Whereas traditional marriages were bound by economic and practical conventions, these egalitarian relationships are cemented by talk, relying on participants’ willingness to continue because of their mutual pleasure therein. This profound cultural shift also characterizes parent-child relationships more than it did in the past. If intimacy is more and more characterized by rich communication, then the idea that communication technologies are somehow in opposition to “good” family relationships is contentious to say the least. Indeed, these devices may be providing an additional channel for performing intimacy.
In my view, then, the issue is to what extent physical, face-to-face relationships should be privileged in themselves. Certainly a particular form of copresence, choosing to spend time together to enjoy the pleasure of copresence, is a practice of intimacy in itself. Prioritizing time, ofering privileged access to time, and seeking “quality time” are all ways of expressing afection, often within a spatially and temporally delineated private sphere. Does the fact that relationships with family and friends are increasingly digitally mediated mean that people place less value on being colocated?
Keeping in touch while physically apart is undoubtedly a marker of intimacy. The ability to be communicatively present with mobile devices may even enhance closeness at a distance. In order to gain some insight into this possible use, as part of my research I asked respondents, “If you and your partner are routinely apart for more than a day at a time, how important is the mobile phone in maintaining the quality of your relationship?” Approximately three-quarters of both men and women consider the mobile phone to be either very important or important in maintaining the quality of their relationship while geographically separated. Connecting with significant others, even via short calls or texts (phatic communication), can play a role in sustaining and deepening intimate relationships. Rather than conveying specific information, in many cases the call or text itself may be constitutive of the relationship.
Here and in my other writing on the mobile phone, I have argued that while people may erect a boundary in order to maintain a distance between work and home, they use the same property of mobiles—constant connection—to strengthen ties with kin and close friends at a distance. For example, when I did my study, nearly everyone was switching of their mobile phone in the cinema, two-thirds were switching them of at work meetings, and almost half turned them of in restaurants. However, only a minority turned their mobile of during leisure activities and during meal times at home. While one would now ask if people were turning their mobile phones to silent rather than switching them of, this pattern seems to indicate that people consider transgressing public spaces as more important than allowing calls at times reserved for family solidarity. Perhaps this is because the telephone is so closely associated with a deepening of connections with significant others that there is less need to control the flow over these temporal boundaries.
Time to Talk
149