News Regarding the Center
As Cellphones Multiply, Phone Books Get Slimmer
New York Times
June 07, 2007
At the end of last year, 7.2 percent of American households used only a cellphone, up from just 0.7 percent six years earlier, according to TNS Telecom, a research company.
Americans have not been eager to list their cell numbers in phone books. Consumers and privacy advocates balked at the idea in 2004, when most of the big wireless carriers said they wanted to compile a nationwide directory.
Cellphones may make it easier for people to reach each other, yet Americans are very guarded about whom they want calling them.
But what people gain in privacy is lost in a sense of community, reflected in shrinking phone books, said James E. Katz, chair of the communication department at Rutgers University.
"People would meet someone, want to know where they lived, and look up their name in the phone book. And there was a certain ritual aspect to it when people would look forward to the new phone book," Mr. Katz said. "So in a sense, it was a way of social visibility and social involvement. That whole way of doing things, it seems, has largely disappeared."
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