Our smartphones have become 'transportal homes' for many of us
Our phones have become more than just devices we use to make calls or send texts. New reseach carried out in nine different countries has looked at this phenomenon and found that our smartphones have increasingly become the place where we live out our lives. Dr Pauline Garvey from Maynooth University was one of the team behind the Irish research for the study and she joined Sarah McInerney on RTÉ Radio 1's Drivetime to talk about the findings. (This piece includes excerpts from the conversation which have been edited for length and clarity - full discussion below).
Garvey explained that they set out to explore the role of the smartphone amongst older adults and how it impacted on their experience of age and retirement. "We spent 16 months in our various countries trying to understand how they were using their smartphone to engage with the world to create new networks or whatever it was that they were doing.
"We had this idea before we started that we would speak to people who didn't consider themselves particularly young or old. And we assumed 'oh, that's maybe 40 to 70', but we quickly realized as soon as we started spending time with people that we were speaking to people in their 60s, 70s, and 80s, and they were telling us that 'actually age does not define me. I've never been so busy. I do not see myself as being old or older or elderly.' We had to expand our parameters pretty quickly."
The smartphone is a place we go so that we are often elsewhere when we are with people
Garvey talked about how our smartphones have become 'transportal homes' for many of us. "The transportal home is this idea that the smartphone is a place we go so that we are often elsewhere when we are with people. It is almost like going home because people are using their smartphones for a significant amount of time to speak to friends, listen to music, download clips or whatever it might be, to be educated. I'm sure we've all had the experience of being with someone who is with us in person, but actually they've obviously gone elsewhere."
However, Garvey also found that smartphones were more about bringing people together than separating them. "Our research participants are using WhatsApp to organise care responsibilities for grandchildren and sometimes even for elderly parents. This age group in their 60s are also using WhatsApp to stay connected, engage with their communities, arrange meetups, join book clubs or whatever. WhatsApp can be this mechanism through which people stay connected as well as this mechanism that separates people."
Hear the discussion in full below. You can can also find out more about the research findings here.
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