In this paper, an examination is made of how young people locate themselves in the world through using GPS-enabled mobile phones. Three research themes are explored. First, how GPS mobile phones encourage young people to explore new territory by providing both spatial information and a ‘lifeline’ to security. Secondly, how parental surveillance encourages or discourages exploration. Finally, how the accessibility of spatial data reduces the need to try new routes or memorise landscape features. In so doing, two myths of mobile phone use are challenged: that the revolution in mobile technology has caused the ‘death of distance’ and created a borderless world through space–time compression and that mobile technologies atomise quotidian life into a series of impersonal mediated encounters. The research, conducted in New Jersey, USA, and Cornwall, UK, shows that mobile phones appear to give young people more confidence in exploring new places, but also distract them from observing their surroundings.
AllenG. (1999) Cognitive abilities in the service of wayfinding: a functional approach, Professional Geographer, 51(4), pp. 554–561.
3.
AllenG.GolledgeR. (2007) Wayfinding in urban environments, in: GarlingT.StegL. (Eds) Threats from Car Traffic to the Quality of Urban Life: Problems, Causes, and Solutions, pp. 79–102. Oxford: Elsevier.
4.
AndersonJ.JonesK. (2009) The difference that place makes to methodology: uncovering the ‘lived space’ of young people’s spatial practices, Children’s Geographies, 7(3), pp. 291–303.
BladesM.BlautJ.DarvizehZ.ElgueaS.. (1998) A cross-cultural study of young children’s mapping abilities, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 23, pp. 269–277.
8.
BodenD.MolotchH. (1994) The compulsion to proximity, in: FriedlandF.BodenD. (Eds) Nowhere: Space, Time and Modernity, pp. 257–286. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
9.
BondE. (2011) The mobile phone = bike shed? Children, sex and mobile phones, New Media and Society, 13(4), pp. 587–604.
10.
CampbellM. (2005) The impact of the mobile phone on young people’s social life. Paper presented to the Social Change in the 21st Century Conference, Queensland University of Technology, October.
11.
CarrN. (2010) The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to our Brains. New York: Norton.
12.
CharltonT.PantingC.HannanA. (2002) Mobile telephone ownership and usage among 10- and 11-year-olds: participation and exclusion, Emotional and Behavioral Difficulties, 7(3), pp. 152–163.
13.
DownsR.SteaD. (1974) Maps in Minds: Reflections on Cognitive Mapping. New York: Harper and Row.
14.
EllardC. (2009) You Are Here: Why We Can Find Our Way to the Moon but Get Lost in the Mall. New York: Doubleday.
15.
FoxK. (2001) Evolution, alienation and gossip: the role of mobile telecommunications in the 21st century. Social Issues Research Centre, Oxford (http://www.sirc.org/publik/gossip.shtml; accessed 20 July 2010).
16.
FurlongA. (Ed.) (2009) Handbook of Youth and Young Adulthood. London: Routledge.
17.
FyhriA.HjortholR.MackettR.Nordgaard FotelT.KyttaM. (2011) Children’s active travel and independent mobility in four countries: development, social contributing trends and measures, Transport Policy, 18, pp. 703–710.
18.
GergenK. (2002) The challenge of absent presence, in: KatzJ.AkhusM. (Eds) Perpetual Contact: Mobile Communication, Private Talk and Public Performance, pp. 227–241. New York: Cambridge University Press.
19.
GoffmanI. (1973) Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Woodstock: Overlook Press.
20.
GolledgeR. (1998) Wayfinding Behavior: Cognitive Mapping and other Spatial Processes. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Press.
21.
GrahamS. (1998) The end of geography or the explosion of place? Conceptualizing space, place and information technology, Progress in Human Geography, 22(2), pp. 165–185.
HannonC.TimsC. (2010) Owning a digital identity, in: HannonC.TimsC. (Eds) An Anatomy of Youth, pp. 94–105. London: Demos.
24.
HartR. (1979) Children’s Experience of Place. New York: Irvington.
25.
HoltL. (2004) The ‘voices’ of children: de-centering empowering research relations, Children’s Geographies, 2(1), pp. 13–28.
26.
HopkinsP. (2010) Young People, Place and Identity. London: Routledge.
27.
HopkinsP.PainR. (2007) Geographies of age: thinking relationally, Area, 39(3), pp. 287–294.
28.
JonesO. (2007) Rurality and the otherness of childhood in a British context, in: PanelliR.PunchS.RobsonE. (Eds) Young Rural Lives: Global Perspectives on Rural Childhood and Youth, pp. 193–204. London: Routledge.
29.
JonesO.WilliamsM.FleuriotC. (2003) ‘A new sense of place?’ Mobile ‘wearable’ information and communications technology devices and the geographies of urban childhood, Children’s Geographies, 1(2), pp. 165–180.
30.
KatzJ. E. (2006) Magic in the Air: Mobile Communication and the Transformation of Social Life. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.
31.
KatzJ. E.AakhusM. (2002) Introduction: framing the issues, in: KatzJ.AakusM. (Eds) Perpetual Contact: Mobile Communication, Private Talk, Public Performance, pp. 1–14. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
32.
KirasicK. (2000) Age differences in adults’ spatial abilities, learning environmental layout, and wayfinding behavior, Spatial Cognition and Computation, 2, pp. 117–134.
33.
KlinkenborgV. (2009) The familiar place, New York Times, 3June.
34.
KulishN. (2010) Turn off GPS: drive toward serendipity, New York Times, 7May.
LenhartA.LingR.CampbellS.PurcellK. (2010) Teens and mobile phones. Pew Internet and American Life Project, Washington, DC.
37.
LeyshonM. (2011) The struggle to belong: young people on the move in the countryside, Population Space and Place, 17(4), pp. 304–325.
38.
LicoppeC. (2004) Connected presence: the emergence of a new repertoire for managing social relationships in changing communication technoscape, Environment and Planning D, 22, pp. 135–156.
39.
LingR. (1997) ‘One can talk about common manners!’ The use of mobile telephones in inappropriate situations, in: HaddonL. (Ed.) Communications on the Move: The Experience of Mobile Telephony in the 1990s, pp. 73–96. COAST248 Report, Telia, Farsta.
40.
LingR. (2008) New Tech, New Ties: How Mobile Communication is Reshaping Social Cohension. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
41.
LynchK. (1960) The Image of the City. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
42.
MadellD.MuncerS. (2007) Control over social interactions: an important reason for young people’s use of the internet and mobile phones for communication?, Cyberpsychology and Behavior, 10(1), pp. 137–140.
43.
MallanK. M.SinghP.GiardinaN. (2010) The challenges of participatory research with ‘tech-savvy’ youth, Journal of Youth Studies, 13(2), pp. 255–272.
44.
MannB. (2008) Social networking websites: a concatenation of impersonation, denigration, sexual aggressive solicitation, cyber-bullying or happy slapping videos, International Journal of Law and Information Technology, 17(1), pp. 83–112.
45.
MarchW.FleuriotC. (2005) The worst technology for girls?, Ethnographic praxis in industry conference proceedings, 9(1), pp. 165–172.
46.
MarkoffJ. (2009) The cellphone: navigating our lives. New York Times, 17February, pp. D1–D4.
47.
MattssonK. T. (2002) Children’s (in)dependent mobility and parents’ chauffeuring in the town and the countryside, Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, 93(4), pp. 443–453.
48.
MorozovE. (2011) The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom. New York: Public Affairs.
NoriR.GrandicelliS.GiusbertiF. (2006) Visuo-spatial ability and wayfinding performance in real-world, Cognitive Processes, Supplement 1, pp. 135–137.
51.
O’BrienM.JonesD.SmidtS. (2000) Children’s independent spatial mobility in the urban public realm, Childhood, 7(3), pp. 257–277.
52.
PainR.GrundyS.GillS.TownerE.. (2005) ‘So long as I take my mobile’: mobile phones, urban life and geographies of young people’s safety, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 29(4), pp. 814–830.
53.
Percy-SmithB.MatthewsH. (2001) Tyrannical spaces: young people, bullying and urban neighborhoods, Local Environment, 6(1), pp. 49–63.
PfaffJ. (2010) Mobile phone geographies, Geography Compass, 4, pp. 1433–1447.
56.
PostmanN. (2000) The humanism of media ecology, Proceedings of the Media Ecology Association, 1, pp. 10–16.
57.
PowersW. (2010) Hamlet’s Blackberry: A Practical Philosophy for Building a Good Life in the Digital Age. New York: HarperCollins.
58.
PrenskyM. (2005–06) Listen to the natives, Educational Leadership, 63(4), pp. 8–13.
59.
RettieR. (2009) Mobile phone communication: extending Goffman to mediated interaction, Sociology, 43(3), pp. 421–438.
60.
RideoutV.FoehrU.RobertsD. (2010) Generation M2: Media in the Lives of 8 to 18-year-olds. Menlo Park, CA: Keiser Family Foundation.
61.
Romero-MikkelsenM. R.ChristensenP. (2009) Is children’s independent mobility really independent? A study of children’s mobility combining ethnography and GPS/Mobile phone technologies, Mobilities, 4(1), pp. 37–58.
62.
SandersR. (2008) The triumph of geography, Progress in Human Geography, 32(2), pp. 179–182.
63.
ShteyngartG. (2010) ‘Only disconnect’, Book review, New York Times, 18July, p. 27.
64.
SpilsburyJ.KorbiJ.CoultonC. (2009) Mapping children’s neighborhood perceptions: implications for child indicators, Child Indicator Research, 2, pp. 111–131.
65.
SutkoD. M.de Souza e SilvaA. (2011) Location aware mobile media and urban sociability, New Media & Society, 13(5), pp. 807–823.
66.
ThompsonL.CupplesJ. (2008) ‘Seen and not heard?’ Text messaging and digital sociality, Social & Cultural Geography, 9(1), pp. 95–108.
67.
ThorpeV. (2002) Teen readers targeted in text message campaign, The Observer, 10March, p. 14.
68.
TravlouP. (2007) Mapping youth spaces in the public realm: identity, space and social exclusion, in: WardC.ThompsonC.TravlouP. (Eds) Open Space: People Space, pp. 71–82. London: Taylor and Francis.
69.
TurtleS. (2011) Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other. New York: Basic Books.
70.
TuttD. (2005) Mobile performances of a teenager: a study of situated mobile phone activity in the living room, Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, 11(2), pp. 58–75.
71.
ValentineG.SkeltonT. (2007) Re-defining ‘norms’: D/deaf young people’s transitions to independence, The Sociological Review, 55(1), pp. 104–123.
72.
VanderbeckR. (2007) Intergenerational geographies: age relations, segregation and reengagements, Geography Compass, 1, pp. 200–221.
73.
VigdorJ. LLaddH. (2010) Scaling the digital divide: home computer technology and student achievement. Working Paper No. 16078, National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA.
74.
WeilenmannA.LarssonC. (2001) Local use and sharing of mobile phones, in: BrownB.GreenN.HarperR. (Eds) Wireless World: Social and International Aspects of the Mobile Age, pp. 92–106. London: Springer-Verlag.
75.
WieheS.CarrollA. E.LiuG. C.HabercornK. L.. (2008) Using GPS-enabled cell phones to track the travel patterns of adolescents, International Journal of Health Geographies, 7:22.
