Unlimited or disrupted communication? How does the development of the mobile phone effect our ability of social action?

Marie-Sophie Löhlein ()

No 04/2009, IET Working Papers Series from Universidade Nova de Lisboa, IET/CICS.NOVA-Interdisciplinary Centre on Social Sciences, Faculty of Science and Technology

Abstract: The aim of this essay is to discuss the thesis of the German Sociologist Günter Burkhart that in modern societies a phenomenon appeared which he calls “handymania”, an excessive and nearly addictive use of the mobile phones especially from adolescents. After a short overview about the history of the cell phone, I will relate this development to Jürgen Habermas “theory of communicative action”, more precisely to his diagnosis of a pathological society (“lifeworld”) to find out if the “handymania” could be one expression of it. Adjacent I will present social-psychological theories from E.H.Erikson and Tilmann Habermas to ascertain whether juveniles could really be a high-risk group for this kind of addiction. I will focus on the ability to communicate in an Habermasian way that could be seriously harmed by the unregulated usage of cell phones.

Keywords: telecommunication; cell phones; youth behaviour; Habermas (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L96 Z19 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 17 pages
Date: 2009-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ict
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://run.unl.pt/handle/10362/1862 First version, 2009 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ieu:wpaper:13

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IET Working Papers Series from Universidade Nova de Lisboa, IET/CICS.NOVA-Interdisciplinary Centre on Social Sciences, Faculty of Science and Technology Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by António Brandão Moniz ().