Chapter 7: Kids on the Hook If there ever was a true technological fable about a devicelong sought after which, once possessed, had quite the reverseof the benefit expected, it would be the strange tale of thetelephone and teenager. It would begin in the 1950s, when the telephone was someseventy-five years into its existence. But it wasn't until the1950s that most Americans had phones in their homes, andteenagers were in a position to use them. This was a break-outtime for more than one technology that would change society.Televisions were being installed even faster than telephones inhomes. Cities were spilling into suburbs, traversable mainly byautomobiles. All of these sleek new technologies became bones ofcontention in the family. Who would drive the automobile? Ateenager who drove away in a car was beyond parentalsupervision. Who would determine what was watched ontelevision? Long before the "remote" and endless fights overwho controls it, my sister and I, children not teenagers in the1950s, had chronic arguments over what would be watched on TV.My father, I recall, was still happy at the prospect of watchingjust about anything on this big magic box, so my motheradjudicated. But disputes over the telephone were on another levelentirely. For the telephone clashed, it is not too much tosay, with the very sanctity of the family. Parental authoritywas challenged and undermined by the phone call, both made andreceived. Teenagers correctly saw the phone as a lifeline tothe most important things in their lives -- conversations withtheir friends, boyfriends, girlfriends. Given the choice ofmeat loaf and peas -- or even steak -- or a phone call from afriend during dinner time, what kid would opt for the plate? Asphones and soon separate phone lines began showing up ineveryone's bedroom -- I had one when I was 16, in 1963 (I didpay for it with money I earned at Krum's, a soda fountain placeon the Grand Concourse in the Bronx) -- the classic punishmentof "go to your room," where you were supposed to commune withyour conscience, became worthless. (The installation oftelevisions and eventually computers in kids' rooms had asimilar, undermining effect. Banishment to your room becameexile in the infinite world of people and information beyond it,in most cases far more interesting than the people andinformation in your immediate surroundings outside the room.) In all of these tussles over the telephone, the teenagerwas striving to have one, or at least have access to one, andthe parent was resisting. No one predicted in those days that the day would soon comewhen parents would insist that their kids each had a phone, andturned on at all times. The Gripping Hand Children have been a special concern of media critics sinceat least the beginning of the twentieth century. Back then,observers worried about the adverse effect of movies on kids --see, for example, William A. McKeever's "Motion Pictures: APrimary School for Criminals" in the 1910 Good Housekeepingmagazine, in which the professor from Kansas argues that dankmovie theaters where kids wile away their afternoons aredestroying the moral backbone of our future. By the middle ofthe century, the locus of presumed peril had shifted to comicbooks and television. Marie Wynn's The Plug-In Drug (1977) maybe the best-known of the many attacks against TV. She contendsthat watching it can be addictive, especially for children. Ina society in which even love has been said to be addictive, Iguess this isn't too much of a metaphorical stretch. But thepoints of actual similarity between real, physical addictionssuch as heroin and psychological "addictions" such as televisionare nil. (Jerry Mander went even further in his 1978 FourArguments for the Elimination of Television, seriouslysuggesting that watching television might cause cancer.) By the end of the twentieth century, the villain was theInternet. Hence the Communications Decency Act of 1996, wiselystruck down as unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, providedfor fines of up to $100,000 and two years imprisonment forpublishing of "indecent" material on the Web, if the materialwas in any manner accessible by children (see my The SoftEdge, 1997, and "Cellphone vs. War 'Blogs' in Chapter 7 of thecurrent book for more). Thus, the Internet has made televisionlook respectable in comparison, in the same way as televisionearlier helped lift motion pictures somewhere closer to thestatus of the "legitimate" theater (itself bawdy inShakespeare's time). It is certainly true that children cannotbe stalked via television, and, for that reason alone, parentsare justified in feeling more comfortable with their kids beingcouch potatoes than web riders. (On the subject of children andthe Internet, incidentally, there is a world of differencebetween pornographic web pages that may be accessible by peopleunder the legal age of adulthood, and sexual predators using theInternet to stalk people of any age. The first is a question offreedom of expression, right to access information, whethersociety has the right to legally define obscenity, etc. Thesecond is simply a vicious crime, online and offline. Oncountering that crime, the Web can be an important weapon fordistributing information to the public about known sexualpredators, including what they look like and their whereabouts.) How does the cellphone figure in this historic, ongoingdilemma about children and media? As a fundamentallyinteractive, two-way interpersonal instrument, the cellphone isvery different from the above cases. Motion pictures,television, and pornography on the Web provide non-interactive,one-way information. Predators on the Web are obviouslyinteractive, or trying to be, but unlike the cellphone, the Webeasily provides contact to strangers, which is one of itsdangers for children. Do we have any cause to be concerned about the adverseimpact of cellphones on kids? I would say, yes -- but notbecause it exposes them to material objected to by parents.Rather, we perhaps need to be concerned because the cellphonemakes kids too accountable to parents. There was a time -- indeed, throughout all of human history-- when teenagers could be away from their parents. This seemslike a simple, obvious fact of life. You want to get away fromyour parent, you just walk out of the house. But the cellphonemakes that kind of everyday getaway impossible, without theprovocation of the teenager shutting the phone off, or lyingabout its lack of service. Of course, up to a certain age, children should not be longout of touch with their parents, or at least a responsibleadult. But teenagers are a different story. Biologicallyadult, yet legally and socially "minor," the teenager must oftenendure adult urges without the wherewithal to act upon them.The telephone in the home allowed the teenager to act like anadult, at least insofar as information was concerned. Thetelephone doesn't ask your age, doesn't require a card to use --well, not the kind of card or proof of age required foradmission to "R"-rated movies. You were under your parents'roof and supervision at home, all right, but if you were on thephone, you were miles beyond them. Why not extend this ability to times you were outside thehome? Payphones did (and still do) this, but the cellphone doesit much better. You can call anyone, anytime, from anywhere youlike, and anyone can similarly call you. But... That "anyone" can include your parents, the very adultswhose scrutiny you wanted to escape in the first place. And thecellphone makes it easy not only for your parents to call you,but for you to call them. In some ways that's worse, because itputs the onus on you. The phone in your pocket pickpockets yourexcuses not to call home at a given time. And if for some goodreason you do not, your parents always have the recourse ofcalling you. The cellphone thus extends and strengthens the sinews offamily. For better or worse -- and the effects are likely both-- there is no place anyone can be away from family now.Whereas previously the family shared both physical space andcommunication in the home, and to leave the home was to leaveboth the physical space and most of the communication, nowadaysthe cellphone keeps the communication of the family intact whenthe home is left behind. From the point of view of familycommunication, the physical home becomes less relevant, lessessential. Instead, the mobile hearth provides some of thecrucial family functions. The cellphone is thus a mobile hearthnot only because it provides access to so many different kindsof information, but because the core of that information isfamilial. Important aspects of family become retrievable,implementable, anywhere, by the mere press of a thumb. Why would this in any way be detrimental? Isn't family,in general, good, and its strengthening therefore desirable?Yes. But part of growing up, part of becoming an adult, andtherefore part of the proper function of family is also leavingthe family. Not entirely. Not even necessarily physically.But certainly this means moving from a state in which parentsshould and do keep tabs on just about every activity of theirchildren to a state in which they do not. Indeed, we mightdefine the passage of childhood into adulthood as atransformation of parent/children tabs from mandatory tovoluntary. Joshua Meyrowitz, in his No Sense of Place (1985),suggested that equal access of parents and children toinformation on television -- information previously availableonly to fully literate adults, for example, news reported innewspaper stories, now on television -- was making children muchmore like adults. Certainly, the coverage of the terroristsattacks on September 11, 2001, and the Iraqi War in 2003, on24/7 all-news cable stations gave children complete access tothe information their parents were receiving about these events.Children using the Web are also often in the same informationalrealms as adults (hence the concern about exposure of childrento pornography -- not a reason to censor the Web, for reasons Iexplained above, but nonetheless worthy of note by parents).But cellphones, which at first seem to continue this trend bygiving children who have them the same access as their parentsto the world of people with phones, may ironically cut againstthis trend in the end. In keeping children and teenagers moreaccountable to their parents, the cellphone safeguards thedistinction between child and adult -- the distinction betweenthe accountable one (the teenager) and the one who must beaccounted to (the parent). But if the cellphone does this toolong and too well -- if it keeps the teenager too long on theapron string, on the towline cell-line of omni-accountability --then cellphone could become a leash that impedes the growth ofchild to independent adult. The cellphone is actually an excellent assistant on bothsides of this transformational process -- the little childbefore and the complete adult after -- just not in the middle,at the point of transformation, the teenage turning point. Thecellphone works well for parents who must keep in touch withchildren and children who must keep in touch with their parents,and it also works well for adult children and parents who want,who elect, to be in touch with their parents. But thecellphone and its 24/7 accessibility can work at cross-purposeswith the transitional stage where children are just becomingadults, are taking the first full steps towards informationalself-sufficiency, or unaccountability to parents. The cellphone has not been around long enough for us togauge this potentially stultifying effect on teenagers. But ifthe effect is real, its remedy will reside in appropriate socialattitudes that limit cellphonic access to teenagers (note,again, that what would need restriction here is not access ofteenagers to the world at large but access to teenagers, byparents). As with other possible social disruptions of thecellphone, the solution, again, would be in more sharply definedcustom. Husbands and Wives on Call Parents and children are not the only components of familywhose relationships are being altered, even revolutionized, bythe cellphone. Husbands and wives now enjoy the same ubiquity ofaccess -- not only to the world, but to one another. Unlike parents and children, the access between husbandsand wives is, in principle at least, supposed to bediscretionary -- either partner is perfectly within his or herrights to choose not to make or receive a call. And, inpractice prior to the cellphone, it usually was, certainly forhusbands and wives who were not at home. (Anyone at home wasand still is by and large expected to answer the phone, if notphysically indisposed.) But, as we have already seen with thecellphone and its impact, the mere possibility or option ofbeing in phone contact, where previously there was none or thecontact was difficult to attain, subtly yet fundamentallychanges the chemistry of expectations. Until recently, there was an intrinsic buffer betweenfamily life and business, between the wife who was at home andthe husband who was at work, between the husband who was at homeand the wife who was at work, between husband and wife in bothdirections when both were at work. The only easy call to makewas from the person at work to the person at home. The otherway around was not so easy. The workplace was effectivelyshielded from the home -- not impenetrably, but layered, like acoat with many linings. Long ago, in order to reach a whitecollar person at work, the caller had to go through the whitecollar's secretary. Blue collar workers were even more removedfrom phones; their bosses, if they chose, could interrupt theirwork with word of someone on the phone for them in the office(assuming the workers were anywhere near the office, which verywell might not be). Directly dialable phone numbers andextensions eliminated the intermediaries in many places, but thewhite collar anyplace away from the desk was still unreachable,or not easily reachable, during the business day. The cellphonealtered every bit of that, stripped all the layers away. Itrings right in the pocket of the white- or blue-collar worker,regardless of what kinds of jackets with how many linings theymay wear. The home had already been under siege from office work fornearly a decade, courtesy of e-mail and the Internet, whichallows people to conduct business from the bedroom, or anyplacein the home with a computer and a modem or other means of datatransmission. We could say the Internet made the bedroom asuitable place for intercourse in the older, once primary use ofthe term -- communication and transactions, for commerce andfriendship, among sundry people, including strangers. Thecellphone injects this homogenization of business and personallife right back into the office. The result is a world withfewer and fewer places where just business or just pleasure canbe pursued. (And in this realm -- the business/pleasurecontinuum -- the cellphone thus does what Meyrowitz saystelevision does for adults and children: it blurs distinctions.) There are numerous practical advantages to thisalways-being-in-touch. I much prefer getting a call from someonein my family telling me we need juice or milk or cookies, as Iwalk from my office to my car, or as I'm driving home, thanfinding about it after I have passed all the supermarkets andconvenience stores, parked my car in the driveway, and walkedthrough my front door. The undeniable benefit of the cellphoneis that it sooner or later provides us with useful informationthat we would not otherwise possess. Coming from a past ofinformation scarcity and cloistering -- in which to drive or bedriven in a car meant that we were out of touch with everyonenot in the car -- we are undeniably in the market for thehelpful, timely phone-call. Still, one might say to thecellphone enthusiast: be patient, you'll get the informationsooner or later anyway, life wasn't so unbearable twenty yearsago, was it? No, it was not. But that's no reason why weshould have to wait now, be inconvenienced, when the cellphoneis at hand. But neither should we be blind to the way that thecellphone and its revolution in access can refigure the veryrelationship it benefits. Was there ever a time in history whenhusbands and wives, parents and children, families, were in suchclose continuing contact? The family on the farm has often beencited as the predecessor to the digital homestead. But unlesshusband and wife and children worked literally together in thefield all day, even the farmstead lacked the unrelievedcontinuity of contact of the "cellstead". Any time Farmer Joneswas out with the crops, and the Missus home cooking up a stew,this husband and wife had more communicative space between themthan today's enlightened couples with cellphones. Is a certain amount of informational distance necessary fora good marriage? Hard to say. Divorce rates were certainlyhigh prior to cellphones. Cellphones probably make infidelitymore difficult .... Well, they certainly make being plausiblyout of touch with a spouse more difficult, but they canfacilitate communication between the parties of indiscretions,so maybe it's a draw. Cellphones certainly make henpecking andits male equivalent easier. But they also allow fasterapologies -- that is, apologies made more shortly after whateverthe offense -- and that's probably good. I recall wanting toapologize to my girlfriend for something I said, as I watchedher take off in a plane to London way back in the 1970s. I wasreduced to sending a telegram to her hotel: "Hi Honey, I'msorry.... Here's a big kiss..." I had to spell out each word onthe phone to the disinterested voice in the Western Uniontelegraph office. "Right, that's 'kiss,' k, i, s, s...." Thecellphone offers a refreshing antithesis to this painful,comical, circuitous route of the telegram. (Conveying thecontent of my telegram by telephone made things even worse, inthis case. Had I written out my message and hand-delivered itto the guy in the telegraph office, at least I would not havehad to spell out "k, i, s, s" to him.) The cellphone can thus make it easier to say somethingnice. And not only apologies. A cellphone can speed andfacilitate the communication of good news, good feelings,anything that we don't want to wait to get home to convey....But impulse cellphoning also speeds expression of pique, whichis probably not so good. If the same device quickens soothingand venting, "Honey, I'm sorry I was such an idiot before," and"Honey, you know I was thinking about what you said, and I'mreally furious...," then the net effect upon this aspect ofmarriage may end up a wash, after all. Whatever the impact of the cellphone on squabbling, itcertainly serves to equalize the roles of husbands and wives infamilies. We have already moved in the past 50 years to fatherswho spend more time with their children and mothers who spendmore time earning money. By making connections to business andfamily equally easy, the cellphone is further transformingfathers and mothers into uniform, interchangeable, all-purposeparents who have the same relationship to their children,providing the same mixture of nurturing and distance, the samecombination of emotional and economic support. There was a time, not very long ago, when differencesbetween men and women, including husbands and wives, werecelebrated. Critics of that age have pointed out, correctly,that "vive la difference!" masked injustices, unfairrestrictions of behavior, mostly for women. One of thechallenges of the cellphone age will be to make sure that suchdifferences as are worth celebrating, that men and women maychoose (not be required) to pursue, remain available....
Shanghai Disney Project Gains Approval
Stork Craft to Recall 2.1 Million Cribs
Eight Charged for Somali Terror Recruiting
Day in Pictures
