Teenagers & mobile phones

From SMH today.

Mobile phones are the portals to friendships and social networks, the ultimate measure of social status and portable shrines to self-image, he says. And if no one’s calling, there’s little shame in programming your phone to ring you, checking for non-existent text messages or talking up a storm with an imaginary friend.

“Kids are talking incessantly on mobiles or messaging from the back of the bus to the front of the bus; they are constantly reinforcing the message that they are in the loop, that they are part of the in group,” Katz says. “To not have a phone feels like social banishment. It really is an issue of being excluded, of being an outsider.”