Study: Cell Phones Add To Family Tension

Use of cell phones and pagers may be hurting family life, according to a new study.

The study finds a link between use of cell phones and pagers and increased psychological distress and lower family satisfaction because it allows yet another way to bring job worries home after work, says Noelle Chesley, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin- Milwaukee and the author of the study.

The study, published in the journal of marriage and family, suggests that women are doubly affected because they indicated that the greater access also allowed home concerns to spill over into the work day, something the men did not experience.

"What we found was that it was a negative experience for both men and women, but women had the added problem of home life invading work," Chesley says. For women, the consequences of cell phone access may be increased calls from children or elderly family members, calls that are usually placed because a problem has arisen at home.

The survey sample included 1,367 people who were employed at one of seven organizations in upstate New York. To be eligible for the study, respondents had to be married or partnered with someone who also worked outside the home.

Use of computers and the Internet, including e-mail, were included in the study, but those technologies did not promote either positive or negative changes in the people studied, says Chesley.

She says she can think of two possible explanations. First, cell phones and pagers are too convenient.

"A cell phone you’d use as an easy way to gain quick access. With the computer, we make more of a decision to go to it, turn it on, and check email and the internet and you can choose not to bother with it. There’s more control there."

Also, cell phones and pagers are a newer phenomenon than computers. "Adoption of computer use has existed for a longer time, and perhaps people have had time to figure out how to control it," she says.