The Communications Network Oral History Interview (7 November 2001)
These excerpts are from a group interview, undertaken as part of an oral history research project run in 2001-2002 by The Communications Network, a Bournemouth University/BT project. In this interview, three seventeen-year-olds are asked about their experiences of telephone technologies and the internet. In these two short excerpts the adolescents recall when they each first saw and got a mobile phone, and give their views on younger children’s mobile phone use.
BT Group Archives: TCK 224/B219
Transcript
Excerpt 1
Interviewer
So let’s, let’s start to talk about mobile phones. Um, can you remember, well, first of all, can you remember how old you were when you first realised that mobile phones existed, even?
Respondent 1
Fourteen.
Interviewer
Fourteen?
Respondent 1
I got my first mobile when I was fourteen. Didn’t have any of the texting stuff on though, it was that old.
Respondent 2
My Dad got one in ‘94 … because we needed one then. I did..
Interviewer
So you would have been about eleven or twelve?
Respondent 2
I’d have been ten.
Interviewer
Ten.
Respondent 3
I remember when my uncle who lived in London, he was a businessman, and I went up there when I was really young and I saw it in his car and I was absolutely amazed (laughs)… absolutely amazed. But I got my phone about when … I was in year ten I think it was.
Excerpt 2
Respondent 1
You see, you see ten-year-olds going round with a Nokia stuck to their ear, it’s like oh my god we never had that…
Respondent 3
The little girl…
Respondent 1
when we were that age…
Respondent 3
…the little girl opposite me she’s got one and she’s like seven or something. And she phones up, she comes knocking on her little friend’s door, she just phones up and goes, “I’m at the front door”. I was like, why don’t you just ring the door bell? (laughs). Just ring the door bell.
Respondent 1
I think it’s ridiculous as young…
Respondent 3
Yeah…
Respondent 1
…a ten-year-old having a mobile phone.
Respondent 3
Awful.
Respondent 1
It really is.
