The “flashpacker” and the “unplugger”: Cell phone (dis)connection and the backpacking experience

Abstract

The cellular phone’s unique characteristics—its mobility, its portability, and the constant availability that it enables—challenge the feasibility of solitary spaces in individuals’ lives. These spaces—for example, cultural “timeouts,” leisure, and backpacking travel—necessitate a certain degree of cutting oneself off from one’s daily routine, which is threatened by the constant presence of one’s cell phone. This study examines the role of cell phones in young adults’ backpacking experience. Using questionnaires ( n = 105) and in-depth interviews ( n = 14) with “cellular backpackers” and “cell-free backpackers,” the study shows how an attempt is made to reduce availability and attain maximum control over the scope and timing of communication, using a variety of avoidance practices. Those practices derived from the personal narrative structure of the backpacking experience as an escapist, “dropping-off-the-radar” one, and as an attempt to preserve the trek as a space that is cut off and isolated from a technology-saturated environment. In addition, it was found that backpackers care a great deal about their parents’ position when making their decisions whether to take their phones with them and when to use them. In this regard, the article continues the discussion on the metaphor of the cell phone as a transitional object, applying this concept from childhood and adolescence to the twenties and thirties, the ages of most backpackers. On another level, the article addresses the mobile phone’s unique function as an antistatus symbol, in a way that contradicts its function in an ordinary context.