Mobile Phones, Japanese Youth, and the Re-placement of Social Contact

The mobile phone is often perceived as an emblematic technology of space-time compression, touted as a tool for anytime, anywhere connectivity. Discussion of young people's mobile phone use, in particular, often stress the liberatory effects of mobile media, and how it enables young people to escape the demands of existing social structures and parental surveillance. This paper argues that the mobile phone can indeed enable communication that crosses prior social boundaries, but this does not necessarily mean that the devices erode the integrity of existing places or social identities. While Japanese youth actively use mobile phones to overcome limitations inherent in their weak social status, their usage is highly deferential to institutions of home and school and the integrity of existing places. Taking up the case of how Japanese teen's mobile phone use is structured by the power-geometries of place, this paper argues that characteristics of mobile phones and mobile communication are not inherent in the device, but are determined by social and cultural context and power relations. After first presenting the methodological and conceptual framework for this paper, we present our ethnographic material in relation to the power-dynamics and regulation of different kinds of places: the private space of the home, the classroom, the public spaces of the street and public transportation, and the virtual space of peer connectivity enabled by mobile communications.