Would you let someone use your cell phone to make a call? How about to search the internet? Or send a text message? Just how private are you with your cell phone?
Phones have become personalized. I remember when a household had a single phone that everyone used, and when others in that household could listen in on your phone call by picking up a receiver in another room. But now everybody has their own phone. We personalize our phones. Choose your color, your apps, your decorative case. We’ve become very possessive of our phones.
Of course we’re possessive of many of our things – I guess that’s why we call them possessions. Over 100 years ago, before there were even landline phones, William James noted that one’s self includes everything to which the label ‘my’ can be applied. My clothes, my house, my job, and yes my family. Some of these are more crucial to one’s self than others. When any of these are harmed, the self is hurt. If someone steals something important to your self-understanding, then it feels as though you’ve been deeply injured and that you’ve lost part of you. Some of these feelings reflects how we use some objects to interact with the world (see I am my car and my toothbrush). But some of the feelings also reflect our choosing the objects as expressions of who we are, as status symbols. People have defined themselves by their objects at least as long as we’ve been collecting objects.
The cell phone is clearly part of how people interact with the world. For many people, their social life depends on their cell phone. They connect with others through the phone. And for many people, their identities are tied up in their phones, the internet, and social media (see Are you addicted to your cell phone?). The phone has become part of who they are.
So I shouldn’t have been, but I was surprised by a conversation I recently had with a colleague and some students. As we were talking about when and how people use their phones, the students all displayed clear discomfort at the idea of letting someone use their phones. No. That was the basic response to the idea of letting someone use their phones. If it really had to happen, they would set everything up so this other person could make a phone call. I can’t imagine they would let that person out of sight during the call, and certainly they would expect to get their phone immediately. It just felt too personal, too private, and too intimate to let someone use. Just a simple “No.” They would prefer to not even be asked and would avoid someone whose phone had died just so they wouldn’t be asked.
This generation posts widely about the private details of their lives. But they’re also a generation that doesn’t want anyone to touch their phone. Although these seem like contradictions, it may be part of the same issue. They want control over their selves. They decide what to post. Their phone is so important to the self, that it feels like an invasion for someone else to touch their phone.
In some ways, we never outgrow our childhood sense of possessiveness. This is my toy and you can’t touch it. The question is what toys result in such a tight sense of ownership, of importance to the self. I’m unlikely to loan my car to someone. You might feel uncomfortable having stay in your house and sleep in your bed when you’re out of town. Where do you draw your line of what is a critical part of your self? For the millennials, the self includes their cell phones. Clearly the phone is more than a toy. So much of their lives are stored and embedded in their phones. Their phones hold their pictures, their friends, their passwords, their entire lives. Loaning the phone is far too personal and intimate to contemplate. So if your phone dies and you need to borrow someone else’s, you might not want to ask a millennial. You would make them cringe to imagine letting you touch their phones.