The Mobile Phone and Marital Communication: Its Influence on Family Happiness in Indonesia

Abstract

Today, a mobile phone has asserted itself as a leading communication tool in most of our personal transactions and interactions. It has become a life simplifying and life changing mode of communication, influencing both public and private lives of people. Being a widely used tool for communication, a mobile phone touches most of the interpersonal cooperation and relationships in society, including marital interactions and relationships. Upon this, the present study, seeks to establish the importance of mobile phone communication in marriage and its influence on family happiness. The study unearths the pattern of mobile phone communication among married partners, by outlining the most common reasons for communicating with the spouse on a mobile phone. A survey was carried out with the help of questionnaires to obtain data from 30 respondents, comprising of married partners, staff and students from a state-owned university in Banjarmasin. Each of the respondents possessed a mobile phone. The Mann-Whitney test indicates that the males profoundly believed that mobile phone communication was more important to their marriage than females to strengthen their relationship. Also, the males reported a higher frequency of sending messages and calling their spouses. By and large, the results of the study illuminate on most common reasons for communicating with the spouse, and the outstanding reason is on maintaining a robust intimate relationship through keeping in touch, sharing updates, emotions, feelings, knowing about children and ensuring the safety of each other through checking on one another using a mobile phone. The findings have significance in showing the need for continued communication in a marital relationship, especially by using the fastest and most comfortable means of mobile phone. Given the synchronous nature of mobile phone communication, the results indicate that married spouses cannot do without it, especially in this Information Society, where we need updates from our spouses, children, friends, and the situation at large.