ABSTRACT
This chapter explores ways that mobile phones mediate children's everyday mobility, extending research in the geographies of health literature that has addressed questions of mobile phone use in the context of children's independent mobility. It considers how children's everyday mobility is negotiated through mobile phones within the contexts of family rules and routines, cultural influences, peer social connections and neighbourhood environments. The chapter details three themes of mobile device ecologies – adoption, affordance and appropriation – in order to analyse the shifting significance of these companion devices in children's everyday mobility. It reports on two qualitative studies examining how children and parents perceive and use mobile phones to negotiate mobility: the first in an inner urban area of Moreland in Melbourne, Australia, during 2011 and 2012; and the second in inner city Auckland, New Zealand, in 2012.
