This depicts therespondents' dependency on the mobile phone quite well. A number of years ago, it wouldn't have

been unusual to be without your mobile phone while out. Katz and Aakhus (perpetual, first chapter) put across this point well.

People worldwide are more likely to own a telephone than the more celebrated 'miracle' of communication technology, the TV. (Katz and Aakhus, 2002)

The popular brand name of Nokia is still a major provider of mobile handsets, which can be

drawn from our data. Two out of the three respondents interviewed admitted to owning a Nokiahandset. Meteor is the most popular service provider with, again, two out of three having contractswith the company.

Life without the mobile phone would be unimaginable for many people today, not leastrespondent A, who claims she would be late for everything if she had no mobile phone. The clock on the home screen of the handset is obviously very important to her. However, that is not all that amobile is used for. Without a doubt, calls and texts are the most important activities which can becarried out on a mobile phone. All three respondents named one or both of these most importantwhen using the phone. SMS (short message service) was developed as a side product and wasexpected to remain overshadowed by mobile calls (Kasesniemi and Rautiainen, 2002). However,the use of texting has, without a doubt, surpassed expectations, especially when taking teenagers'use into account.

Text messaging, like TV and the internet, has established itself as part of the adolescents' everyday life asa teenager. It is now common for teens to have more SMS messages than calls on their invoices

(Kasesniemi and Rautiainen, 2002)

An interesting point that we learned from the interviews is that two out of three of thesubject use bill pay method of paying for the usage of their phone. This method can have a bigimpact on the users life depending on how much they spend bi-monthly. Receiving a bill at the endof this time means that they dont have to worry about running out of credit or travelling to the shopif they do, this could happen if they had the Pay As You Go scheme. Only the college student had

this scheme of payment. She can more readily purchase credit when she has the money as opposedto receiving a bill at the end of two months of frequent phone usage and not being able to afford to

pay it.When asked during the interview if their phone was on all three subjects responded with a

yes. The working mother received a text during the interview, read it but refrained from replying.The businessman received a phone call during the interview and answered the call. Here, they wereall still available to a further social network while participating.

Our three subjects use their mobile phone for both business/college contacts and socialcontacts. Only one subject had two separate mobile phones, one for business transactions and theother for socialising. However he finds that the two phones get mixed up anyway, blurring the

boundaries between work and social life. This is well noted by Aoki and Downes in An Analysisof Young Peoples Use Of and Attitudes Toward Cell Phones. One has to wonder if there isanyway to keep the two separate. Subject A uses her mobile phone for both college correspondentsand social correspondents, as does subject C who uses her mobile phone to contact her work


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colleagues as well as her family and friends.When asked about using their phone on a daily basis and what they use it for, the subjects

had different answers. The businessman uses his most for organising social activities around his business life and social life, then socialising privately. He uses his phone least for emergencies. Thisis opposite to the working mother who uses her phone most for emergencies, such as childrenringing for a lift or if they are lost, arranging activities is the second most likely aspect she would

use her phone for. The college students usage of the mobile phone differs from the businessmanand working mother. The subject uses her mobile phone mostly for socialising and time keeping,even noting that if her phone were to be taken off her she would be late for everything. Andalthough having her mobile phone for emergency situations, When walking alone at night, I feelmuch safer [having the phone], it still comes to the bottom of the list in her daily usage.

The applications used most by the subjects are voice calls and texting; the working mother uses voice calls more than texts. The businessman also makes voice calls more than texts but

prefers receiving text messages rather then phone calls which he considers annoying. The collegestudent finds texting most useful, sending up to fifteen texts a day as opposed to just three voicecalls a day.

We had given the subjects six options and to rate them in order of importance. Calls andtexts were most important, with the camera falling in third by all subjects. This is very interesting. Itshows the significance of other applications on a mobile phone. Although the main function of themobile phone to the three respondents is communication, other functions also come into play.Games on phones are used also, for entertainment value but arent seen as important in comparisonwith calls and the camera. These facts will influence the future technology of phones and their dailyusage with cameras and other functions. Overall however, our results coincide with Aoki andDownes in An Analysis of Young Peoples Use Of and Attitudes Toward Cell Phones, when theauthors noted that mobile phones are used largely as communication devices.

When using the phones as noted before SMS or texting is a popular form of communication,although not as popular with the working mother, all three subjects use it quite often. Over onemonth the college student sent 165 texts and the working mother sent 747 and received 2204, the

businessman did not know how to access this information on his phone but stated that personally,he sends 100 texts a week, while through his business phone he sends about 60 a day. He uses thefree web texts supplied by his service provider to send this amount of SMS.

Messaging can be a way of maintaining ongoing background awareness of others,and of keeping multiple channels of communication open.

(Ito M., Okabe D., 2003)

The subjects had views on the benefits of having a mobile phone with them at all times. The businessman found being always contactable very restricting and annoying and yet will not leavehis house without his phones, during the interview he even noted that he wished he didnt have amobile phone. This shows that although he has dislike for his mobile phones and he wont rid of them he has a strong dependency on them. The working mother also finds having a mobile phonerestricting in that she feels that it is essential to have when leaving the house. This is different to thecollege student who finds it freeing not having to sit next to the landline phone when waiting for acall. She finds it extremely useful to be contactable at all times.

As participants start using a cell phone regularly, it becomes part of their lives and they feel lost withoutit.

(Aoki and Downes,2003)

During the day all subjects said they would readily answer their phone or text someone back

while socialising with a group of friend without a second thought, yet the business man and theworking mother both stated that they would be annoyed if someone in their social group did thiswhile in front of them. The college student however stated that this wouldnt trouble her much.


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They would all answer their phone in a social setting such as on a bus but not in a meeting or lecture, only the businessman would check to see if the call is important enough to leave themeeting for.

All subjects find the mobile phone the best form of communication. According to Rich LingNobody sits at home and waits for the telephone to ring. our subjects thoroughly agreed with thisstatement. The businessman doesnt have a landline, the college student has only used her student

accommodation landline a couple of times to contact other people in the same student village as her for free and rarely uses her home landline, while the working mother sometimes uses her landline

but finds her mobile phone gets the most usage.


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