Mobile Phones Let You Control Your Life
A new study out of the UK that watched how people actually used their mobile phones (as opposed to how they said they used their mobile phones) shows that people use their phones to control certain aspects of their lives. It allows people more flexibility in deciding when and how they will interact with the rest of the world as well as giving them new options to have some control over aspects that were previously impossible to control. For example, older women were shown to use the phone to check up on where their husbands were. Children used text messaging to ask friends for advice (though, they were opposed to text messaging with their parents). While the reporter seems to find these results surprising, they seem pretty straightforward. The mobile phone is a useful device (clearly), and all this really means is that people are integrating it more deeply into their lives.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
