Palestinian girls, dating, and the mobile phone

Fascinating article. The field trip/study occurred in 2003 - since then the paper admits mobile phones have become more pervasive and common. However, the behavior of the teenage girls it examines during study points out that a mobile phone may be a totem of your social identity (especially, when you're just fiddling with it in public making use of idle time). Italic emphasis added below.

"The girls...did not possess the phone through personalization...Instead, they related to the mobile in a very functional way...seeking devices...not seen as technologically advanced or too sophisticated...Rather than display their mobile phones, then, the girls were preoccupied with hiding this object, which they were not supposed to own - and with denying the relationships it signified"

"For these teenage girls, the mobile phone connoted not mobility and movement in space, but rather intimacy and person-to-person communcation.."

danah boyd says, "In short, they document how culturally specific gendered practices (not technological features) frame the meaning and value of technology."

This rings so true for me... it's like the Clay Shirky quote: "the social characteristics of the web only become interesting once the technology is boring." (paraphrased).

That's why the usage and behavior on a site like craigslist is more interesting than any web service in the last year.

It's certainly fascinating to see how technology and traditions influence each other. Here in the Netherlands I've seen muslim girls receive text messages during the ramadan, signalling them when they're allowed to eat.

How do you get to downvote comments or articles?

Pics of cute palestinian girl or it didn't happen.

(Sorry, it's the internet. Someone had to say it.)