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Managing mobile relationships: Children’s perceptions of the impact of the mobile phone on relationships in their everyday lives, a work composed by Bond delves deeper in the impacts and influences that mobile phones holds on youth and their relationships, socialization and development. This article focuses on English children’s use of mobile phones and the impact said mobile devices have on managing and maintain relationships with people in their day-to-day life. In this study, 30 young people between the ages of 11 and 17 participated in this study. The aim of this study was to better understand how mobile phones and technologies are used by children and how these children understand risk (Bond, 514).
In this article and study, Bond reports on three main identifiable areas: mobile phones and their impact on relationships, reciprocity and risk. In summary, Bond uncovered that without the presence of mobile phones in their lives the subjects would “have no friends, demonstrating the centrality of the mobile phone in the children’s everyday social lives and their friendships”
(Bond, 517). Reciprocation in the mobile phone world pertains to the social conduct that is expected by those engaging in communications via mobile phones. Bond found that children were most concerned about reciprocating appropriately as to be in line with other person’s perceptions. Bond found that both timing and the nature of the response (wording, perceived emotion, etc.) was vital to mobile phone use and etiquette (Bond, 518-519). Lastly, Bond focused on the associated risk of mobile phone use in children. Through the study, it was uncovered that mobile phones have a very diverse role in a child’s life as they act as both a positive and a negative influence. Positively, mobile phones play an integral role in managing and maintaining friendships and have proved to be useful in crisis situations. Negatively, mobile phones act as a catalyst for bullying whether this occur through text, picture or video (Bond,
521).

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Bond has identified some impactful trends amongst children and their mobile phone use.
It is apparent that children place a great amount of emphasis on the importance of mobile phones in their everyday lives. This, ranging from friendship maintenance and their socialization amongst their friend group as a whole. Additionally, it has been discovered that there are definitely social scripts that children follow while using this technology (eg. reducing response times as to reduce the anxiety of the other user). Lastly, the tradeoff between positive and negative impacts of phone use in the child demographic is indisputable; mobile phones provide a platform that allows for constant connection to friends and family at the tip of one’s finger, but this widespread reach and freedom allows for negativity to make its way into the mobile phone world in forms such as bullying and harassment. I am in full support of Bond’s findings and conclusions surrounding this topic. An overlying aspect to mobile phones I feel was neglected in this study is the use of mobile internet and the (mis)use of social media and its large role it plays in children’s lives. However, I will expand upon this topic by bringing Utz, Muscanell &
Khalid’s article “Facebook vs. Snapchat jealousy Snapchat might increase your jealousy:
Comparing Snapchat and Facebook use in Europe” whereby using a slightly older participant pool with a mean age of 22, they explore the implications social media applications such as
SnapChat and Facebook have on the user’s jealousy and ultimately their emotional state.
Although the participant pool is older, I strongly feel the same issues are directly relatable to the younger participant pool used in Bond’s study. Additionally, I will further strengthen my stance on this topic by integrating the study from Davie, Panting and Charlton’s study from their article
“Mobile phone ownership and usage amongst pre-adolescents” which will outline the positive and negative social impacts the use of mobile phones carries. Similarly, Madell and Muncer’s article “Back from the Beach but Hanging on the Telephone? English Adolesccents’ Attitudes

and Experiences of Mobile Phones and Internet” will support the claims made in Bond’s study
3 that there are both positive and negative implications to mobile technology in youth. Lastly, I will incorporate the findings of Livingstone and Smith from their article and study “Harms experienced by child users of online and mobile technologies: the nature, prevalence and management of sexual and aggressive risks in the digital age” whereby they have discovered that