Intimate Connections: Contextualizing Japanese Youth and Text Messaging

This paper describes the social, cultural and historical contexts that structure current mobile text messaging practices of Japanese youth. First, it examines the ways in which mobile messaging has been structured by the power geometries of existing places such as the home, school, and public places. Second, the paper presents the main social context in which youth messaging is set: the intimate peer group. Finally, it describes how these practices are situated in a post-war history of intergenerational struggle and cultural policies relative to youth communication and street cultures. The authors’ key argument is that youth technology use is driven not only by certain psychological and developmental imperatives, but also by youths’ position in historically specific social structures.