Social complexity and mobile communication.
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Scholars have consistently found that teens use mobile phones to bond closely with small groups of peers, and there is widespread concern that these insular peer networks limit access to social capital. However, much of this research is based on self-report measures that do not reveal the rich social dynamics underlying social bonding and mobile phone use, nor do they show how specific types of mobile interactions accumulate over time to enable or hinder access to specific types of social capital.
The primary objective of this research is to provide a rich understanding of mobile phone based peer bonding during adolescence and its consequences for social capital using an innovative data collection technique that triangulates smartphone log data, onscreen survey questions, and in-depth interviews. The secondary objective of this research is to develop a web-based interface that will be widely available to researchers and allow them to create customized versions of an existing smartphone application that collects anonymized voice call, texting, and email data.
Tele-cocooning & Network Insulation
Early mobile phone studies found that mobile communication facilitates homogeneous interactions with close like-minded ties resulting network insulation what Habuchi (2005) termed “Tele-cocooning.” Scholars conducting research in a variety of countries have consistently focused on adolescents’ intense use mobile phones to bond closely with small groups of peers. It has been argued that such use of mobile phones comes at the expense of ‘bridging social capital’, which is derived from weaker social ties that provide access to diverse information and resources (Putnam 2000; Lin 2001). Nevertheless, socio- emotional selectivity theory along with empirical evidence from social network and mobile phone studies indicate that although mobile phone-based bonding may be a common activity during adolescence, intense mobile phone use may also be motivated by the desire to build bridging social capital. The prevalent use of self-report measures of mobile phone use and the lack of comparative analysis in the literature are likely strong factors contributing to these contradictory findings, pointing to the need for a study that triangulates smartphone log data, onscreen survey questions, and in-depth interviews.
Questions
To what extent is intensity of mobile phone use during adolescence driven by bridging versus bonding behaviour?
To what extent is the differing usage of text messaging and voice functions between adolescents and adults driven by bridging versus bonding behaviour?
How do adolescence understand and articulate their own bridging and bonding behaviours as they relate to their mobile phone use?
recent studies by Boase and Ling (forthcoming) and Kobayshi and Boase (2012) comparing self-report measures of mobile phone use with digital trace data of actual mobile phone use have clearly shown that respondents do not accurately self- report mobile phone use. Boase and Ling (forthcoming) conducted a comparative analysis drawing on self-report data collected through a nationally representative survey conducted in Norway and server log data for the month in which respondents completed the survey. They found that the self-report data correlate only moderately with the server log data, indicating low criterion validity. Kobayashi and Boase (2012) used self-report data collected through an on-screen smartphone questionnaire with log data for the smartphones of 310 Android phone users residing in Japan. Their findings showed that respondents vastly over-reported their mobile phone usage, and that this inaccurate self-reporting could result in spurious correlations between mobile phone use and other activities, such as civic engagement. Given that the majority of mobile phone use studies reviewed above draw on self-report measures, it is quite possible that the association between bonding and mobile phone use can be at least somewhat attributed to measurement error. The study proposed here overcomes this limitation by using a method (described below) that draws on tested behavioural measures of mobile phone use and links them to bonding and bridging behaviour and measures of mobile phone use and links them to bonding and bridging behaviour and attitudes.
Methodological Limitations of Mobile Media Research
The triangulation of data attained from smartphone logs, on-screen survey questions, and in- depth interviews, is designed to address the research questions. First year will be devoted to the development of a customized version of the smartphone data collection application originally developed by the main principal investigator, Dr. Jeffrey Boase from the University of Toronto, and a collaborator, Dr. Tetsuro Kobayashi from the University of Tokyo. In the second year, the customized application will be installed on the smartphones of 100 adolescent high school students living in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). The students will be selected from a random stratified sample of public schools in the GTA, whereby ten high schools will be randomly selected, from each of which 10 students will be randomly selected.
Once each participant has installed the application, a brief summary of their mobile phone usage patterns will be sent to the researchers. The research team will use these summaries as the basis of an in-depth, one-on-one, hour-long interview with each student. The interviews will focus on having the students describe their mobile phone usage, social relationships, and motivations for bonding and bridging activities in their own words. The interviewer will also ask the students to reflect on their personal usage summary produced by the application in the context of these topics. Each interview will be transcribed. The in-depth interviews conducted with these 100 students will enable the investigators to more deeply understand the ways in which adolescents understand their own mobile phone usage with regard to bonding and bridging, also attuning the investigators to possible perceptions and sources of this behavior that they had not previously considered. After these interviews have been conducted, the investigators will use textual analysis software to explore emerging themes and write at several international peer reviewed publications.
Method Design
Results
To our knowledge this study will be the first to triangulate reliable digital trace data of mobile phone use with data gathered from in-depth interviews and on-screen survey questions. It contributes to mobile communication studies by addressing several major shortcomings in the literature, including the reliance on inaccurate self-report measures of mobile phone usage, lack of attention to the relationship between bridging social capital and mobile phone use during adolescence, lack of systematic research comparing adolescents and adults, and a flexible method that allows for the development of survey questions based on in-depth interviews.
Common mobile communication platforms found in the study
In addition to addressing major theoretical and methodological holes in mobile communication research, this project further addressed an issue of immense societal importance: namely, the extent to which mobile phone use limits world views and the development of social skills among adolescents by acting as a medium through which they bond closely with small, insular peer groups.
By examining the extent to which these devices may also enable the formation of bridging social capital, which exposes individuals to new ideas and information, we took seriously the possibility that mobile phone use may also have important social benefits for adolescents. Taking this possibility seriously helps to round out our understanding of the social significance of these devices for young people and helps to inform the development of policy and the public discussion of this topic.
