The High-Tech Mobile Phone as Self Phone: A Media Dependency Study of Mobile Phone Use among Adolescents in Taiwan

This study examines use, sense-making, and reinvention of the mobile phone among adolescents from the media dependency perspective. Findings of a survey of 525 Chinese high school students in Taiwan show that adolescents embraced the mobile phone and have integrated it into their daily lives. They use the mobile phone for calling and seeking mobile information and entertainment. Moreover, a hierarchical pattern demonstrated the chain effects of individual mobile phone dependency on respondents' attention to and attitudes toward the mobile phone, and the extent to which they personalize the mobile phone as self phone.