Cellphones are an Appendage

Elliot:  Last month the Kaiser Family Foundation issued a report on teens and cellphones. So now the Pew Foundation weighs in with another report…
Cathie: … and they both document the same basic phenomenon: For all intents and purposes, cellphone ownership amongst teens is 100% and spreading quickly to the younger crowd, and cellphone usage is just about 100% during the teens’ waking, non-school,  moments.
Elliot: Calling it a “cellphone” as we have said before, is a misnomer. Teens use the cellphone to play music, send texts…
Cathie: The Pew report says that teens make 5 voice calls a day but send 10 times that number of texts!
Elliot: Today’s youth are definitely not the “digital generation.”
Cathie: Yes, the “digital generation” used computers to play games…
Elliot: .. but for today’s “mobile generation” the mobile computer enables them to connect to each other, to connect to parents and employers, to connect to the global marketplace in which they are situated…
Cathie:  … yes, as well as do computing type things like play games.
Elliot: To the mobile generation, the cellphone is almost another appendage!
Cathie: And yet, there is no shortage of tsk, tsk, tsking amongst adults.
Elliot: You are referring to the alarmist article in this Sunday’s New York Times about the potential anti-social behavior of teens who are social-networking users…
Cathie: … If only we could go back to the Good Olde Days of the black telephone…
Elliot : … I bet you had a princess phone…
Cathie: … careful, careful… but yes I did – a baby, blue one.
Elliot:  We adults are wasting our breath…
Cathie: ..and newsprint; the Genie is out of the bottle.
Elliot: The Pew report talks about low SES youth paying hard-earned money to buy data plans for their smartphones so they can have a “connected computer” since their family’s don’t have one at home.
Cathie: Mobile technologies, unquestionably, are the way that we will eliminate the digital divide. Mobile technologies provide everyone access to the world wide network…
Elliot: Immediate access; unmediated access. And, increasingly – low-cost access!
Cathie: We would make great cheer leaders!
Elliot: I will not wear one of those short skirts!
Cathie: I was being metaphorical, silly.
Elliot: Oh, yeah, sure...
Cathie:  On the other hand...