Text of that NYT article (link will expire at some point).
August 2, 1999
Teen-Agers Are All Talk With Own Cell Phones
By VIVIAN S. TOY
NEW YORK -- Amit Sinai, 18, plopped down on her spot at Jones
Beach after a quick dip in the ocean, and before the sea water on her
face had a chance to dry she reached for her cellular phone and
started dialing.
"Hi, it's me," she cooed into the palm-sized phone. "I'm on the beach. Where
are you?"
She prattled on with a friend while
she soaked up the sun and
occasionally gestured toward her
beach companion, Julie Papi, 19,
who sat nearby thumbing through
a magazine. Ms. Sinai, a
sophomore at John Jay College of
Criminal Justice, has had her own
cell phone for about a year, and
Ms. Papi got hers when she was
16. Neither of them can imagine
life without one.
"I need it to get in touch with my
friends," Ms. Sinai said a little
incredulously when asked why she and her cell phone were so inseparable.
"Everyone has a phone."
While industry experts say specific numbers are not available, they say there
is no doubt that a growing number of teen-agers across the country have
acquired cell phones in the last year or so. The trend was sparked by the
recent drop in wireless phone service costs, with service charges now
averaging about $40 a month and some plans offering youth-oriented bonuses
like free phones or free service on nights and weekends -- prime teen-age
gabbing time.
The Yankee Group, a Boston-based consulting firm that follows global
wireless trends, found in its annual nationwide survey of cell phone users this
year that 20 percent of them believed it was important for children to have
cell phones, and 8.5 percent had already provided wireless phones to children
under 18. It also found that parents paid for the phone service 72 percent of
the time.
"Wireless phone costs are 50 percent less than
they were four years ago, so it's become a lot
more affordable," said Mark Lowenstein, of the
Yankee Group. "Because of that, carriers have
become more focused in their marketing
campaigns, and they've definitely identified teens
as a segment worth targeting."
This summer, Sprint PCS hired 100 teen-agers to
pitch cell phones to their peers in the New York
area at malls, parks, pools, concerts -- anywhere
teen-agers hang out.
It is clear that teen-agers, both urban and
suburban, see toting a cell phone as cool. Many
teen-agers have adopted cell phones as their
accessory of choice and got rid of their pagers --
that other technological appendage that has
become as much a teen-age fashion statement as wide-legged jeans and
platform sneakers. But others have hung on to their pagers and merely added
a cell phone as part of their wireless arsenal.
Parents often buy cell phones for their children so they can call for help. Cell
phone providers said many parents took note that when gunfire broke out at
Columbine High School in Colorado in April, some students called 911 on
their cell phones. But parents also provide the phones so they can keep tabs
on their teen-agers when they go out with their friends. While teen-agers
could always ignore a parent's page and claim they were nowhere near a pay
phone, parents can usually reach children directly on a cell phone.
"Having a cell phone is a lot less free than having a pager," said Nahil Dhanji,
an 18-year-old resident of Woodside, N.Y., and a recent graduate of
Townsend Harris High School. "You can't get away when you want to be
alone, and you can't just turn it off because then your parents get all
worried."
Industry studies show that the vast majority of teen-agers who carry cell
phones talk to their parents on their phones daily. Still, most teen-agers
primarily use the phones as a lifeline to their friends.
Ms. Papi, of East Meadow, N.Y., on Long Island, said her father first got her
a phone when she started driving to make sure she would never be stranded.
But she now uses the phone about 20 times a day and screens calls with the
caller ID function. "If I see it's a call from my house, I don't pick it up," she
said.
Instead of a traditional ring, her phone -- a sleek Nokia in iridescent purple --
trills the first few notes of the William Tell Overture, but she said she
frequently has to shift to another one of the 30 tunes the phone offers. "All
teen-agers have the same phone," she said with wide-eyed hyperbole. "So if
I'm at the mall or I'm in a room with someone who has the same ring, I have
to change it."
Latoria Gurley, a 15-year-old from New York City who plans to buy her own
phone next month with savings from a summer job as a day camp counselor,
said she would rather have a cell phone than her own line at home. "Because
then I could be outside with my phone showing it off to everybody," she said
while waiting for a midnight movie. "I'd be on the phone all night, every
night. Me and my friends, we never get bored on the phone."
As more and more teen-agers clutch personal cell phones, the nature of the
time-honored teen-age pastime of aimlessly hanging out has become more
fluid. Instead of arranging to meet her friends at a regular place and time,
Phoebe Vickers, a 17-year-old from New York City, said: "I just tell them,
call me. This way I don't have to make specific plans, and I don't have to
stick to them. It makes it easier to find my friends."
While many teen-agers keep track of new cell phone colors and styles the
way car fanatics follow the new makes and models, there seems to be a
healthy contingent of teen-agers who use them sparingly and pragmatically,
and still others who detest cell phones.
Alexandra Lawson, a freshman at Nassau Community College who met some
friends in Manhattan last week, said she tried to keep her usage down to the
200 minutes that come with her $40 monthly plan. She happily accepted the
free phone that came with the plan and is completely uninterested in fancy
phone trends. "It's not a tattoo, it's a phone," she said.
But her friend, Julia Lucas, who was visiting from Philadelphia, said she was
vehemently opposed to cell phones. "Cell phones are a status thing, and it's
not necessary," said Ms. Lucas, 17. "Call me prehistoric, but I can use pay
phones."
Ms. Vickers, a senior at the United Nations International School, estimated
that about 25 percent of her schoolmates had cell phones. She said she made
and received about 45 calls a day on hers. She keeps it with her whenever
she leaves the house, she said as she fished it out of a shopping bag one
recent day, and it has been known to go off during class. "Then I have to
scramble for my bag to shut it off," she said. "Some teachers don't mind, but
some are really strict about it."
Schools across the region, including the New York City public schools, have
banned pagers and cell phones. A 1996 New Jersey law bans pagers in
schools, and many schools apply that to cell phones too.
At Washington Irving High School, a public school in New York City, school
officials routinely confiscate about 120 beepers a year, but last year -- for the
first time -- four or five cell phones appeared in the pile of banned electronic
items.
"This thing is going to grow because it's booming," said Bob Durkin, the
school's principal. "Pretty soon they're all going to have them. Technology
will win, as it always does, and we'll adjust and set up new social norms and
go from there."
Officials at Great Neck Public Schools on Long Island said that pagers and
cell phones were prohibited and that students caught with either were subject
to disciplinary action. But students at Great Neck South High School said that
cell phone use at the school was rampant.
Courtney Tomaselli, who graduated from Great Neck South last spring, said
she got her phone when she was 14 and uses it mainly when she goes out at
night. But she said students walking the school's halls routinely talk to friends
who are just on the other side of the school.
"I think that's just silly," she said last week while hanging out with friends at
the Starbucks in downtown Great Neck. "Plus, my mom would kill me if I
used it that way."
Amanda Sarroff, a junior at Great
Neck South who neither has nor
wants a wireless phone, said she
thought cell phone mania was out
of control. "People are very
disrespectful with them -- they go
off in class, in the theater, in
synagogue," she said. "People
have no limit; it's crazy."
Over the years, as prices have
fallen, phones have also become
much smaller and lighter.
Teen-agers seem to favor the tiny
flip phones that easily slip into a
shirt pocket and the growing
number of brightly colored phones
and phones with interchangeable
covers. Entrepreneurs have expanded the fashion value of cell phones by
selling customized covers with designs that range from an American flag and
a $100 bill with Benjamin Franklin's portrait to youth icons like Michael
Jordan and Hello Kitty.
The latest in wireless phone service also offers many calling options that
teen-agers crave. "I get more stuff on my cell phone than my phone at
home," said Kassy Ray, a 17-year-old from the Riverdale section of the
Bronx. Her companions at Jones Beach nodded in agreement as she rattled
off items like caller ID, call waiting, caller ID for call waiting and conference
calling.
When cell phones first became readily available in the 1980s, the primary
market was business people, and the average bill was about $100 a month.
The number of cell phone subscribers grew from about 92,000 in 1985 to 69
million at the end of 1998, when the average monthly bill dropped just below
$40.
Tom Wheeler, the president of the Cellular Telecommunications Industry
Association, said that the $40 monthly bill was something of a tipping point
for the industry. He said that statistics show that the growth of a new media
technology usually does not take off until its cost falls below 2 percent of
average weekly income. "It was true for VCRs and color televisions," he said.
"And that number for us happens to be $40 a month."
Cell phone service became much more competitive after 1996, when digital
phone service was introduced as an alternative to the traditional analog
wireless service. The number of wireless phone carriers in the New York
area, for example, increased from two to six, and competition drove phone
and service prices down.
Wheeler, who lives in the Washington area, said that he got a cell phone for
his teen-age daughter in 1993, even before the price drop. "I told her she
could call me any time and place and I would come get her, no questions
asked," he said. "And it gave me a terrific sense of security."
He said the only time she used it for that purpose was when her school
volleyball team's bus broke down one night. "She was the only one who had
a phone," he said. "But that was six years ago. Now it would be, 'Here, let me
use my phone,' or, 'My phone's color is better, and it matches the school
uniform."'
Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company |
