Picking up on trends in mobile phone usage

Net Results: Do you panic if you leave home without your mobile phone? Do you get a special thrill when surreptitiously sending a text from a meeting? Do you think that people who opt not to have a mobile are a bit odd?

Then you, like many others, are under the sway of an emotional attachment to your mobile, says University of Surrey researcher Jane Vincent, who is based at that university's Digital World Resource Centre and explores the way that people use devices like mobiles.

A research scientist, she has spent many years working in the mobile industry, which gives her a particular interest in the peculiarities of mobile communications.

After years where research meant producing commercial marketing strategies, both industry and academia are delving into areas of deeper behavioural research, she says.

Vincent, who was a keynote speaker last month at the International Irish Wireless Conference in Dublin, says that people view mobile handsets in a very different way to their landlines.

"This technology has enabled a total global revolution in communication and that transition has changed business as well as day to day activity," she says.

For businesses, they generally are seen as a more private form of communication, for example. Business people tend to use them for cementing existing relationships, not for making cold calls to people they don't know, Vincent says.

Not only do we feel that mobile phones are an essential part of what we wear or carry with us each day, they also are forcing behavioural changes, she believes.

"My real interest is how much of an emotional attachment people have to their phones," Vincent says.

For many people - perhaps most - there's now an emotional bond with a handset that goes beyond the straightforward usefulness of the item.

"People panic if they've left their charger at home and find that their battery is running down.

"They can't face going through the day without their phone. And you often see people clutching and holding their mobiles in times of crisis now," she says, noting that she observed this in newspaper and television images after the July bombings in London.

And we all know that communications etiquette has also been turned on its head, with no certainty of what is considered acceptable behaviour any longer with mobiles.

"The whole shift since the 80s has been very interesting," notes Vincent. "In the 80s, people weren't even comfortable holding a phone too close to their heads, or speaking into it. I remember people holding them away from their head to listen, then holding the phone in front of their head when they wanted to speak."

The bulky 1980s handsets weren't considered an acceptable item to bring to social gatherings - restaurants, for instance - and few people would have chatted away into a mobile handset during a party.

By contrast, these days, as far as mobile phone usage is concerned, nearly anything goes. People regularly answer their phones while in public toilet stalls, during concerts, even in church and absolutely everyone, of every age, has a mobile.

This ubiquity has led to new questions about where the boundaries of proper social behaviour lie with mobiles, with younger users more at ease with some uses that older people find particularly irksome, such as talking on phones while in restaurants.

People also struggle to understand when it is appropriate to send a text - to express condolences, for example, is seen as a misuse of SMS, even by the younger people that she has spoken to, Vincent says.

Not unexpectedly, mobiles are having an especially strong impact on the under-20s, a particularly interesting group to study, she says.

Getting a first handset is now a rite of passage for young people, and mobiles have altered relationships with parents in subtle ways, making children accessible to their parents as they are only a call or text away.

However, she cautions that it can be easy to make assumptions that are not correct. Many older people think that youths spend all of their time on their mobiles, she notes.

When Vincent studied children and their mobile behaviour, she found that they were careful when using them, often choosing to send texts rather than make calls, and keeping calls fairly short.

Children also saw their phones as something of a liability, as they felt that they suffered a loss of privacy when carrying them - due to their parents potentially being at the other end of the line, knowing that their children were always reachable.

For younger people, phones are gaining ground as a fashion accessory, although she says this trend in its infancy. Nonetheless, already "the actual device itself is symbolic of all sorts of social affiliations".

Meanwhile, mothers say that the ability to maintain contact with their children, and to be reachable themselves throughout the day, has given them enormous freedom and the ability to leave their house when they please.

"Mothers are in effect released from being tied to the phone at home, and tied to a fixed location," says Vincent.

So what will mobiles have us doing next?

"If my research into this industry has proven one thing, it's that it is impossible to make predictions," she says.

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