Calling and texting (too much): Mobile maintenance expectations, (over)dependence, entrapment, and friendship satisfaction

Abstract

This article uses dialectical theory to examine how mobile phone use in close friendships affects relational expectations, the experiences of dependence, overdependence, and entrapment, and how those experiences affect relational satisfaction.Results suggest that increased mobile phone use for the purpose of relational maintenance has contradictory consequences for close friendships.Using mobile phones in close relationships increased expectations of relationship maintenance through mobile phones.Increased mobile maintenance expectations positively predicted dependence, which increased satisfaction, and positively predicted overdependence, which decreased satisfaction.Additionally, entrapment, the guilt and pressure to respond to mobile phone contact, uniquely predicted dissatisfaction.The results are interpreted in relation to the interdependent dialectical tensions of friendship, media entrapment, and the logic of perpetual contact. © SAGE Publications 2011.