Mobile Phones or Pepper Spray?

Integrating mobile technology into women's everyday lives has rendered fantasies (and realties) around enhancing one's personal safety in multi-tasking while fulfilling the often gendered expectations of constant contact, accessibility, and responsibility. Mobile intimacy changes the user's perception of their current social environment. A survey study was conducted using 197 female college students from a large US public institution to investigate whether women imagine their mobile phones to be weapons of self-defense. Significant results indicate that not only do women imagine their mobile phones to be weapons of self-defense, they view mobile phones to be more effective than a more traditional weapon, like pepper spray. Mobile phones do promote personal safety and disaster relief, yet over-reliance on mobile phone use can be detrimental. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]