Gender Sex and Tech: Continuing the Conversation
Episode Six: Interview with Noorin Manji
Transcript by Ganesh Pillai
Jennifer Jill Fellows: Long-term romantic relationships require work. Maintenance. Communication. Care, Attention (phone noises). . . did you just check your phone? Like, while I was in the middle of talking to you? (laugh) I think a lot of couples in long-term relationships are realizing that, even if they are monogamous, their relationship isn’t just the two of them. It’s the two of them, and their phones. Their phones which are constantly interrupting conversations. But these phones are also used to help manage some of the work that goes into maintaining a long-term relationship. So I guess it’s maybe not all bad?
Jill: Hello and welcome to Gender Sex and Tech: Continuing the Conversation. I’m your host, Jennifer Jill Fellows, and I’m joined today by Dr. Noorin Manji.
Jill: Dr. Noorin Manji is a professor at the University of Waterloo, where she teaches in sociology, in Waterloo’s Arts-First program, as well as in Global Business. She specializes in work related to modern communication technology and human relationships. Noorin’s research focuses on smartphones, and the ways in which they have transformative effects on the very processes for which people use them. By building on her expertise in theory development, Noorin has bolstered her exploration and understanding of the growing presence of smartphone technology by investigating new theoretical lenses through which their impacts can be framed and understood. Beyond this theoretical work, Noreen also specializes in qualitative approaches to data collection, as she strives to authentically reflect people’s lived realities through thick, descriptive representations of their perspectives. And today, Noorin is here to talk to me about the way heterosexual couples use smartphones to navigate their relationships.
Jill: Hi Noorin, welcome to the show.
Noorin: Hello Jill, how are you doing?
Jill: Pretty good. How are you today?
Noorin: I’m well, I’m excited to be here, and thank you for having me.
Jill: Thanks for making the time. I want to begin by acknowledging that the Noorin and I are several kilometers apart today, and are meeting in digital space, we are absolutely relying on physical space for this virtual connection. I think it is important to remember that digital space is physical space. And that much of the physical space that currently connects us is stolen land. So today I acknowledge that I am a settler on the unceded territory of the Coast Salish people of the Qiqéyt nation, one of the smallest nations in British Columbia, and the only one without a dedicated land base. So I do definitely want to talk about heterosexual couples and their use of smartphone technologies, but first, Noorin, can I begin by asking you a bit about your academic journey? Like, did you always dream of being a sociologist?
Noorin: Absolutely. I would love to talk to you about this. Since I started my undergrad at McMaster University, and I sat at my first sociology lecture, the discipline captured my attention and my passion. I, I feel like sociology is one of those umbrella disciplines that kind of encapsulates all the different social sciences. And you could almost study anything about humans and still call it sociology. And so that’s why the discipline has always attracted me. And when people ask you, well, what does the sociologists do? You can say anything, right? We study anything and everything. And so the discipline has always attracted me. And when I finished my undergrad, I had finished with the combined honours in sociology and anthropology, and a minor in poli-sci. But sociology was the one that I focused on for my MA and PhD. Because like I said, that umbrella discipline just makes it so appealing because you can literally study anything. And I’m, like you mentioned, I’ve been lucky enough to expand my academic horizons now using that sociological background to kind of bolster my steps into new directions. So working with a global business and digital arts program at the University of Waterloo is really interesting because now I’m seeing that application of what I do with studying like modern forms of technology to this kind of aspect of digital culture, and looking at modern marketing techniques and business techniques and applying that in a different way. Beyond my academics, I also am pleased to say that I have some entrepreneurial endeavors on the go, and I’ve co-founded and run my own education-based business called Love of Language, which is a direct outcome of my academic experiences. I basically teach students how to write, public speaking skills, grammar skills. So I have a lot on the go and I’m just really excited to see where this journey takes moving forward.
Jill: That’s awesome. Yeah, so it sounds like kind of the breadth that sociology offered is very appealing to you. And now you’re involved in a lot of different areas. So, we talked about the different places that you teach, but also running this business as well. Yeah.
Noorin: Yeah. It’s something have been told that I’m one day going to have to pick between the academic side, and those entrepreneurial endeavors. But I’m like determined because I love both of them so much that I want to see them both flourish. So I’m excited to see where the journey takes me now.
Jill: So we’ve talked about sociology as being quite a wide discipline, where you can study a lot of different things. So I guess I’m curious about what drew you particularly to an interest in studying smartphones. Or maybe, even more basically, like when did you get your first smartphone and what did you use it for? What do you use smart phones for?
Noorin: That’s so funny because when I was working through my research, that was one of the first kind of things I put in my first early chapters is how this interest in technology and smartphones spawned. And it basically was catalyzed by my personal history. Like, I grew up in a family, in a home, where I guess you could call it like technologically inclined. My dad has always been the first to have the latest gadgets, phones, devices. So it was a hand-me-down thing right, where he got the newest stuff and the old stuff kind of trickled down to the family. And I guess that’s where my love of technology generally started because I was exposed to it at a very young age. But in terms of smartphones specifically, I think my interest in them spawned from my own use because, as I was using these devices, watching my friends use these devices, my observations about the way the devices have affected our everyday lives just captured my attention. And the interesting part to me is, as the technology grows, it comes to encapsulate more and more aspects of our everyday lives. From year to year, from month to month, these smartphones are capable of doing more and more and more. And I remember one of my research participants saying that they felt like their smartphone was a remote control for their life. It is, isn’t it right? We do everything through these devices. So I think just that, that aspect of using them, seeing how other people were using them really, really got my attention. When did I get my first cell phone and smartphone? Let me think. I know I was young when I got my first cell phone, I was 12 years old. This back in the day was a huge thing to be 12 and have a cell phone. Now it’s pretty normal.
Jill: It’s like a rite of passage now, I think.
Noorin: No. Yeah, exactly. But being 12 at that time and having a cell phone was like a huge deal. Everyone was very like, “Oh, what’s that technology?” And now, I went from being the anomaly of having the most up-to-date devices, and now everybody has the most up-to-date devices. So yeah, it’s been a really interesting kind of transition going from being one of those early adopters to now the average Joe just having a smartphone. And you know, I guess initially the device was mostly used for the traditional purposes of a phone – calling and texting. But now I use my smartphone for everything. I literally like, I won’t say I can’t survive without it, but it’s not just my social conduit, it’s also my work conduit. Like I do my consumer activities through them. I work through like connecting with family, friends. It’s, it’s just all the time, you know, part of my life. And I actually was going to ask you, do you have a smartphone?
Jill: I do, yeah.
Noorin: What kinds.
Jill: Mine’s an ASUS smart phone?
Noorin: I was I was counting, if I was a betting woman, I would have thought you would’ve had an iPhone because everybody’s got the iPhone disease.
Jill: I’ve never actually owned an iPhone. Way back in the day, I had an iPod.
Noorin: This is now me collecting data because I want to I like is that like a conscious decision?
Jill: They’re more expensive.
Noorin: Yeah. Okay. I thought you were kinda like No, everybody else has an apple.
Jill: It’s yeah, they’re more expensive. All the Apple products are more expensive. And so that means that I don’t have like an Apple laptop. My friends who have iPhones, who have PCs, found it very frustrating. So I just decided I wasn’t going to go down that route since I didn’t want to buy Apple everything because of the cost.
Noorin: Interesting, and so it was like a kind of encompassing decision. It wasn’t just about the one device, it was about what it could mean in terms of its proliferation. Do you think you’ll always talk about resistance? You think ever my switch?
Jill: I don’t know.
Noorin: I guess we’ll have to have another podcast soon.
Jill: I generally buy the cheaper phones.
Noorin: Interesting, interesting. I’ll have to interview you now.
Jill: Yeah, I think that is interesting. And I think, also thinking about the way in which the phones kinda come to take over our lives, right, like, yeah, my leisure, my social, my work, it’s all on there. I watch videos on there, listen to podcasts, read my books, everything.
Noorin: Yeah. It really is a remote control. There is no other way to put it.
Jill: I don’t know whether that’s scary or awesome.
Noorin: I think that’s going to be a theme that comes up a lot in our conversation today because that’s what the data has shown me, is that people are very much ambiguous about their feelings on this technology. And yeah, there’s, there’s a lot to explore here for sure.
Jill: So on that note, can you tell us a little bit about your research here? I know that this is specifically looking at the use of smartphones by heterosexual couples, so can you talk a little bit about how many couples you interviewed, the process of gathering the qualitative data, all that kind of stuff?
Noorin: Absolutely. I could honestly talk about my research all day if we have the time, so please stop me if I go off on a tangent. But yeah, the most recent iteration of my research, like you said, focused on looking at that intersection of smartphones, and where they fit in into committed romantic relationships. And, you know, on one hand, I wanted to understand people’s experiences with technology, and how that’s been impacted by the relationship dynamics, and on the other hand, and conversely, like how people’s committed relationships have been impacted by their use of the technology, right? So it’s, how is the relationship affecting the technology use, and how’s technology affecting the relationship? And it’s not a unidirectional relationship. Things are affecting in many different ways. And, and that’s the really fascinating part to me about this research area. And when you look at smartphones and committed relationships separately, they’re both hugely emphasized elements all around the world, right? At any culture you look at, and now any society you look at, relationships are a huge emphasis, and now the technology is becoming an increasing emphasis as well. And not to mention, this is also reflected in the academic literature right. There’s whole bodies of research surrounding the smartphone literature versus the committed relationship literature. So my goal with this research project was trying to bring those two fields together. And to kind of collect the data, what I did was I interviewed 56 individuals that comprise 28 heterosexual couples. And I interviewed them each individually, although when I initially started planning my methodology, I had, uh, really big ambitions. I had this idea I would interview everybody individually, and as a couple, and cross-looking at the data, and of course all of that was reined in by practical constraints like time and other resources. So I never ended up getting to do the couple interviews, which is something I’d like to pursue in the future. But for this iteration, I interviewed each of the participants individually, and they were mostly recruited through convenience and snowball sampling, so people that were in my area, people who could refer me to others. And I just wanted to get a sense of how people were feeling about the technology and their relationships. And since this was pre COVID, most of the interviews took place in-person, the old school way. With like an audio recorder. I think I did maybe one or two over the phone. Now, I can’t remember how many now, but Zoom and Teams and none of that was a thing.
Jill: I know, we’ve all learned so much.
Noorin: I don’t know how specific we want to get in methodology here, but I use a semi-structured interview guide where I had some kind of major themes elements that I wanted to cover. But I think the most interesting part of the experience of collecting data was just seeing the trajectory that each conversation took, because every single person I talked to had so many unique insights to share about how they felt about their smartphones, where it fit into the context of their relationships. And people are eager to talk about this because, you know, as much as we use the technology every single day, like it’s a normal thing, like opening the fridge, brushing your teeth or whatever, we’ve never really stopped to think about the implications of this technology that’s kind of been thrust upon us very quickly in the last 10, 15 years. So, giving people a chance to talk about it, it was like opening the floodgates. People wanted to talk about it, and it was a really, really great experience.
Jill: That’s awesome. I think there are two things that I really like about that. I mean, I like the whole answer, but there are two things I really want to focus on, which is this idea that first of all, collecting the data, you had kind of an idea going in of the themes you wanted to look at, but also as people answer questions you probably, it sounds like, discovered new things to think about. And I think research is so great for that, that you often go in with like one question, and then it turns out, oh man, there’s all this other stuff that I hadn’t even thought about it. And that’s just such a wonderful thing about doing research.
Noorin: Absolutely in qualitative research, especially. Not to knock quantitative or anyone that does quant or mixed methods. I absolutely see the value in that data too, but qualitative it just like it, just, like I said, it creates a space for people to share things where that space doesn’t exist. It’s not the same as providing, let’s say, like a product review online or talking to your friends about it because, you know, when you’re doing it in that qualitative research arena, it’s, it’s much more kind of benign, and people don’t feel the pressure to have an opinion one way or another. They tend to be more honest about their experiences when you give them the space to talk about it. It’s amazing.
Jill: That’s really cool. And then the other thing that super resonated with me in that answer was this idea of being very ambitious with the, with the initial research project and research goals. And I think, I think this is a good thing. I think often we start out with our research projects being really, really ambitious. And then because of reality constraints and time constraints and funding, perhaps, and resources, end up perhaps not reaching the heights of those ambitions. But I think that’s good because then there’s always more room to grow the research, like Okay, you didn’t get to interview the couples together, so in a future research project you what you want to do, right?
Noorin: Absolutely. And that was literally in the conclusion of my discussion section is next steps – let’s talk to couple those together. Because I felt when I was sitting there matching up answers, like looking at one person’s and their significant other’s answers, it was, it was me. I mean, after all, the researcher’s always going to be a tool of the research because the data comes through us and we interpret it. But I felt if I could see these two people in the room together, I would be getting not only at the data of their answers, but then also their body language, their interactions with each other, and then I could compare that, that qualitative data of the couples together to their individual interviews, and see what the differences, similarities were in the answers they would give. And I think yeah, there’s definitely lots of space to keep moving forward with this type of project.
Jill: So in working through the qualitative data, you drew on a work by Marshall McLuhan, namely his famous work, “The Medium is the Message,” to make sense of your findings. Can you speak about this work a bit? Like, what does it mean to say the medium is the message?
Noorin: Absolutely. McLuhan’s idea of medium as the message is, you know, it’s one of those foundational, classical theoretical perspectives, and it has stuck with me since the first time I encountered it in an Undergraduate Communication Studies course, I remember sitting in class just captivated by this idea that, “Yeah, that’s, that’s so true.” And those are my favorite moments as an undergrad, when you get those light bulb moments and, it’s just stuck with me, this theory. And yeah, the title of the work is “Understanding Media, the Extensions of Man.” And it was published in the sixties, and so even when I, when I teach my students about this in courses, as I said, this is a theory that was developed in the 60s, but I personally think it’s more applicable today than ever before. That’s mind-blowing. For some students anyway, for me, definitely. That’s something that’s, you know, however many decades old can still be so, so relevant today. So, basically what McLuhan is telling us what this theory is that he starts by kind of showing us that forms of technology can be seen as physical extensions of our beings and our bodies. So when he, McLuhan, was writing this, he would refer to examples like a hammer, for example, right, which would be an extension of your arm or your hand, allowing your body to do more than it could on its own. But now when we apply that theory and modern contexts, which I’m sure McLuhan probably didn’t even anticipate smartphones, but yeah, that smartphone is not just an extension of our arm and hand now, but when you look at the way we use it, I see this as an extension of our cognition, of our psyche, of the way we think and we organize our lives, and it’s just an extension of every part of us. And so to say the medium is the message, McLuhan is saying we need to look at the mediums through which we communicate, not just the content of that communication. And to illustrate with an example that can connect back to my research here is, you know, when you think about how couples communicate, yeah, you could look at the texts they send each other, or the e-mails they send each other, or the phone calls they make, and you could look at the content of those exchanges and that’s definitely great data to access, but what McLuhan points out to us it that’s not the limit, right? We can push further and look at the actual mediums through which that communication happens. And that’s the interesting part. Now, all those various forms of communication, and more and more each day, are all happening through this one device. And it’s growing and proliferating in ways that I don’t think even the first person who thought of a smartphone could have anticipated. It’s moved so far beyond where we started that we have to look at the medium, not just the message. The medium is the message as McLuhan says.
Jill: Wow, this also reminds me of work in philosophy. In the late 1990s, Chalmers and Clark put forward this theory of extended mind. And it’s the idea that our mind or our cognition extend into devices that we use. And I mean, they’re doing this before smart phones. So they were talking about things like having a personal organizer, or a diary or a notebook, as a way of extending your mind, right? Because you’ve got your calendar of events, maybe you’ve got phone numbers written down physically in this personal organizer or a Rolodex. But when I read it now I’m like, “Oh my God, it’s the smartphone.” So just this idea that like theories dealing with very different technologies from the past, like McLuhan’s, like Chalmers and Clark’s theories, which are more contemporary than McLuhan’s, but still predate the smartphone, just can have these like light bulb moments for you.
Noorin: And not to go off too far off the philosophical deep end here, and I have this personal theory. This isn’t from any work or anything, but I kind of look at the internet now as, as a modern, almost like a deity. Like, it’s the collective knowledge of all of humanity in one place. And to me that, that, that’s, in a philosophical sense, well beyond the limitations of modern, or I should say, of traditional religions. And not to bring religion into it, I know that’s a whole separate tangent, but when you look at how powerful the Internet is, how it is a connective force, how it’s a archive of all human knowledge and experience and everything else, you can find the answer to any question you have, to me, that’s, that’s, that’s a religion, right? Like that’s something that we, we worship it. We worship it the same way we worship a deity. Anyways, that’s like I said, it’s kind of off the philosophical deep end. But when I think about how powerful the technologies become, I can’t help it equalize it with something of that scale of how powerful religion is, because that’s how we are entrenched in it I feel.
Jill: So we’re leaving that as, as a question, maybe, for listeners to research and think about.
Noorin: Yeah, for sure.
Jill: So there’s another concept that you drew on in analyzing your data from your research. You drew on Katz’ and Aakhus’ concept of Apparatgeist. Can you discuss that a little bit?
Noorin: Absolutely. And yes, this work is certainly more recent. Katz and Aakhus published their work in the 2000’s. So it’s, it’s a really interesting perspective they take because it was definitely, because of its contemporaneous, more aligned with modern technology than let’s say, McLuhan’s work, which like I said, I don’t think he could have anticipated modern technology the way that it’s unfolded right? So what’s fascinating about Katz and Aakhus’s apparatgeist is, well, first of all that term, apparatgeist, can be broken down into two origin words. So that first part of the word, apparat, it’s essentially the same word you would think of when you think of like an apparatus or a machine or a device. But that geist part, apparatgeist, the end, it literally refers to the spirit or energy of something. So when you think of the term apparatgeist, it refers to the spirit of the machine. So Katz and Aakhus, with this theory, are prompting us to sort of recognize and observed human interactions with personal communication technologies like smart phones. So not just how do humans interact with each other, but how do humans interact with the devices as an almost an alive being, right? Because our uses, and even our non-uses of the technology, do affect the trajectory of its development. And so to refer to the spirit of the machine, it’s basically we’re personifying the technology to the point of saying that it has like a soul of its own. We interact with it and we impact, it the same way we interact with and impact other humans, essentially. And so in a, in a sentence, the best way to think about it is sort of the technology is affected by us as much as we are affected by it. And so their theory, in my opinion, is especially applicable to intersectional work because it already accounts for that layering effect of different intersections of different social variables because it brings the technology alive, not just as a passive kind of device that we passively use, it’s very much part of the process itself. Fascinating stuff.
Jill: That’s really, really cool. I’m having a lot of thoughts about that.
Noorin: Yeah, I know. When I first read their theory, I was like “what? Yeah, exactly.” It’s again, another light bulb moment that you’re just like, it’s a little disturbing to think about it, in my opinion, it’s a little disturbing to think about a smartphone is being alive. But when you think about the fact that they listen to us, that they respond to us, that they help us, that they do things that are very human in a lot of ways, despite the fact that they are a technology.
Jill: Yeah, and it also makes me think of the German word zeitgeist, this idea that the technology and the way we use it could impact the technological tools which impacts society on a very large-scale, zeitgeist, the idea of like the spirit of the times. So, technology as a part of the spirit of the times is very interesting to me, and seems quite correct.
Noorin: Yeah.
Jill: Okay, so we’ve got these very big theories. The medium is the message, apparatgeist. So let’s bring it down to kind of the, the data level again, and think about your own research. What kind of things did you find that heterosexual couples use smartphones for? In what way are these smartphones shaping relationships, or being used in these relationships?
Noorin: Yeah, that’s a big question. So that’s a really big question. So I’m going to try and answer it in a succinct way and bring in some big themes that I think will be really interesting to the listeners here. And, you know, when I was doing the data collection, and I was interviewing people, it was so interesting to me to hear those personal accounts of my participants because as I talked to each couple, as I talked to each individual, each of them had their own unique things that they understood about their device, or the unique ways they use their device, especially in terms of connecting with their relationship partner. So, you know, there’s the obvious level, right? Certainly people are using their smart phones for the most obvious relationship activities, like coordinating schedules or childcare, sharing household tasks. But this is where we can extrapolate because the way I’ve always thought about it is, is recognizing the kind of instrumentality of a smartphone as a tool, that, in essence, allows people to maintain their relationship overall, right? Not to say that the relationships wouldn’t exist without the devices, but the devices are so entrenched in our daily lives now that I don’t believe that relationships are qualitatively the same as they were before smartphones came onto the scene. And the way that I, I’ve framed this with my data collection, after kind of parsing out all the data, and coding and coding until my face was falling off, just coding out of my ears, I kind of distilled down all the different codes and data that I found into kind of four major categories, which I call the “Four C model.” And what were the four Cs come in are first connection, communication, control and constancy. So when you think about it, smartphones give people new sources of connection, new channels of communication, new methods of control, and all of these features are underscored by the fact that the devices have a constant presence in our lives, right? So and then when you take the turn towards intersectionality, right, which is, which is what our focus is for our discussion in the context of our work, this is where the nitty-gritty starts to come out, where you start to see the specificities of how different groups, for example, are experiencing this technology when there’s multiple social vectors accounted for. So let’s take gender for example. This is a big one that is not only spoken of very strongly in the data, in the literature, but also it came out very clearly as I was talking to people as well. So looking at gender, let’s see here, women, for example, a simple finding. It’s the fact that women tend to expand their text message social networks more than men, right? So fine. Women tend to have that bigger conversation via text.
Jill: They text more people.
Noorin: Yeah. And not just more people, but their, their relationships that already exist, they tend to build them with more text messages, right? So the question is why does this matter? Okay, so fine women are the ones that are texting all day. Fine big deal. Why? What’s the deal here? Well, the data in the literature shows that the intimacy of people who communicate both face-to-face and via text message is actually rated higher than people who only communicate face-to-face. Right? So traditionally we think are face to face is the best way to establish intimacy, and the best way to have good communication. But the data shows that actually people who do more than face to face, and have that extra text message background as well, are bolstering greater levels of intimacy. And this is the operative part, right? It’s because of the way that they’re using their smartphone, that they’re building that intimacy, right? So I mean, this is not to say that those relationships wouldn’t be as great, or as of great a quality if smartphones weren’t there. It’s just that the smartphones are being used now as a conduit for building that intimacy,
Jill: So I’m thinking about that and it reminds me again about what you’re discussing with regards to McLuhan, right. So we come back to this idea that we would think that face-to-face is the best. And I’ve heard that a lot and like I’ve heard a lot of people say face-to-face is the best, and like the friends that you text aren’t the friends that are going to show up there for you or whatever. And you’re saying that the data shows that face-to-face is important, but face-to-face plus text creates a qualitatively different kind of relationship. So the medium is changing our relationships with each other. And I find that really interesting.
Noorin: Yes, yes, we do expect face-to-face is the best. There is a term that we use for this in the literature called digital dualism. And when we see this term in the literature, it’s this perspective that the digital technology is not as effective as a face-to-face interaction rate. But now more and more scholars are, are kind of quashing digital dualism because they recognize that the nature of our digital connections in the way that we connect through the technology actually has room for us to do things that we can’t do when we communicate face-to-face. And so many participants talk to me about this as well. For example, the idea that, especially when you’re starting a new relationship, and you’re just texting that person and just getting to know them, well, the fact that the device is there, and allows you to have that communication, allows for you to have room to get, let’s say, input from somebody, right? You might say to a friend, “Oh, this new person is texting. What should I say to them, right?” And that kind of idea of a collective action towards the relationship building is a really interesting thing that you can’t do that face to face. You can’t take the room to say, “Hey, let me go ask my friend what I should say in response to you,” right?
Jill: “Let me just proofread this response before I give it.”
Noorin: You can’t do that in face-to-face. So, this is to me, like a real indication that yeah face to face is great. It’s been the way we’ve done it since the beginning of time, but it’s not the best way, and it’s not the only way anymore for sure. And the digital technology has grown to such an extent that we definitely have more room now to use it in ways that allow for things like face to face just simply does not.
Jill: So you’ve noted that there’s differences in terms of how women text message versus how men text message. What about any other differences that you noted?
Noorin: Yeah, so there’s a couple of other vectors and intersections that I think are worth mentioning. For example, there’s obvious ones like age. We know that people of different ages use their devices differently. That’s an obvious thing. We know that young people use their devices much, much differently than, older people. And one of the ways that young people, for example, are using their devices is to build better quality relationships, right? Because without the devices, a young person might go to school and see their friends there and have the relationships there, and they go home and then that’s the end right? And now the device is there to facilitate the time that they don’t see their friends to build those relationships, and in a way to have higher quality relationships at a younger age. So that’s just one little outcome. But one thing I also want to put out there as a caveat is a lot of the findings I’m talking about, and that we’re discussing, all appear good and dandy, but I really want to emphasize that clearly not all impacts of smartphones are good, right? And in fact, it’s quite clear from the data when you ask people the question about how they feel about their smartphones, the responses are overwhelmingly ambiguous, right? People recognize that the device does great things for them, but they also have really strong feelings of distrust, of being addicted or over-reliant, on their phones. And I know that’s a little tangent, but that’s something that I think is a really important theme that I hope will come back to later in the discussion.
Jill: So in the same way we can build the stronger qualitative relationships, it may also be hard to pull back and have alone time or something like that.
Noorin: Yeah. Opting out and turning off the device it’s it’s not an option. Can I ask you, have you turn off your smartphone, or when was the last time you turned your smartphone?
Jill: I have no idea when the last time I was that I turned it off.
Noorin: Right? Maybe what it made me do an update and it forced me to turn it off.
Jill: Maybe last summer when I went camping and I had no Internet connection.
Noorin: Right. So the fact that we just cannot even allow ourselves to, of kinda disconnect shows how entrenched it is. And the part of smartphones is that it’s not just when you choose to pick up the device does it create communication and channels of interaction, but there’s constantly incoming things all the time, whether it’s phone message, social media, whatever the case might be. And one of the theories that I hope to kinda bring up later, and that I hope to discuss with some details, Rainie and Wellman, who have this theory of networked individualism, they talk about us as being empowered by always on connectivity. And you don’t want to talk to my students about this, sometimes I asked them, “Do you feel empowered by that always on connectivity or, or is it a burden, sometimes?” And answers on both ends of that spectrum. And maybe you can tell me, do you feel empowered by the always on connectivity or?
Jill: As somebody who has recently deleted a bunch of apps from my phone because I couldn’t deal with the constant need to check them, I’m feeling better at the moment. But it definitely took kind of consciously limiting myself in order to feel a little more in control.
Noorin: Wow. So you kind of had to take control of the remote control.
Jill: Yeah. Yeah, and be like “No. Twitter is off. No more Twitter app on this phone.”
Noorin: Right? That, that conscious disconnecting, that’s such another, another important area I think that’s going to kind of burgeon in upcoming scholarly work is, is how we consciously disconnect from this technology. What implications that has on social connections, on work, on productivity. Because I think mental health is becoming a bigger and bigger conversation. And I do think the devices play a role. I won’t say what role, because I haven’t studied it myself, and there’s lots of literature out there on it, but like I said, it’s vast and ambiguous. It helps mental health in these ways, and it damages mental health in some way. So it’s very, you know, the pendulum keeps swinging in both directions. And because in my opinion, the technology is still in its infancy as long as it, even despite how entrenched in our lives, it’s still very new comparatively in society. We don’t know where it’s going and what the long-term effects are going to be. So I think it’s gonna be really interesting to see that. But before we move on, I had one more little vector I wanted to talk about with intersectionality because this is one piece of data that I, every time I think about it, it intrigues me. And that’s when we bring culture, age, and gender together.
Jill: Perfect. Let’s do it.
Noorin: Yeah, these are three big factors that affect lots of people, and the data from this in both literature and in my data, it’s just fascinating. So one example I’ll give you is in the literature. Some studies have, for example, looked at young Pakistani British men and women. In my data, it came out as Muslim men and women. I don’t think that it’s necessarily relegated to any one particular type of culture, but there’s different patterns across different sectors that we can look at. So for this example, what we see is that for some people who are often in cultural environments where cross-gender relationships and dating are maybe not the norm, or perhaps they are restricted because of cultural norms, the devices, the smartphones play a key role in allowing these youth to cultivate cross-gender relationships, to develop feminine and masculine identities, and doing all that, right, while still maintaining their cultural integrity and their familial expectations, right? My mom and dad say I’m not allowed to date, but at least I can see what kind of partner I like, because I can text this person and get to know them in the background, right? So these devices are allowing like, connections that would not be possible otherwise. And yeah, I could go on and on about this, but I’ll stop there for now.
Jill: That’s cool. So when your cultural expectations are that, what we might call dating or hanging out with people of a different gender, are not allowed, particularly in a one-on-one setting, so sometimes dating might be allowed if it’s supervised or in a group setting. but these kind of one-on-one, face-to-face connections are not culturally permitted, yet, you can still have one-on-one digital connections. Is that what I’m understanding?
Noorin: Absolutely. That’s exactly right because it allows people to maintain that integrity and their commitment to their cultural sort of normative behavior, and the expectations of their parents, family, family members, whoever it might be. And it’s just fascinating to me that the smartphones essentially become like a workaround to allow people to kind of balance those expectations versus the desire to have whatever experiences, or develop whatever identities. Especially when it comes to masculine and feminine identities, and other types of identities that are emerging as well, right, where do youth, especially, get to experience that, right? What spaces are there available that are safe? Safe is a subjective term. I know with smartphones, it’s not always safe, but yeah, you know, when, when there are restrictions around ways to express those elements, the smartphone can be a tool that people are using. And I won’t say good or bad, I’m not giving an evaluation, but people are using it for that purpose.
Jill: But it exists. And that’s one way in which people use the smartphone, and I guess another way in which the medium has changed our experience. So whereas past generations in these cultural contexts may have navigated things quite differently, and still maintained cultural expectations, now what we’re seeing is the smartphone playing a really key role in balancing individual desire and cultural expectation.
Noorin: Absolutely. I couldn’t have said it better. That was great, yes, exactly.
Jill: That’s so fascinating.
Noorin: I think so too, and definitely an area for future research. Like I would love to jump on that one.
Jill: So you did just mention the idea of smart phones being used, not just to navigate relationships, but to navigate identity. Cultivating, for example, in your studies, cultivating masculine and feminine identities. And this is another thing you note that is in your, in your chapter, you note that there is a lot of existing literature on smartphone use and individual identity. So how does this manifest in the use of smartphones to maintain relationships?
Noorin: Yes, absolutely. Identity is a huge theme that keeps arising again and again and again when you look at the smartphone data. And we, we talked about it like you said, to some extent, with some of the intersectional vectors, right? Where we’re talking about age, gender and cultural identities. All of those things easily fall in the realm of identity work. But beyond this, so many of the participants I talk to would reveal to me ways that their device has helped to just even establish and solidify particular identities or roles within their relationship. So let’s do a little mental exercise to illustrate this, right? Think of any relationship in your life, whether it’s a romantic partner, a parent-child, friendship, whoever it might be, just, just picture somebody in your mind. Now the question is what patterns have formed around your interactions with that person through the device. Okay. So let me prompt with some questions. Is there one of you that tends to initiate the communication more or less? Is there one of you that tends to rely on text-based, versus someone who likes the phone better? Is there someone that really tends to organize the plans more, and someone who tends to go along with them more? And here’s a really interesting dynamic to consider. What levels, if any, of reciprocity are reached through your smartphone interactions, right? Are there equalizing elements? Are there things that Okay, if that person does it, that person does it. I was just teaching a course, I teach a mobile technology and society course right now, just this past Monday, I was talking to my students about this idea about reciprocity through the devices. And a student put up their hand and said something to me that I thought was really interesting, and the student said, if somebody likes my picture on social media, I’ll make sure that I like their next picture. Or if they comment on mine, I’ll make sure to comment on one of their upcoming posts. And yeah, this notion of there’s this underlying reciprocity of experience that we either, I’ve never had this conversation where someone’s told me “If someone likes your picture, you should like theirs.”
Jill: “You have to like their’s back.”
Noorin: Yeah. So no one’s told us to do this. And yet these kind of dynamics are developing. And I think that this is an expression, in a lot of ways, of the way we portray our identity, right? Are you a conscious social media user? Are you a reciprocal engager with the device, right? Not to put you on the spot Jill, but if you wanted to share, like do you have, can you think of a way that your relationships with perhaps a friend, or a family member or whoever, that you see those patterns, where your identity or role has kind of solidified?
Jill: Yeah, As I was thinking of this, first before I answer that, I also want to jump back on your discussion of reciprocity. And like one of the places that I do frequent in social media is Twitter. And there is this kind of like if somebody follows you, are you supposed to follow them back, right? Or if they like or retweet your posts, do, you go in and reciprocate that way as well. And I think that that’s really interesting because sometimes I do feel pressure to do that. But, yeah, when I was thinking about this, I was thinking that, for example, I and my partner, not just share too much about him, but I tend to be very text-based. And he tends to be the one who is much more visual, sharing photos, he takes more of the photos in our relationship, and so most of the photos that we have are because of him. And he does the work of like sharing photos with extended family so they can see what we’re up to. I don’t really do that. I’m much more sending text messages. And so I thought that was really interesting, and does kind of also reflect our offline roles. As you can maybe tell listeners, because I produce a podcast, I am more about words and texting. And yeah, my husband is much more visual. So I think that’s really interesting.
Noorin: Yeah, it is. And that’s the same thing that participants echoed to me. And whether it was in a similar kind of simple ways, like the example you just gave, or in more kind of intense ways like when it comes to parenting, and how to rear, like raise your child. And who’s the disciplinarian versus who’s the fun parent, or who’s the bill payer, who’s not the bill payer, right? So it’s just these devices and it’s not to say again, these roles would likely be there without the devices as well, but the devices in the way we’re communicating through them is what solidifying them, and allowing us to have the vernacular in the language, even, to say what that person does, and this is what I do. And like, just the way you just said it, my husband tends to be the photo taker and I’m not right? So even now you’ve put that identity role, that label, on. And so it’s likely to tend to continue, right? Because label is there and the experience is there. And so the device essentially legitimizes that experience, and continues it, it proliferates and maximizes in my opinion or as I’ve seen through the data.
Jill: Yeah. And then it seems like it could also be supported by wider networks, right? Because couples don’t exist in a vacuum. So when I say, for example, my husband sends photos to extended family, photos of our child too, so they can see our child growing up because extended family don’t live nearby. And now there’s this kind of expectation, that is not just an expectation from me, but from other people in this kind of network of relationships, that that’s the role that he fulfills in this personal relationship. And I think that’s really interesting.
Noorin: Absolutely. And so, and this, like I said, it’s been echoed. This is one thing that I thought was echoed across almost all of the interviews I did. And what really started to come out to me is that the device itself almost seems like a third member in the relationship, right? It’s, it’s, it, we have both passive and active interactions with it. And it essentially is that conduit, a connection, communication, control, constantly, all the different things that we do, giving the impression that the device is indeed almost its own, alive, entity, coming full circle right back to Katz and Aakhaus’ theory of apparatgeist, right, that this device is full of affecting energy that we then, we then push into motion. And like you said, it has far-reaching impacts, well beyond the two people who are in the couple.
Jill: So we’ve talked about how the phones can kind of create these identities, create these rules. And a lot of our discussion, with some caveats, has been quite positive about the use of these phones. But one thing that you found in your research, and that appears in your chapter, is a lot of themes of the ways in which smartphone technology can be used for trust-building, but also the ways in which issues of distrust can appear, and particularly in how couples speak about their use of smart phones, or their partner’s use of smartphones. So I wonder if you can elaborate on trust and distrust a little bit more.
Noorin: Yes, please. Let’s talk about this more because this is one of those areas of the data that I, not only I’m fascinated by but, again, has huge potential for future research. Especially because I feel like it’s, like all aspects of smart phones and technology in general, it’s constantly changing as well. So before I answer your question though, let me ask you one quick question, Jill. Do you trust your smartphone now?
Jill: No
Noorin: Dare I ask why? I know why, but do you want to share a few reasons why?
Jill: Because it’s listening.
Noorin: Listening. Any other reasons?
Jill: Yeah. I mean, a lot of the work that I’ve done over the past couple of years, building this book, and then building the podcast, has given me ample reasons to distrust mostly the companies behind the phones. I don’t know if it’s so much the device themselves, as the multinational tech corporations that are making and selling these devices to us.
Noorin: Yeah. Oh, that’s a little tangent discussion I think we’ll need to have on another time that is the companies then, or should the government be mandating some rules around this? There’s a whole other separate, like I think there’s definitely more to talk about there. But then just one quick follow up. If that’s the way you feel, do you ever, and most people feel this way, but why do we continue to use device?
Jill: Yeah. Why do we have this surrounding us when the majority of people are uneasy about it upon reflection?
Noorin: Absolutely. And that is the question, right? So I found the same thing when I was talking to people, right? The overwhelmingly common response is never an easy one. People really struggle with this aspect of the inclusion of the technology in their lives. And there’s definitely this underlying thread of distrust for the devices. Even the fact that our smartphone collect our biological data, our fingerprints and facial scans, and we’ve talked about devices listening to us, and I’m sure you can tell me if you’ve ever experienced this, I know I have. Have you ever mentioned something casual conversation and gotten an ad for that exact thing? Yeah. That’s creepy to an interestingly creepy level.
Jill: Definitely.
Noorin: And yet we go along with it. So the only way that I can think to universally characterize people’s kind of relationships with their smartphones is through this lens of duality, right? We love and we hate them. We enjoy using them to connect, but we also feel overwhelmed by the level of connectivity. We trust them to help us do so much, but then we also distrust them in so many ways as well right? Now, where this data extends to the next level then is when you add committed relationships into the discussion, right? And why committed relationships specifically? Well, we know, because of all the different types of relationships we have, committed relationships are often the ones that rely most heavily on a fostered sense of trust, right? With the parent-child, the trust is implicitly there, right? The child trusts the parent until something bad happens. But, you know, with a committed romantic relationship, that’s something that’s built and cultivated, right? And so when you look at that, and you look at people’s experience of trust with their devices, there’s so many vectors now, right? It’s not just do you trust your device and do you trust your significant other. Now the question is how is the experience of trusting someone mediated by people’s trust in the devices? The way we experience trust, or don’t experience it, in our relationships with others is compounded by our feelings of trust in relation to the technology. We might text somebody something, but then our distrust of the technology forces us to go back and read the text and say, “How will they read it? Will they understand what I meant even though there’s no tone, even though there’s no intonation to my voice right?” And that’s a really simple example of ways we distrust, but that’s on so many levels, right? So for some couples, I talked to, this discussion of trust has sort of become now just one of many blurred boundaries, right? And in my work, this theme of blurring boundaries is a huge underlying thread, thematic thread, because we see though the blurring of public and private, and the blurring of producer consumer activities. Now, with this issue of trust, we see the blurring of trust, privacy and surveillance, even. So one of the big data points that came out when I talked to couples was couples talking about practicing different types of surveillance with each other. So one code I had in my work was open surveillance, right? These were couples that both partners knew that they occasionally looked at each other’s phone. They were okay with it and that was an indication of a degree of trust in their relationship. But other couples I spoke to talked to me about covert surveillance, right. Checking your partner when they don’t know about it, right? And what that means for the trust in the relationship. And to the third level, right? There were still other couples who talked about not checking each other’s devices and that being a sign of trust in the relationship. Alright, so clearly, different couples are using the devices in different ways as an expression of, not just their trust for the technology, but their trust for each other. And there’s lots more to explore and I even wonder how this line of inquiry could translate to research with other focuses, right? Like parent-child trust, employer-employee trust, right. There’s so much, there’s so much to discuss here.
Jill: Right? And as these phones have become so personal, and so much of a facet of our personal development of identity, individual and social identity, the decision of whether or not to give somebody access to your phone, or the decision of whether or not to go through somebody else’s phone, becomes a very weighted decision for couples to collectively navigate that didn’t exist in previous generations.
Noorin: No, that’s right. And so we know there’s tons of challenges the devices have kind of introduced into people’s relationships, but that’s definitely a big one, right? So part of now compatibility is your digital compatibility compatible with somebody else, or is your digital view compatible with somebody else’s digital view? Because I don’t see a couple of being prosperous and happy if one person needs to check the other’s phone and the other one doesn’t want to do that.
Jill: So if you have a couple where one person wants to have this kind of open surveillance as a signal of trust, and the other person wants privacy as a signal of trust, we have a problem.
Noorin: Yeah, and so that level of compatibility wasn’t something that we even have to think about once upon it, not that long ago, once upon a time. So the fact that, yeah, the way we use our digital tools now needs to be a factor in our compatibility evaluation with a potential partner is definitely one of the unique ways that trust, and every one of these themes comes out, with smart phones and couples.
Jill: That’s really interesting.
Jill: So I want to ask something that’s related to the issue of trust, but perhaps there’s a little bit different. Because you note that, as we’ve said, there are a lot of advantages to using smartphones in relationships, but there are also unique problems. And this issue of navigating trust is one of those unique problems. But there’s something kind of related. One of your participants, you report in the chapter, was uncomfortable when she learned that her partner’s ex was following him on a number of social media sites. And I think that this does connect with the issue of trust, but it’s also something more than that because she viewed this as a problem, that the ex was following him, but her partner, he didn’t seem to think this was a very big deal. So can you elaborate more on how the use of smartphone technology in couples can create unique challenges for couples?
Noorin: Yes, absolutely. So the trust aspect we’ve talked about to some degree, but I agree that this particular scenario, and this particular data, moves beyond that issue of trust, and it’s becoming an increasingly highlighted area of research now, where we’re moving into not just issues of trust, but then issues of fidelity, and even perhaps more broadly, monogamy, right? Whether the devices help us to. . . help, help is a tough word. I don’t mean to make it sound positive, I just mean whether the devices facilitate our desire to move beyond traditional normative boundaries of relationships, for example, right? So the best way that I can think to illustrate this and explain it is sort of, you know, when you think about it, at the heart of every committed romantic relationship is an active choice, right? Both people in the couple are choosing to be part of it. And they essentially have to continue to choose to be part of it for the duration of the relationship, right? It may not be like a constantly active decision-making process, but yeah, it’s a choice every single day. It’s a choice to stay and be there and be part of it, right? So when you add smartphones into this equation, the devices essentially open up the doors, right? Not just two more choices, but to more channels to access those choices. So, let’s do a comparative exercise. In eras past, like I’m thinking maybe 30, 40, 50 years ago, if a person wanted to cheat on their significant other, what channels were available to do it? How could they do it? In my mind, the thing that immediately comes is like office romances, or a covert rendezvous, I don’t know what else. But now, what channels are available? What choices are available? It’s like limitless right. Like there are dozens and dozens of specialized dating apps at the tip of our fingers, on our own personalized devices that only we have access to generally. And think about the possibilities of meeting another significant other via any number of other outlets, right, social media outlets, message boards, Twitter, Reddit, any of the different things that people use on a daily basis, open up all these doors for people to make new connections. And in fact, I’m sure you’ve heard of AshleyMadison.com. You’ve heard of this website?
Jill: Yes. But for any listeners who don’t know?
Noorin: Yeah, for any listeners who don’t know, it’s a, it’s a dating site that actually targets people who are already in committed relationships or marriages, and who essentially want to discretely pursue external relationships, whether that be romantic or sexual or whatever.
Jill: And it’s not framed like you’re in an open relationship. This is framed as you are in what is seen as a committed, monogamous relationship. And this is going to facilitate you cheating.
Noorin: Essentially, yeah. And it’s interesting because they don’t even make a secret about it. So Noel Biderman, who is the former CEO of Ashley Madison, has said in an interview and described this site as a quote unquote, “infidelity service.” Like the Google of cheating through which they can provide their customers with the quote, “perfect affair by using technology to deliver discretion.” So it just, it’s mind blowing, right? On one hand, we can note the obvious stuff, that the fact that the technology is being appropriated, or maybe even misappropriated, by people in these ways, but the fact that it’s now being used as a targeted business strategy? So people are cluing into the potential of these devices for both good and bad purposes. Again, I’m not adding evaluation or judgment here. It’s just a matter of what are the limits? And to me, every day that the technology develops, it becomes more and more limitless, right. The options are a compounded every single day. So, certainly when we’re talking about themes of trust, fidelity in monogamy, I think, I think the dynamic of what relationships are, and what we believe a real relationship to be, are going to be changing the coming years because of the way we’re using technology.
Jill: Yeah, I was going to ask that. Because specifically in this example, where the ex is following the male partner, there seems to be a difference in opinion about whether or not this was a problem for the relationship. And I could see, even more extremely, cases where one person does not think they are engaging in infidelity, and another person does. So kind of figuring out what does it mean to be in a committed, monogamous relationship is perhaps something that past generations thought they had figured out, and now the smartphone is challenging that definition. Like if you’re only flirting with somebody online…
Noorin: Is it cheating?
Jill: How do both partners feel about that? Is that cheating or not cheating?
Noorin: Yeah, absolutely. And again, speaking I think to that underlying theme of blurring boundaries, right, the boundary again has become obscured. It’s not a clear cut, you know, you have to actually physically go and see somebody to be cheating, you have to physically kiss them or whatever to be cheating. Now there’s all this gray area of would my partner be okay with me sending this text to somebody else or sending this.
Jill: Or liking this photo.
Noorin: Exactly. Liking this photo, following this person, commenting on it. Like there’s so much more space for there to be confusion, issues, problems. That again, this is another area of research that I’d really love to pick up on that because I think we have to as well, right? When a 50, 50 percent divorce rate society, you know, maybe it’s worth our while to look at the role that technology is playing in that.
Jill: So I want to shift gears and talk about a different way in which smart phones can affect our relationships. Because one concept I found so interesting in your research was this idea that smartphones were a source of what was called “relationship memory.” You say in your chapter, quoting, “perhaps the most interesting affordance smartphones have extended to committed couples that use them is by offering them a source of what we can call ‘relationship memory,’ which refers to the ability of smart phones, with their personalized, mobile and constant nature, to retain an historical record of a relationship from its inception. The idea that every text message, every photo, every vacation, every text-based compliment or argument, every social media post, every shared life event, not to mention, every life event in general, is documented for a couple is astounding. And people do feel a sense of marvel when reflecting on it.” So can you elaborate on this relationship memory a little bit more?
Noorin: Yeah. And I’d love to because, I know I’ve said this about everything we’ve talked about, but this data I found so fascinating. It stood out to me immediately when I came across it in different ways, across the different interviews of participants. And I mean really, what other technology do you know that can archive so many aspects of a single relationship in one centralized place? Like there is none, there is no other equivalent technology that does that, right? And that’s the thing with the concept of relationship memory. It’s, it’s not that we didn’t have all the same tools to archive our relationships and our relationship history before smartphones, I mean, cameras, and even digital cameras, have been around a long time, and so have phones, and so have cell phones, even email, social media, all these things have been around a long time.
Jill: Or earlier, like letters.
Noorin: Letters, right? The old school way. But the thing that smartphones represent is the first time that all of these elements, and so much more, are centralized in one hub, right? And when I look at this data, I, this is my sociological background coming into action, is I immediately think of a social constructionist lens, because when you look at social constructionism, the core belief is essentially this idea that we as humans construct society through our interactions with each other, right? We interact until society is produced as a set of patterns in those attractions. And then conversely, humans, we ourselves get constructed through our interactions, as a result of society, right? As new members join our society, as babies are born, they learn the way society works through interactions, right? So it’s a kind of dual process of us constructing society, and society constructing us. But now throw smartphones into that equation, right? The device is essentially a tool of legitimation, right? And so what I mean by this in the context of relationships is, of course, people’s relationships still existed without smartphones. We know that. I’m not questioning that, but what the smartphones add is this legitimizing component, right? Because now it’s the pseudo-institutional memory of shared experiences. Now, with a smartphone, the memories exist somewhere outside of the minds of the two people in the relationship, right? It’s beyond just their independent kind of experiences, and it’s all centralized in one place, right? So in theory, these memories can be relived through the device anytime, anywhere, theoretically forever, right? And this type of dynamic, again, has just led to some tangible, qualitative differences in the way people are interacting with each other, and the way that they look at their relationships, and the way that they engage with their partners.
Jill: Yeah. As you were saying that I was thinking about things like, I know Facebook is not so much a thing anymore, but the idea of like saying that you’re in a relationship in Facebook, right? And then Facebook being like, “you’ve been in a relationship with this person for ten years. And here’s a bunch of pictures to celebrate,” or something like that. And I know other social medias have other mechanisms for doing that. And then like Google Photos will pop up with like here’s what you were doing this time last year. And then also, yeah, like text message chains, and all those kind of things, they’re all there, right?
Noorin: Yeah. Even even the nature of geotagging, right? The fact that when you take a photo, your device knows exactly what’s you put that photo in. And you can look at the world map and see every place you’ve been, every photo you’ve taken, all on this device. And it’s just, I mean, it’s a really neat, it’s just neat. It’s neat. And beyond just being neat, it has real implications for the way that couples view themselves, view each other, view the quality of the relationship. And you see even dynamics of the longevity of the relationship, how this changes over time, right? So what a couple does with their smartphone one month in, versus six months in, versus 6 years in right? So it’s almost like the experience with the technology evolves as the relationship does as well. And that’s a really interesting thing too, is because we learn each other through the technology, and we learn the technology through our interactions with each other.
Jill: Yeah, that’s really, really cool. And it seems to also kind of go back to some of the lenses that you said you were using to talk about this, like apparatgeist right, or the medium is the message, the way in which the phone itself is transforming our relationships with each other, and even transforming the way we think about the history of our relationships with each other. And this maybe is particularly stark for people who, perhaps you’re older couples, I don’t know, I’m just guessing, who had a relationship that pre-existed the use of smartphones, right. And so only half of their relationship, maybe, is documented on the phone, and how that affects their relationship memory, like transitioning from having photo albums, to having the phone?
Noorin: Yeah. And it’s like a relic, right? It’s an artifact as well, right? So while we look at ancient societies, and we dig up things and we look for their artifacts. what are our relics going to be? They’re all going to be digitized. You know, it’s going to be a matter of plugging in a USB and you can see every historical milestone for a couple.
Jill: Yeah. Yeah, I think that’s really, really cool. Also kind of unsettling, going back to this idea of surveillance. But I mean, I think a lot of people that have had the experience of kind of getting lost in looking at the archives of pictures online, and stuff like that. Oh, and then this also goes back to the idea of the phone is kind of a third player in your relationship, right? So you and your partner may not remember this thing, but your phone remembers that it happened.
Noorin: Right, and even think about meeting a new potential partner, and what we do when we engage with someone new, right. The first thing we do is a deep dive into their social media to see who they were, who they used to be, how they’ve changed. And all of that is a byproduct of someone having that smartphone wherever they were for there all those years, right? So we learn so much faster about each other, and that the rate of everything has increased as well, just even how we interact and build relationships, and even how we end relationships, it’s affected every part of the process.
Jill: Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me about couples’ use of smart phones today. Is there anything else that you would like to leave our listeners with with regards to smartphone use and heterosexual relationships?
Noorin: Actually, yes, I had pulled this really great quote out from that work I mentioned earlier called “Networked” by Lee Rainie and Barry Wellman. And what I like about this quote is I think it really captures what it’s like to live in our contemporary, technologized society, and especially the society where smartphones are the tool, right? We have lots of tools, lots of digital tools, but smartphones appear to be the most universal, common tool. And I think this quote really captures what that experience is like. So here it comes.
Jill: Okay.
Noorin: “We live in an environment that tests our capacities to deal with each other, and with information. In our world, the volume of information is growing. The velocity of news is increasing. The places where we can encounter others and information are proliferating. The ability of users to search for, and find, information is greater than ever. The tools allowing people to customize, filter, and assess information are more powerful. The capacity to create and share information is in more hands. And the potential for people to reach out to each other is unprecedented.” So as you read this, and this is now me, not Rainie and Wellman, but what Rainie and Wellman say is that the onus is on us as individuals to be network mavens, we have to find a way to navigate all these different things that we’re experiencing in the society that we live in. And from my research, it’s become evident that smartphones remove all sorts of limitations for people. And like we said, blur all kinds of boundaries that once existed in human lives, right? And in one sentence, the way that I would frame it is essentially smartphones create the possibility that each and every single person is theoretically connected to the whole world in an infinite number of possible ways, at all times. When you think about that, that’s heavy.
Jill: Yeah.
Noorin: And you know, to come back to our underlying theme of intersectionality here, I would say that smartphones are a direct conduit of intersectionality in our modern society that we really have to further study because we need to start making sense of how smartphones enable, or perhaps even force, people to experience diverse and impactful vectors of everyday life all at once, right? Whether that’s in the context of romantic relationships or outside of that, these devices are now a filter through which we experience all these elements at once and we definitely need to further study it. So, yeah.
Jill: This episode of Gender, Sex and Tech continued a conversation begun in chapter six of the book Gender, Sex and Tech: An Intersectional Feminist Guide. The Chapter is called “Smartphones and Committed Relationships: Navigating the Intersection of Sex, Gender, and Other Social Variable” and it was written by Noorin Manji. I would like to thank Noorin for joining me today, for this really engaging discussion, and thank her for asking me so many questions that prompted me to reflect on my own smartphone habits. And thank you, listener, for joining me for another episode of Gender, Sex and Tech: Continuing the Conversation. If you would like to continue the conversation further, please reach out on Twitter @tech_gender, or consider creating your own material in your own voice. Music provided by Epidemic Sound. This podcast is created by me, Jennifer Jill Fellows, with support from Douglas College in New Westminster BC, and support from the Marc Sanders foundation for public philosophy. Until next time, Bye!!