This article explores English children’s use of mobile phones in managing and maintaining friendships and relationships in their everyday lives. Based on the accounts of 30 young people aged between 11 and 17, this research adopts a social constructivist perspective to offer a theoretical framework which explores how children themselves actually use mobile phone technologies and understand risk in their everyday lives. This is an interpretative account that offers a methodological rationale for hearing children’s voices and viewing them as experts on their own lives.
Beck, U. ( 1992) Risk Society Towards a New Modernity. London: Sage.
2.
Berking, H. ( 1999) Sociology of Giving. London: Sage.
3.
Boyd, D. ( 2008) ‘Facebook’s Privacy Trainwreck Exposure, Invasion, and Social Convergence’, Convergence: The International Journal into New Media Technologies14(1): 13-20.
4.
Brannen, J., K. Dodd, A. Oakley and P. Storey ( 1994) Young People, Health and Family Life. Buckingham: Open University Press.
5.
Brownlie, J. ( 2001) ‘The "Being-Risky" Child: Governing Childhood and Sexual Risk’, Sociology35(2): 519-37.
6.
Charlton, T., C. Panting and A. Hannan ( 2002) ‘Mobile Telephone Ownership and Usage among 10- and 11-Year-Olds’, Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties7(3): 152-63.
7.
Christensen, P.H. ( 2004) ‘Children’s Participation in Ethnographic Research: Issues of Power and Representation’, Children and Society18(2): 165-76.
8.
Christensen, P. and A. Prout ( 2005) ‘Anthropological and Sociological Perspectives on the Study of Children’, in S. Greene and D. Hogan (eds) Researching Children’s Experience Approaches and Methods. London: Sage.
9.
Clarke, A. and P. Moss ( 2001) Listening to Young Children: The Mosaic Approach. London: National Children’s Bureau/ Joseph Rowntree Foundation.
10.
Crabtree, J. and M. Nathan ( 2003) MobileUk - Mobile Phones and Everyday Life. London: The Work Foundation.
11.
Frosh, S., A. Phoenix and R. Pattman ( 2002) Young Masculinities. Cambridge: Polity Press.
12.
Frost, L. ( 2005) ‘Theorizing the Young Woman in the Body’, Body and Society11(1): 63-85.
13.
Giddens, A. ( 1990) The Consequences of Modernity. Cambridge : Polity Press.
14.
Giddens, A. ( 1991) Modernity and Self-Identity Self and Society in the Late Modern Age. Cambridge: Polity Press .
15.
Giddens, A. ( 1992) The Transformation of Intimacy. Cambridge : Polity Press.
16.
Giddens, A. ( 1999) Runaway World How Globalisation is Shaping Our Lives. London: Profile Books.
17.
Goffman, E. ( 1959) The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Garden City, NY: Doubleday.
18.
Goggin, G. and L. Hjorth ( 2009) Mobile Technologies from Telecommunications to Media. Abingdon: Routledge.
19.
Grover, S. ( 2004) ‘Why Won’t They Listen to Us? On Giving Power and Voice to Children Participating in Social Research’, Childhood11(1): 81-93.
20.
Harden, J. ( 2000) ‘There’s no Place Like Home: The Public/Private Distinction in Children’s Theorizing of Risk and Safety’, Childhood7(1): 43-59.
21.
Hjorth, L. ( 2009) Mobile Media in the Asia-Pacific: Gender and the Art of Being Mobile. Abingdon: Routledge .
22.
Holloway, S.L. and G. Valentine ( 2001) ‘ "It’s Only as Stupid as You are": Children and Adults’ Negotiation of ICT Competence at Home and at School’ , Social and Cultural Geography22(1): 25-42.
23.
James, A., C. Jenks and A. Prout ( 1998) Theorizing Childhood. Cambridge: Polity Press.
24.
Jamieson, L. ( 1999) ‘Intimacy Transformed? A Critical Look at the "Pure Relationship" ’, Sociology33(3): 477-94.
25.
Jenks, C. ( 1996) Childhood. London: Routledge.
26.
Kasesniemi, E.L. and P. Rautiainen ( 2002) ‘Mobile Culture of Children and Teenagers in Finland’ , in J.E. Katz and M. Aakhus (eds) Perpetual Contact Mobile Communication, Private Talk, Public Performance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
27.
Laurier, E. ( 2001) ‘Why People Say Where They Are During Mobile Phone Calls’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space19: 485-504.
28.
Lee, N. ( 2001) Childhood and Society. Buckingham: Open University Press.
29.
Leung, L. and R. Wei ( 1999) ‘Who are the Mobile Phone Have-Nots?’, New Media and Society1(2): 209-26.
30.
Licoppe, C. and Z. Smoreda ( 2005) ‘Are Social Networks Technologically Embedded? How Networks Are Changing Today with Changes in Communication Technology’ , Social Networks27: 317-35.
31.
Ling, R. ( 1999) ‘ "We Release Them Little by Little": Maturation and Gender Identity as Seen in the Use of Mobile Telephony’, paper presented at the International Symposium on Technology and Society (ISTAS’99) ‘Women and Technology: Historical, Societal and Professional Perspectives’, Rutgers University , New Brunswick, NJ, 29-31 July.
32.
Ling, R. ( 2000) ‘We Will Be Reached: The Use of Mobile Phone Telephony among Norwegian Youth’, Information Technology and People13(3): 102-20.
33.
Ling, R. ( 2004) The Mobile Connection The Cell Phone’s Impact on Society. San Francisco: Morgan Kaufman .
34.
Livingstone, S. ( 1998) ‘Mediated Childhoods: A Comparative Approach to Young People’s Changing Media Environment in Europe’, European Journal of Communication13(4): 435-56.
35.
Livingstone, S. ( 2002) Young People and New Media. London : Sage.
36.
McCracken, G. ( 1990) Culture and Consumption: New Approaches to the Symbolic Character of Consumer Goods and Activities. Bloomington : Indiana University Press.
37.
MacKenzie, D. and J. Wajcman ( 1999) ‘Introductory Essay’, in D. MacKenzie and J. Wajcman (eds) The Social Shaping of Technology, 2nd edn. Maidenhead: Open University Press.
38.
Maus, M. ( 1925) ‘Essai sur le don. Forme et raison de l’échange dans les sociétés primitives’, l’Année Sociologique, seconde série. (English translation, The Gift. London: Routledge, 2002.)
39.
Pahl, R. ( 2000) On Friendship. Cambridge: Polity Press.
40.
Plant, S. ( 2000) ‘On the Mobile: The Effects of Mobile Telephones on Social and Individual Life’; at: www.motorola.com/mot/doc/0/234_MotDoc.pdf (accessed 3 March 2005).
41.
Ritchie J. and J. Lewis ( 2003) Qualitative Research Practice: A Guide for Social Science Students and Researchers. London: Sage.
42.
Scott, S. and S. Jackson ( 2000) ‘Childhood’, in G. Payne (ed.) Social Divisions. Basingstoke : Palgrave.
43.
Scott, S., S. Jackson and K. Backett-Milburn ( 1998) ‘Swings and Roundabouts: Risk Anxiety and the Everyday Worlds of Children’, Sociology32: 689-705.
44.
Selwyn, N. ( 2004) ‘Exploring the Role of Children in Adults’ Adoption and Use of Computers’, Information Technology and People17(1): 53-70.
45.
Sibley, D. ( 1995) Geographies of Exclusion. London: Routledge.
46.
Simmel, G. and E.C. Hughes ( 1949) ‘The Sociology of Sociabilty’, American Journal of Sociology55(3): 254-61.
47.
Slater, D. ( 1998) ‘Public/Private’, in C. Jenks (ed.) Core Sociological Dichotomies. London: Sage.
48.
Smith, P., J. Mahdavi, M. Carvalho and N. Tippett ( 2005) An Investigation into Cyberbullying, its Forms, Awareness and Impact, and the Relationship between Age and Gender in Cyberbullying: A Report to the Anti-Bullying Alliance; at: www.anti-bullyingalliance.org.uk/downloads/pdf/cyberbullyingreportfinal230106_000.pdf (accessed 2 February 2006).
49.
Smoreda, Z. and C. Licoppe ( 2000) ‘Gender-Specific Use of the Domestic Telephone’ , Social Psychology Quarterly63(3): 238-52.
50.
Smoreda, Z. and F. Thomas ( 2001) ‘Social Networks and Residential ICT Adoption and Use’, paper presented at the EURESCOM summit meeting, Heidelberg; at: www.cost269.org/Committee/linksmoreda/Smoreda%20&%20Thomas.pdf (accessed 3 March 2005).
51.
Strauss, A. and J. Corbin ( 1998) Basics of Qualitative Research: Grounded Theory Procedures and Technique, 2nd edn. London : Sage.
52.
Taylor, A. and R. Harper ( 2002) ‘Age-Old Practices in the ‘New World’: A Study of Gift-Giving between Teenage Mobile Phone Users; at: www.dwrc.surrey.ac.uk/Portals/0/GiftGiving.pdf (accessed 14 July 2006).
53.
Thrift, N. ( 1996) ‘New Urban Eras and Old Technological Fears: Reconfiguring the Goodwill of Electronic Things’, Urban Studies33(8): 1463-94.
54.
Wilkinson, I. ( 2001) Anxiety in a Risk Society. London: Routledge.
55.
Williams, S. and L. Williams ( 2005) ‘Space Invaders: The Negotiation of Teenage Boundaries through the Mobile Phone’, The Sociological Review53: 315-30.
56.
Yoon, K. ( 2003) ‘Retraditionalizing the Mobile Young People’s Sociality and Mobile Phone Use in Seoul, South Korea’, European Journal of Cultural Studies6(3): 327-43.
