In particular, SMS, or text messages, provide adolescents with a form of interaction that they have adopted and shaped to their own purposes, turning it into “a living form of interaction.” According to Norwegian researchers Rich Ling and Brigitte Yttri, texting’s relatively low cost and the slightly illicit ability to silently maintain contact with friends (for example, during school or in the middle of the night under the bed covers) have been key to its popularity.32 Crucial to its function is the physical nature of the phone—small and portable—and the fact that it is a personal communication device. That is, the mobile phone individualizes communication in that callers reach a specific person rather than reaching a random household member as with the landline telephone. Callers know that they are calling directly to an individual—not to a house phone where they may have to get through the filtering interactions of talking to a parent or another sibling. The mobile call is interpersonal and removes parental scrutiny.
In this way, the mobile phone provides young people with a means of being in touch with friends during times that were traditionally designated as times of family togetherness, such as during meals or on vacations. On one level this is not a new development, as other technologies like television have also permeated family space and reformed how families interact. Nonetheless, the authors conclude that the increase of mobile telephone usage is a distraction from the common focus of the ritual occasion, whether that is a common evening meal or the annual Christmas dinner: “the device steals attention from the shared family experience and thus limits its efect. The technology can undercut the potential for this type of solidarity and the hierarchical dimensions that this form of social structuring implies.” 33
As a counterpoint, I would emphasize that the speed and portability of digital communication may be enabling young people to maintain intimate friendships in new ways. Perhaps, in a distinctive manner, young people are now able to concurrently experience family time and time with friends. Time’s elasticity means that it does not have to be apportioned in a unilinear mode. Rather than thinking about these interactions as exclusively family oriented or peer oriented, and setting up mediated communication in opposition to copresence, we need to complicate our understanding of the forms that intimate relationships can take in this digital era.
Chapter six
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