Seen and not heard? Text messaging and digital sociality

Abstract

Mobile phones have invited a number of dystopian understandings, particularly as far as young people are concerned. They have been variously argued to contribute to poor spelling and grammar, disturb attention to school work, facilitate text bullying, lead to brain cancers and promote the destruction of face-to-face relationships. Despite these concerns, text messaging is by far the most common form of mobile communication between young people in New Zealand. Drawing on actor-network theory and qualitative research conducted with New Zealand teenagers, we explore how teenagers, cell phones, socio-spatial relations and discourses exist within a hybrid and interdependent network which we have termed digital sociality. This network seems to facilitate rather than destroy proximal contact. The machine and the human, in a cyborgian sense, meld to develop new and complex workings of space and the social which suggests mobile technologies are not as damaging to young people as many have suggested and calls for preventative approaches to this technology might need therefore to be rethought.

On becoming textually active at Youthline, New Zealand

“…These aspects appear to be potentiated with mobile telephony as a mobile phone tends to be owned and operated by just one person where the means of communicating can be taken into spaces that feel more private (Ling, 2007;Thompson & Cupples, 2008). These authors suggest having control over the means of communicating contributes to both access and perceived privacy.…”

7. Text messaging

“…French texters, however, have been found to appreciate the ability to engage in private communications in public places, as texting permits senders to freely express emotion absent inhibitions and modesties (Anis 2007;Rivière and Licoppe 2005). The privacy afforded by texting also enables young people to communicate more freely (e.g., without adults' surveillance), which shores up young people's communities (Thompson and Cupples 2008). Conversely, in China, the traditional social order as governed by the State is perceived to be under threat, where texting facilitates a more or less Habermasian "public sphere" (Latham 2007).…”

Enhanced Causation for Design

“…Design in general, and technology in particular is in its essence 'prosthetic design' (Clark, 2005). All these kinds of 'prosthesis' enlarge the scope of our meaningful relationships to our environment (L. Thompson & Cupples, 2008).…”