Cell phones, social networks and symbolic interactionism: possible connections

Abstract

The emergence of new communication technologies makes social practices keep pace with the constant mobility and adaptation to the new communicative reality. Thus, as the new technologies are the result of socio-technological evolution, this same society absorbs them and constantly alters its dynamics of interaction and sociability. From these suppositions we can pinpoint a communicational technology, which undoubtedly finds the necessary support in contemporary societies for its ever increasing permanence and acceptability: cell phones. Currently these artifacts are not only a synchronous person-to-person communication object in real time, but have transformed themselves into a hybrid and multifunctional device, which surpasses its main functionality and has become one of the most utilized mobile digital technologies on the planet. This paper proposes to take a look at the relationships between this artifact and the symbolic interactionism concept widely discussed by Mead and Blumer, to seek a reconfiguration of the debate about the contemporary technological nuances, especially cell phones.