A number of studies have sought to understand how mobile phones affect time practices, and beyond them, the experience of time in users’ daily lives. This article is a further effort in that direction, employing the deprivation study method. We conducted a field study of 80 adolescents, or “cellular natives,” separating them from their cellphones for 1 week. The findings indicate that the cellphone’s absence indeed had a dominant impact on a variety of adolescents’ time-related practices and experience, that yielded in turn both negative and positive feelings. We propose three main axes for understanding the cellphone’s implications for the time experience: The mobile’s flexible time v. Rigid time, its ritual time v. Linear time, and its fragmented time v. Continuous time. In all these dimensions, we point to distinct features of the time experience associated with the mobile phone, and also try to relate it to the emotional state and state of mind of today’s teens. In conclusion, we propose that a broad understanding of the cellphone’s role need to include the aspect of time, at least as it is experienced by adolescents in our current media climate.

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This chapter charts the response of Jewish groups to encounters with digital networks. It outlines the development of Jewish communities online, surveying their characteristics and varieties. Highlighting the divides between Jewish denominations, as well as between Israel and the Diaspora, the chapter traces the evolution of online Jewish communities diachronically, from the emergence of the World Wide Web to the dominance of social media in the digital environment. First, it maps contemporary Jews and Judaism in their quest for community, and in their attitudes toward the use of digital technologies as a way of achieving this goal. Then it surveys aspects of the theoretical study of both online religion and religion online, as they relate to the Jewish case. It continues with a review of the literature on digital Judaism, dividing it into two research phases corresponding to the following platforms: (a) internet sites and forums, and (b) social media, maintaining in both phases a dominant emphasis on ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) groups. A secondary emphasis is on the role of women and their online presence, in Haredi and other communities.