Media Framing of Teen and Adult Mobile Phone Use

Seattle.
The next speaker in this bumper session at AoIR 2011 is Andrea Guzman, who’s interested in the media framing of mobile phones. She has worked through a range of media texts from the New York Times and the Washington Post in the years 2006 and 2010 which discuss such issues, focussing especially on articles which mention mobile phones in their lead paragraphs.

Where mobile phone uses by adults are discussed in such articles, they are framed most of all as a necessary tool for coordinating work, coordinating life activities, and living in modern society. They are portrayed as especially important for more powerful people as well as for parents. A second key frame is convenience – this emerges in 2010, and sees phones as convenient tools for commerce as well as for making charitable donations (given that the Haiti earthquake had just happened then).

Negative frames discuss the phone as a burden or annoyance: an always-on connector from which there is little escape, as well as an annoyance when used by others in public spaces (this emerges especially in 2010). Another negative frame is also of the phone as a risk – especially when used while driving, but also in connection with supposed cancer risks associated with mobile phone use.

Teens, by contrast, are voiceless in the media coverage; they are talked about, but not allowed to speak for themselves. Mobile phone use by teens remains framed by adults, then. Key frames here include the hyperconnection of teens through mobile phones, and their inability to disconnect at any point; they are portrayed as unnecessarily overconnected. The mobile is also a gateway to trouble in these depictions – especially in schools, where phones are seen immediately as being used inappropriately, and as a source of safety issues.

Teen use of mobiles, in fact, is seen as a challenge to authority, both in schools and in other contexts; there is a perception of a constant struggle between teens and adults over appropriate mobile phone use. When teens are at all allowed to speak, necessity is a far more dominant frame; this is also the case where parents speak on behalf of their kids.

Sexting is another fear associated with teen use of mobile phones; it remains relatively rarely mentioned in 2006, but has emerged significantly more by 2010 – but it remains confined mainly to teens, and is only very rarely discussed as something which adults engage in. The term ‘sexting’ is not used even in celebrity cases where inappropriate sexual messages were revealed to have been sent.

So, this coverage reinforces a double standard, keeps teens from being able to speak for themselves.