In this modern society, mobile phones are indispensable requisites for communication and information exchange as well as the lives of those who perform commercial transactions. In particular, mobile phones greatly have effects on forming and developin...
In this modern society, mobile phones are indispensable requisites for communication and information exchange as well as the lives of those who perform commercial transactions. In particular, mobile phones greatly have effects on forming and developing interpersonal relationships. In this paper, in order to analyze the effects of mobile phones on social relationships, the mobile phone possession of adolescents, who used mobile phones most among all of the age groups, and its causal relationship with the range and intensity of adolescents’ social relationships were analyzed.
In order to analyze data, the number of adolescents’ close friends was set as the index for the range of social relationships. In addition, the degree of affinity for friends & parents was set as the index for the intensity of social relationships, which was a dependent variable, while the possession of mobile phones, which was an independent variable, was categorized into “whether you own a mobile phone or not” and “the duration of ownership”. In order to address an issue of the previous studies, which was the fact that they had not controlled the socioeconomic background factors of the study objects, socioeconomic backgrounds such as the average monthly income for households, the educational level of parents, residential areas, and the type of households, which may affect the social relationships of adolescents, as well as personal characteristics such as sex and the type (e.g., regular high schools and vocational high schools) of their high schools were set as control variables.
The perception of mobile phones at one point of time and the subjective awareness of the influences of mobile phones were analyzed by researching the cross sectional data about only groups whose members owned mobile phones, which had been obtained from the previous studies. In this study, data from “Korea Youth Panel Survey” containing both cross sectional data and time series data were analyzed in order to research the effects of changes in the ownership of mobile phone on changes in social relationships as well as differences between the social relationships of adolescents who owned mobile phones and that of adolescents who did not own them. As an analysis method, a random effect model was used in order to control the time effects of the data from “Korea Youth Panel Survey”.
As a result, differences between the intensity and range of social relationships among adolescents depending on whether they owned mobile phones or not were confirmed. First, adolescents who owned mobile phones felt higher affinity toward their friends or parents than those who did not own mobile phones. When adolescents who did not own mobile phones got to have them, their affinity for their friends or parents got higher. Second, adolescents who had mobile phones for a long period of time had higher affinity for their friends or parents than those who had them for a short period of time. As the duration of owning mobile phones increased, affinity for friends or parents got higher. Thirdly, adolescents who had mobile phones for a long period of time were less likely to lose their friends for reasons such as going on to a higher stage of education. Lastly, it was confirmed that the ownership of mobile phones had structural differences depending on the residential area of the adolescents and the average monthly income for households. These analysis results indirectly imply that socio-economic gaps can affect adolescents’ social relationships through mobile phones.
These research results prove that mobile phones enhance adolescents’ social relationships and keep friendship from being dissolved. Considering the importance of social relationships in the adolescent period, the social effects of mobile phones need to be researched further and in detail. In addition, the “Digital Divide” among mobile phones should be researched in the future since structural differences in the ownership of mobile phones exist.