Chapter 2

The Psychology of Mobile Technologies

Pamela B. Rutledge

Editors’ Note: This chapter lays the foundation for understanding the psychology of mobile
media. By enabling social connection, mobile technologies tap into the biologically based drive
for social contact. Digital tools such as the internet have given us global awareness, but it is
mobiles that give people the control to be personal. Mobiles have helped create a “place out of
place,” or interspace, that allows users to be physically in one location but mentally elsewhere.
Mobiles are challenging the meaning of public spaces and social norms for interaction. Mobile
tools provide the ability to offload lower-value cognitive tasks and focus more on creativity,
analysis, and problem solving. Mobile technologies are changing individual expectations about
opportunities and impacts of activism. The chapter concludes by cautioning against the many
unintended consequences of design, which make it difficult to institute rules and regulations.

According to ITU (2010) and World Bank (Kelly et al., 2012) estimates, 90 percent of the
world’s 7 billion people are now covered by a mobile cellular signal and, with global mobile-
cellular subscriptions reaching nearly 6 billion by the end of 2011, one in four has access to a
cellular device, even in the most rural areas. Around the globe, people can now communicate
with each other as never before imagined throughout history. The magnitude of this impact is
inseparable from the impact of the World Wide Web on the meaning of connection. Public
access to the internet created a structural revolution that established new norms and expectations
for communication and collaboration on a global scale, redefining established patterns of social
action, interaction with information, and the experience of time and space. People, organizations,
and governments around the world are adjusting to new technologies, and some are adjusting
more willingly than others. These transformations are fraught with difficulties; the changes in
how information flows are undermining existing political structures, redefining social capital,
creating new divisions, and challenging individual beliefs and assumptions. This chapter will
examine some of the psychological implications of mobile technologies on individuals and
society in a socially networked world.

Changing Communications Models [A]

Each significant contribution to human communication has had profound repercussions at all
levels of society. Mobile technology is no different. From the alphabet and writing in ancient
Greece to Gutenberg’s printing press, innovations have changed the power structure of society
by altering how information, ideas, knowledge, and social capital can be developed and spread.
How, where, and with whom we can communicate shapes our core beliefs about
ourselves and our understanding of the environment (Beck 1976; Rumelhart 1980). The printing
press ushered in the era of mass communications, creating a new communications paradigm that
was unidirectional and one-to-many, with a small number of producers broadcasting to large

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audiences (Ito 2009). Decades of research to understand the implications of this shift followed,
based on the assumption that individuals were powerless to resist the influence of mediated
communication (Giles 2003; Livingstone 1996). Even as theories became more sophisticated, the
impact of media technologies continued to be conceptualised as linear, unidirectional, and
negative (e.g., Gauntlet 2005; Giles 2003; McGuire 1974; Preiss et al. 2007). The dominance of
this position perpetuated the perception of separateness where the media and technology are
distinct forces, imposing their influence and direction on a passive user (e.g., Pannabecker 1991).
This ability to separate media technologies from the users makes them handy scapegoats for
social ills, as well as relieves the pressure to adapt to change (Biltereyst 2004; Miller 2006).
Communications models were disrupted again with the wholesale adoption of the internet
and social technologies, which introduced dynamically adaptive, peer-to-peer communications
networks. Information rippled out around the world, no longer developed and curated by
corporate media systems. The “many-to-many” world had massive reach and, simultaneously,
personal collaboration and participation (Varnelis 2009), liberating Oldenburg’s conception of
the hangout, or third place, from geographic tethers (Soukup 2006). The movement toward
mobility accentuates this massive structural shift toward the paradox of networked
communications; they are simultaneously personal and public, local and global.
Networked communications, inexpensive and easy-to-use tools, and increased access
challenge the validity of the passive audience assumption. In less than 20 years, the internet has
set a new standard for communications that concurrently enhance autonomy and collaboration
(e.g., Harp et al. 2010; Harris 2004; A. L. Howard 2010; P. H. Howard 2004; Kellner and Share
2007; Winston 1998). Where social technologies have redefined and merged the roles of media
producer, distributor, and audience (Jenkins 2008), mobile devices are redrawing the boundaries
that once delineated communications channels, challenging not only linear models but the notion
of offline and online as separate realities (Baym 2010). Nowhere is this change more profoundly
visible than in the shift from location-bound phone numbers to person-linked mobile devices that
are an integral part of individual identity and public presentation, as well as embedded into the
most mundane of daily activities (Arminen 2007).

The Unique Qualities of Mobile

Communications define the foundations of social life. Mobile technologies enable
communication free from the constraints of space and geography, with nearly seamless
interaction among people around the globe. Handheld computing and cellular technologies
enable multimodal communication and web access, creating new norms for connections and
information use. Mobile devices have become so embedded in daily life that they are not only
normal, but perceived as essential (Hemment 2005). With the ubiquitous adoption of mobile
devices comes flexibility and autonomy, placing the locus of control literally and
psychologically into the hands of the user.
Mobile phones are a new technology wrapped in an existing mental model. New
technologies often meet resistance to adoption because the technologies challenge existing
schema and create cognitive dissonance. Mental models are powerful because they are the basis
for how the human brain identifies, categorises, and makes meaning out of new information so
that it can be stored in memory for later retrieval (Hutchinson and Gigerenzer 2004; Klucharev
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2008; O’Sullivan and Durso 1984; Rojahn and Pettigrew 1992). Resolution of cognitive
dissonance can come from denial or by expending the cognitive effort to create new meanings
and attitudes that support the adoption of new behaviors and social patterns (Agarwal and Prasad
1998; Morris and Venkatesh 2000). Mobile devices evolved from a known technology with a
clearly understood social purpose.
Mobile devices have revolutionized the way people can communicate because they
enhance human experience through person-to-person connection and enable new forms of social
action. A socially networked world of shareware and flash mobs is at odds with the traditional
proprietary structures of the communications companies, and mobile users appropriate the
centralized structure across a network culture of Global System for Mobile Communications
(GSM), text messaging, and wireless (Hemment 2005). As a peer-to-peer structure, mobile
devices form self-organizing networks of individual users, and these networks possess emergent
properties that are much more robust than the artificially constructed networks built by
traditional communications providers (Barabasi 2003; Marin and Wellman 2009). The
redundancy in a self-organizing network decreases network failures, severely limiting the ability
of any source to control information and concomitantly increasing the speed at which
information spreads (Bampo et al. 2008; Gilbert et al. 2007; Heylighen 1999). We see continual
demonstrations of this quality, such as the viral spread of the KONY 2012 video (Jenkins 2012),
the Red Cross efforts to gather support and resources during the Haitian and Japanese earthquake
crises (Gross 2010), and commercially, the Twitter protests against Motrin pain reliever
advertisements (Evans 2008).

Perspectives on Technological Impact

The ubiquity of mobile devices has drawn attention to the power of mobile technologies to
communicate experience, identity, and emotion and to shift everyday behaviors in ways that are
potentially profound (Arminen 2007; Fogg and Eckles 2007). Research into the impact of
communication technologies has been dominated by two contrasting views: technological
determinism and social constructivism (Mesch and Talmud 2008). Technological determinism is
a reductionist approach in which technology is a primary cause of social change and is
responsible for the underlying structures of social organisation (Chandler 1995). Hypotheses of
impact are based on the affordances of each technology, often relative to the status quo, such as
face-to-face communication. The technological deterministic perspective has resulted in polar
views. One is dystopian, focusing on the comparative deficits of mediated communications, such
as increased social isolation (Putnam 1995), the inability to form meaningful attachments or have
a sense of presence due to limited social cues (Caplan 2002, 2007), or the increasing isolation of
marginalised members of society (e.g., Mesch 2006; Mesch and Talmud 2008; Walther 1996;
Walther, Anderson, and Park 1994). The alternative is the utopian view of technology that argues
for increased democracy and civic participation (Cheong and Jie 2010), increases global empathy
(Nicovitch, Boller, and Cornwell 2005), and overcomes the digital divide (e.g., Harp et al. 2010;
Papa et al. 2000; Salmon, Post, and Christensen 2003).
Conversely, social constructivists argue that social pressures drive the path of technology.
From this vantage, social institutions interact in a symbiotic system with the environment, and
cultural meanings, such as language and cognition, are a product of human interaction with the
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environment (Chandler 1995; Pannabecker 1991). Social shaping stakes out some middle ground
by positing that technological affordances enable behaviors while social forces drive
technological change through emergent uses (Baym 2010; Katz 2006). James E. Katz and Mark
Aakhus (2002), for example, proposed the apparatgeist theory to explain how communication is
shaped through the interaction of meaning-making around a device, as well as by the affordances
of the device itself.
Technical determinism and the sociocultural models all overlook biologically based
drivers of human behavior. In doing so, they do not account for the importance of unconscious
and instinctual-level filtering and processing to the formation of individual goals and motivations
and, therefore, to the resultant attitude and behavior change, such as technology adoption, across
society. Social connection is a primary biological drive at the unconscious level, and using it as
a referent sheds new light on the rapid spread of mobile technologies and the adoption of social
networks.
In the 1940s, Abraham Maslow developed a hierarchy of needs model (Figure 2.1) that
has become a culturally based rule of thumb across many disciplines, from business management
(Bateman, O’Neill, and Kenworthy 2002) and design (Garrett 2003) to education (Huitt 2007).
A. Maslow (1954) described human motivation as an ordered process in which the satisfaction of
lower goals allowed individuals to move on to satisfying higher goals. The five levels, beginning
with the lowest and most basic, are 1) biological needs, 2) safety and order, 3) connection
belonging and love, 4) self-esteem, and 5) the desire for personal growth. This model is an
easily applicable heuristic for human behavior, but more important, it exposes a widely held
assumption that human connection is not the primary motivator of behavior, including
technology adoption.
Neurological evidence shows that humans are biologically wired to seek social
attachment (Insel 2001). Maslow’s model shows a popularly held view, but one that undervalues
the biological nature of social connection at the most basic level: human survival.
Conceptualizing human motivation as a system revolving around the biological imperative of
social connection reframes the rapid spread of mobile and social technologies. How mobile
technologies are used and integrated varies across cultures, contexts, and demographics—but
why people seek to connect does not vary.

Figure 2.1 Maslow’s hierarchy of needs undervalues the biological imperative of social
connection, which is central to human motivation.
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 Social connection has been an adaptive advantage throughout evolution. Collaboration
and connection were essential to survival behaviors, such as getting food or raising young. Social
cognition co-opts neural networks for affective processing at the preconscious level as a survival
mechanism (Norris and Cacioppo 2007). The rapid preconscious processing of emotional
information is central to determining social context and cultural norms that dictate group
behaviors such as cohesion, inclusion, and potential threats. By enabling social connection,
mobile technologies tap into the biologically based drive for social contact and the attendant
dynamics of social influence (e.g., Cialdini and Goldstein 2004), group affiliation (e.g., Smith,
Murphy, and Coats 1999), social identity (e.g., Brewer and Pierce 2005; Roccas and Brewer
2002; Stets and Burke, 2000), and psychological well-being (e.g., Snyder and Lopez 2005).
Social connection is essential to psychological as well as physical survival. The developmental
psychologist John Bowlby (1982) demonstrated the irreversible mental health damage of
children without early social connection. R. F. Baumeister and M. R. Leary (1995) developed the
belonging hypothesis to describe the fundamental need to form strong relationships. They argue
that people are motivated to cultivate and maintain social bonds through frequent personal
contact.
Howard Rheingold (1999) chronicled how the Amish, traditionally known for their
reluctance to embrace modern technologies, have adopted the mobile phone. The Amish criteria
for adoption is whether a technology brings them together as a community and culture or drives
them apart. The Amish have persistently fought to maintain group boundaries and cohesion in
order to preserve their cultural values. Their criterion for technology acceptance reflects both the
biological drivers that influence “groupness” as a survival mechanism and the necessity of
cohesion for the maintenance of a social group.

Mobile Impact on Individuals, Families, and Society

Like any new tools, new technology invites experimentation and exploration as a first step to
discover its capabilities and usability. The process of evaluation requires a cognitive investment
to achieve some degree of mastery to get the knowledge that enables an individual to estimate a
technology’s benefits for the individual’s explicit and inherent goals. The learning process to
achieve mastery activates neural networks in areas involved in memory, attention, visual
imagery, motor execution, and affective experience, creating vast new linkages and
understandings (Falk et al. 2010; Falk and Lieberman 2012). Acceptance and initial adoption are
the result of cognitive projections, or schema, of a new user’s value expectations (Gravill,
Compeau, and Marcolin 2002; Rayburn and Palmgreen 1984). The assimilation, appropriation,
and personalisation of a new technology are the results of new learning and competencies that
change attitudes, including self-concept and self-efficacy through the experience of
accomplishment (e.g., Bandura 2002; Gecas 1989). Even small successes, such as texting,
sending a photo online, or sharing a video, require proactive engagement, and the user is
rewarded with digital evidence of technological ability (Fogg and Eckles 2007; White 2007).

INDIVIDUALS
Digital technologies have challenged our understanding of identity by providing opportunities to
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experiment and explore multiple identities and representations of self (e.g., Bargh, McKenna,
and Fitzsimons 2002; Turkle 1984). According to K. Y. A. McKenna, A. S. Green, and M. E.
Gleason (2002), digital interaction can have great benefits by providing opportunities to practice
new behaviors and learn from observing others. Social modeling and learning theories (Bandura
2001, 2002) have been used to explain the impact of group participation on individual attitudes
and behaviors and the ability to practice new behaviors in a safe environment or to observe
desired behaviors demonstrated. Gay teens, for example, have found support and validation by
connecting with people who have faced similar challenges (McKenna and Bargh 1998).
In social identities theories, the self is socially constructed using salient intra-group
characteristics to validate and enhance self-concept and self-worth (Brewer 1991; Obst and
White 2005). Women who shared a passion for the Twilight saga experienced validation from
connecting with other fans, which led to transformative experiences in their personal lives
(Rutledge 2011a, 2012). College students and suburban community members experienced an
increased sense of well-being by connecting to social networks (Ellison, Steinfield, and Lampe
2007; Wellman et al. 2001).
Throughout history, various forms of ostracism from the “tribe” have been used to
maintain order, punish deviance, and increase social cohesion. Mobile technologies have been
shown to trigger the positive emotions of belonging through facilitating social engagement, as
well as negative emotions, such as low self-esteem and decreased well-being, from being
excluded from mobile conversations and text messages (Bianchi and Phillips 2005). At the same
time, anonymity and lack of accountability via mobile devices can lead to antisocial behavior
such as cyberstalking (Finn and Banach 2000), cyberbullying (Li 2006), and bluejacking1
(Thom-Santelli, Ainslie, and Gay 2007), although evidence suggests they are not as prevalent as
often assumed (Postmes, Spears, and Lea 1998).
Mobile technologies become personalised social constructions. Whereas PC-based
resources are often shared, mobile phones are personal property carried around in pockets,
purses, and backpacks and containing symbols and artifacts of an individual’s life and identity.
G. Staid (2008) describes a teen’s mobile device as a “kind of ‘shell’ which encloses their social
life and networks, emotional experiences, personal information” (150). S. Campbell (2008)
argues that mobile devices, as wearable technology, are subsumed by the body as an integral
part. Technology is an increasingly important part of one’s sense of self and presentation of self,
especially for teens. Most mobile phones are chosen more for their aesthetic qualities and what
they say about the user than for their capabilities. Mobile phones are “the first personalised
medium for distance communication” (Arminen 2007, 433) and become demonstrations of
personhood and selfhood (Campbell and Russo 2003).
Teens express ambivalence about the constant connection of mobile phones, yet they
almost never turn theirs off for fear of psychic disconnection. The always-on presence is
theorised to be potentially problematic, increasing anxiety, psychological dependence, and lack
of reflection (Turkle 2008). H. Geser (2006) and Rich Ling (2004) have portrayed the constant
access and availability to social circles as an “umbilical cord.” For Geser, as for Turkle, this
aspect has the potential to be regressive, stunting psychological and social growth. Some argue,
however, that access to information and connection creates a positive experience of self through
enhanced confidence and competence (Rutledge 2012). Research by Ling (2004) suggests that
much mobile communication is used to arrange social activities involving face-to-face meetings.

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The application of attachment theory (Ainsworth 1979) suggests that continual contact among
connections functions as a glue that strengthens the bonds and qualities of attachments, both in
anticipation of face-to-face engagements and in increasing the sense of presence to virtual
connections (Rutledge 2011b). In this way, mobile technologies shorten the distance between
individuals and their meaningful social networks and facilitate the biological drives for social
connection.
No matter what the proximal use of technology, from negotiating fair market prices for
crops to posting Facebook updates, mobile technologies afford accurate and timely feedback and
proof of one’s self-efficacy, the ability to take effectual action in one’s environment (e.g.,
Bandura 2004; Maddux 2005; Pajares 2006; Zimmerman 2000). The result is psychologically
validating and has a cumulative positive effect on subjective well-being over time, through the
upward spiral of positive emotions (Fredrickson 2004), engagement (Csikszentmihalyi 1991),
and resilience (Masten and Reed 2005). A greater sense of self-efficacy and enhanced resilience
increases an individual’s willingness to take on future risks and persevere in the face of
difficulties or setbacks; these experiences in turn enhance perceptions of self-efficacy, continuing
the upward spiral (Fredrickson and Losada 2005). The promotion of self-efficacy and human
agency is an implicit result of positive technological interaction, from education, commercial
activity, and civic participation to social support (Bandura 1982, 2002).

FAMILIES
Mobile technologies impact families in a number of ways. In developed countries, mobile
phones are the primary communication source for teens (Ito et al. 2008). Parents alternately
appreciate mobile technologies for their ability to help keep children safe and connected to
family and friends and express concerns about the level of use and constant connectivity
(Lenhart et al. 2010).
Mobile phones create new avenues of communication for sharing concerns and
expressing affection difficult to reveal in person (Portus 2008). For families spread across large
distances, mobile communications can provide the connection that maintains relationships, such
as between grandparents and grandchildren living in different communities. Mobile telephones
also help preserve both relationships and culture across extended families separated by great
distances (Urry 2007). Migrant workers in the Guangdong Province represent approximately
30 percent of the provincial population, yet they are isolated, with no security and emotional
exchange or support from family. Mobile phones allow the migrant workers to fulfill social and
identity needs by accessing enews and mobile entertainment and maintaining social contacts with
distant families (Wu 2009). In transnational Filipino families, mobile technology mitigates some
of the effects of migration, at the same time giving rise to conflicts due to the changed realities of
mother-away families and traditional role expectations in Philippine society (Cabanes and
Acedera 2012).

SOCIETY
Mobile technologies’ real power may be in the impact they have in developing countries,
improving economic opportunities, providing health information and care, creating programs for
literacy, improving water quality, and reconnecting families separated by hardship, crisis, or war.
The Manobi Development Foundation (www.manobi.net/foundation) uses cellular technology to

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distribute market prices for farm goods to rural farmers in Senegal so that the farmers are able to
negotiate fairer prices with middlemen. Its success and the increased profits have resulted in
investment in new schools for the village . Manobi uses GPS to survey and register land to
ensure it is inherited by legitimate family members. It also connects the mobile telephones of
midwives to national birth registries so that rural children have birth certificates that will grant
them access to education and healthcare.
In Ghana, mobile technologies have saved time and reduced transportation costs,
improving the profitability of trade. Traders with mobile phones enjoy a competitive advantage
over traders without mobile communications (Overa 2008).The demand for mobile phones in
some rural areas is turning local women into micro-entrepreneurs; for example, a Grameen Bank
affiliate’s Village Phone Program in Bangladesh allows women to earn income from renting
mobile phones to neighbors (Anderson 2007).

Real-Time Connectivity: Impact on Space and Connectedness

Real-time connectivity has the potential to transform our understanding of time and space.
Digital communications are a “place out of place,” or interspace, that allows us to be physically
in one location but mentally elsewhere. Presence is a term for what takes place when the
physical world recedes and the user exists within the context of the communication, whether it is
voice, text, or image. When we use mobile devices, our interlocutor experiences our presence,
but those around us feel our mental absence (Ijsselsteijn, Freeman, and De Ridder 2001;
Lombard and Ditton 1997). Presence is the ability to experience empathy, the “as if” condition,
that induces the cognitive and affective responses of “being there,” whether the communication
is synchronous or asynchronous (Barak 2007; Nicovitch, Boller, and Cornwell 2005), although
the immediacy of synchronicity increases the sense of presence and shared place. The
introduction of rich multimedia can amplify the sense of co-presence in mobile communication,
making the mediated distance feel almost seamless (Arminen 2007).
The ubiquity of mobile devices is challenging the meaning of public spaces and social
norms for interaction. D. Hemment (2005) proposes that the boundary between the created
virtual space and the embodied, social space is experienced as disruptive. A mobile phone
conversation in a public place invokes social conventions about the observation of distance,
privacy, and anonymity applied because of an invisible “other” (Banjo, Hu, and Sundar 2008).
The invisible participant creates an ambiguity about how others should respond to conversational
behaviors; no such ambiguity arises when both sides of a conversation can be overheard,
increasing the sense of exclusion and annoyance. These feelings in turn create a need to evaluate
and redefine new social rules, or m-etiquette (Arminen 2007). Ling (2002) points out that the
physical environment often imposes “enforced eavesdropping” (2) on those in proximity to a
mobile phone conversation. A mobile phone used in public is interacting simultaneously with
two audiences, leaving embarrassed eavesdropping listeners to take such action as moving away
physically or engaging with their own device. Mobile communications effects go beyond the
information generated by the device; gestures that indicate interaction with a mobile phone can
also be used to send symbolic symbols to intercept potential interaction, such as to avoid an
encounter.

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Location-Based Connectivity and Activities
Technological innovations such as GPS, mobile cell phone identification, and network
triangulation are giving users access to mobile services and information that are location-based
and context-aware. Paradoxically, the freedom of mobility allows locative media to reestablish
the role of place and location through linked applications that allow environmental exploration
(Hemment 2005). For the user, location-based services can deliver timely, relevant, and engaging
content that improves various types of experience, such as socialising, commercial experience,
entertainment, or education. For developers and network operators, these services hold the
promise of new revenue streams (Rao and Minakakis 2003).
Until recently, technology was not seen as a persuasive experience independent of
message. Mobile devices, however, have the ability to change attitudes and behavior in a number
of ways that rely on context awareness, which can take the form of reminders, practical
information, and rich-media experience (Fogg, Cuellar, and Danielson 2007). Researchers found
that Chicago Transit Authority bus ridership increased when the system implemented
BusTracker,2 which provides real-time scheduling information, such as routes and delays, via
text message or email alerts (Tang and Piyushimita 2012).
Every intentional human–technology interaction embodies explicit and implicit goals on
the part of the developer and the user, and these goals are not always congruent. Persuasion can
exist subtly in design structures that help people to navigate effectively through a device menu or
purposefully in device-supported behavioral reminders. The emotional investment individuals
have in mobile devices, however, makes the devices particularly persuasive; the extension of
personal identity and anthropomorphic projection onto the device enhances its power of social
influence and the need for identity congruence. The results of interactions with devices and
applications have a halo effect, positively or negatively influencing psychological and subjective
factors about a device and application as they challenge or affirm individual identity (Bandura
2002; Nisbett and Wilson 1977).
Growing user control and expanding technological capabilities that allow the delivery of
rich content and social connectivity increase the potential for engagement and persuasive
experiences. Accordingly, applications that deliver immersive experiences, such as augmented
reality, are highly persuasive technologies as they enable the on-demand addition of virtual
information to a user’s sensory perceptions and create opportunities for immersion, simulation,
and interaction (Cialdini 2007; Escalas 2004).
Connected to social networks, mobile applications leverage the impact of social
influence. Researchers have shown correlations between behavior change and neural activity in
regions involved in monitoring social perceptions and have affirmed the role of social factors in
persuasion and engagement (Falk et al. 2010; Falk and Lieberman 2012). It is not surprising that
social computing applications that empower users to locate one another and create and share
media are becoming increasingly popular (Goh et al. 2011). Services that use location to offer
social experiences include Groupme (www.groupme.com) group messaging, Lanyrd
(www.lanyrd.com) social conference director, and Sonar (www.sonar.me) and Highlight
(www.highlig.ht), which, like the successful Foursquare (www.foursquare.com), identify people
who are close by.
Motivating individuals to engage in content creation and sharing enhances user
experience and commitment by cultivating intrinsic motivation through the sense of ownership
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and identity (Malone 1981; Ryan and Deci 2000). Foursquare, for example, motivates users to
participate through the inclusion of game dynamics, such as rewards, points, leader boards, and
other forms of user accomplishment based on participation.
In educational settings, location-based devices allow for mobile learning in a way that
establishes a metaphor for mobility across contexts (Brown et al. 2010). J. P. Gee (2007) argues
that video games teach literacy and cognitive flexibility as players continually explore new levels
with new rules and attributes. Similarly, as learners are physically on the move, mobile devices
demonstrate the rapidity of framework shifts with context-dependent knowledge by engaging
variable local stimuli. The ability to see interconnected knowledge and multiple perspectives
increases cognitive flexibility (Spiro, Feltovich, and Jacobson 1990) and empathy (McNulty,
Davies, and Maddux 2010; Preston and de Waal 2002).

Privacy, Trust, and Exposure

With the development of interactive mobile technologies and context- and location-aware data
gathering, there is an inherent conflict between sharing and privacy. The meaning of privacy
varies substantially among people and situations (Ahern et al. 2007) and individual behaviors
often do not align with reported beliefs (Patil and Lai 2005).
Issues also surround potential data harvesting and aggregation of personal information
from mobile and digital services. Violation of privacy and misrepresentation of actions break an
implicit social contract, whether it is between individuals, between customers and companies, or
between citizens and governments. Breaching implicit social contracts is not legally actionable
but causes serious damage to trust and goodwill. Developers are investigating ways to establish
trust levels with mobile users through securing locations and providing certification services that
allow content creators to tag their content without exposing their identity to content users
(Lenders et al. 2008).

Generation Y and the New Normal

Generation Y (also called Gen Y, digital natives, the Millennials, the Net Generation, and the
Echo Boomers) is the cohort3 that has grown up in a socially networked, always-connected
world. Marc Prensky (2009) famously distinguished between digital natives and digital
immigrants by describing the former as a generation born “speaking the language of
technology.”
Gen Y has distinct psychological differences resulting [Au: Is this what you mean?]
from the formative social and environmental childhood experiences that shape individual
assumptions and core beliefs (e.g., Casson 1983; Erikson 1993; Lavin and Agatstein 1984). Core
beliefs establish category patterns and relationships that influence the processing of all new
information and provide the heuristics and schema used to make judgments. Gen Y has core
assumptions about “normal” as the ability to access and distribute information and reach social
connections on demand around the clock. These views have significant ramifications for their
expectations about education, employment, collaboration, and participation, ideas often viewed
with considerable consternation by older generations.

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 N. Howe and W. Strauss (2000) suggest that the core beliefs of Gen Y have made them
optimistic and involved. Many others, on the other hand, view Gen Y’s use of social networking
and expectations of immediacy as signs of self-entitlement, self-indulgence, and narcissism
(Bauerlein 2008; Twenge 2006). Prensky (2001) disagrees. He argues that concerns over the
“debilitating effects” of technology, such as GPS systems diminishing Gen Y’s map-reading
ability, spell-checking and calculators precluding the need to learn spelling and math, or, as N.
Carr (2006) expressed, Google making people stupider, all lose sight of the skills that matter for
the 21st century. Digital tools provide the ability to offload lower-value cognitive tasks, such as
data storing, and devote the brain’s scarce resources to learning skills such as creativity, analysis,
strategy, and problem solving that will reap greater individual and society-wide benefits in
increased productivity, economic growth, and social change. Gen Y lives in a world that is
information-rich and time-scarce. Gen Y’s core expectations and assumptions are redefining
individual access and voice, organisational hierarchy, education, technological integration,
privacy, time, and social validation in favor of self-efficacy and individual agency (e.g., Arellano
2007; Bannon, Ford, and Meltzer 2011; Godwin-Jones 2005).
Social and mobile technologies have given people unparalleled control over their lives.
People act and, because they are linked in real time, see the actions others take and can interact
with them, creating collective efficacy (Bandura 2000). In the first 24 hours after the earthquake
in Haiti, the Red Cross raised $5 million in donations from text messaging. Text messaging is
easy, so critics call this slactivism, or feel-good efforts of volunteerism that take no real sacrifice
or engagement. Slactivism or not, the Red Cross raised new money and expanded public
awareness because of the assumption that, from protests to flash mobs, small individual acts
matter. Mobile technologies change individual expectations about the ability—and the
responsibility—to contribute.

Smart Mobs and Collective Action

The biggest changes from mobile and emerging technologies are coming from the new
relationships, connections, and social practices that new technology-enabled communications
structures afford. Technology has enabled collective action in many different ways: online
information creation on wikis and aggregators, such as the 4 billion English entries on
Wikipedia; collaborative events that move on and offline, including alternate reality games such
as Conspiracy for Good; or coordinating offline resources through online access, as in the
political activism of Tahrir Square in Egypt or the resource management in the aftermath of the
Haitian earthquake.
P. Levy (1997) defines collective intelligence as “universally distributed intelligence that
is constantly enhanced, coordinated in real time and resulting in the effective mobilisation of
skills” (13). Smart mobs, as first identified by Howard Rheingold (2002), are mobile,
technologically mediated, self-organising social groups. But as the prevalence of technology-
enabled collective action grows, so do variations among different types of mobs based on
duration, focus, implementation, and purpose (Kindberg et al. 2011).
Smart mobs behave “intelligently” because an adaptive communication network allows
for social coordination on a vast scale (Shirky 2008). Since Rheingold (2002) documented the
smart mobs responsible for overthrowing president Joseph Estrada of the Philippines in 2001, we
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have seen many other examples of the impact of collective behavior, not all positive. In 2011,
collective action ran the gamut, from political events, such as in the Middle East and on Wall
Street, to arts-based flash mobs promoted by Knight Arts and Random Acts of Culture4 to the
flash-mob looting and rioting in London (Downs 2011). This urge to participate is reinforced by
people’s dopaminergic reward centers responding to perceptions of social validation and
belonging. As group size increases, the social and biological triggers to participate increase
(Carlson 1998; Kosslyn 2006; MacLean 1985). Mobile technologies facilitate group
collaboration and collective action in situ, in real time, heightening the experience of
participation.
Key components of smart mob formation and action are the desire for communication
and belonging, available and affordable instantaneous communication, and a shared goal or
purpose within a designated time frame (Harmon and Metaxas 2010). Digital tools benefit mob
behaviors by facilitating motivation and organized action, attracting new supporters, and
garnering attention through multiple media channels. Crowd-based collaborative events and
projects all share coordinated collective action but not the same level of managed coordination,
focus of purpose, or psychological dynamics and sustainability.
At the same time that social technologies have eroded the confidence of official
institutions, mobile technologies have established a new standard of personalisation and control.
The combination of the need for social validation and demands for local control have fueled a
trend toward crowdsourcing, such as Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, which brings together
unrelated individuals to crowdsource tasks (Kittur, Chi, and Suh 2008). Nearly 50,000 projects
have posted proposals for financing on Kickstarter (www.kickstarter.com), the world’s largest
online funding source, since the site’s inception in 2009 (Wortham 2012). Kiva.org
(www.kiva.org) crowdsources micro-loans by connecting small borrowers with private lenders
around the world. Mobile technologies built on application program interfaces allow easy
development and shared use of data so that users can contribute location-based data, retrievable
photos, information, and experiences to map the environment. Ushahidi (www.ushahidi.org) is
an open source platform available to developers to create crowdsourced solutions for crisis
information. Initially developed to report postelection violence in Kenya in 2008, it is now used
for everything from managing snow removal in New York City to reporting gender violence in
Pakistan.

Future Trends and Implications

The rapid change in technology capabilities and use presents challenges for everyone with a
stake in understanding how and why people use and attribute meaning to technology. Evidence
suggests that there are many unintended consequences of design, which makes developing and
instituting rules and regulations difficult. Doing so is all the more problematic because
institutions regulate through a rearview mirror when they try to solve problems that have already
occurred. Technologies change, and behaviors with them, but regulations become cast in cement,
exacerbating unintended and unforeseen consequences.
The impact of technology is not about the tools; it is about the behaviours that the tools
facilitate. Mobile communications create opportunities, but it is human goals and motivations
that drive solutions. Successful development and guidelines come from identifying the
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fundamentals, not the current use of a specific technology. When we look at the impact of mobile
devices on our young people, we rarely ask what skills, experiences, and knowledge they will
need in order to succeed in their world (not ours). The world is changing quickly. Parents,
educators, developers, and officials have to step outside their own hubris and look with ever-
changing eyes.
The following are identified as fundamental trends in the mobile ecosystem:
• The distinction between online and offline is no longer relevant. Mobile technologies and
transmedia content will continue to close the gap and blur the boundaries.
• In an information-rich environment, the premium will be on facilitating filtering and sorting
information without giving up choice and control. In the same way that they are suspicious of
advertising, consumers and users will become increasingly suspicious of recommenders and
search algorithms that are not transparent.
• The trend to mobile emphasises the importance of personal environments. The internet has
given us global awareness, but mobile technologies give people the control to be personal.
The flood of information reinforces the need to identify what is important, both
metaphorically and practically. Gen Y sensibilities lean toward balancing life and work. All
these trends argue for increasing emphasis on localization, personalisation, and control, with
impacts on everything from work to civic engagement.
• Global visibility creates empathy. The combination of individual agency and global
awareness will be reflected in society-wide pressures for corporate social responsibility and
social entrepreneurship.
• Peer-to-peer culture flattens hierarchies and values transparency and authenticity. This
trend will put increasing pressure on governments, institutions, organizations, and individuals
to behave honestly and with a human face.
• Human connection is a primary driver of human behavior. Users are experience-loyal, not
device- or brand-loyal. Technologies that recede and that put the focus on human goals will
be most successful. Organisations and governments will come under pressures to be more
transparent, participatory, authentic, human, and consistent across all channels.

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Endnotes [A]
1. Bluejacking refers to sending unsolicited messages to other mobile devices within a
transmission range of about 10 meters (or approximately 33 feet), using Bluetooth
capabilities.
2. CTA BusTracker, www.ctabustracker.com/bustime/home.jsp.
3. There is little agreement as to the exact dates of Gen Y. Its birthdates fall somewhere
between the late 1980s and 2000. The salient point is that it is the generation that has grown
up with socially networked connectivity.
4. The Knight Foundation, www.knightarts.org/random-acts-of-culture.

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